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Where did all the feathers come from?

I lunge for my bedspread and yank it down. But it’s not the comforter that’s been torn open.

The fitted sheet and the mattress are in shreds. Right where I slept. And I know for a fact it wasn’t like that when I went to bed last night.

I can’t wrap my mind around the horror of it. The invasiveness. Someone had practically reached under me to rip open my mattress and extract all those feathers.

How could I not wake up?

My breaths come faster and faster; I can’t take in enough air. I back up, nearly tripping on my own feet.

I open my mouth, the words coming out almost reflexively. “Bargainer, I want to—”

Des materializes before I finish my sentence.

At first, he has eyes only for me. And he looks so damn happy—happy that I called him.

But then he notices the feathers. The fucking feathers, which areeverywhere.

“What happened.” It’s not even a question; it’s a threat to whoever did this. The edge in his voice makes the back of my neck prickle.

I’m shaking my head. “I don’t know.”

He walks around the bed, studying the patterns. He almost manages to pull off looking calm, but I can see the dark outline of his wings.

He places a hand on the mattress, gathering a fistful of feathers. “They did this while you slept?”

“Yes,” I croak out. My voice sounds embarrassingly weak. Scared.

I hug my arms across my chest. I feel violated in my own home, my sanctuary.

Des drops the feathers and stalks to the other side of the room, checking the doors. From what I can tell, they’re still locked.

He drags a hand down his mouth. I feel his magic then, building and building. Strands of my hair begin to lift at the static electricity in the air.

“You’re under my protection,” he says. “You have been for a very long time. Whoever did this was capable of sensing that.”

As he speaks, the floorboards shiver beneath his feet and the glass panes behind him begin to rattle as they did last night. I hear one of them fissure.

“No one—no one—touches the people under my protection.” His wings flicker in and out of existence with his words.

I’m woman enough to admit that right about now I’m a little scared of Des. I can feel his fury riding the magic in the room. This is one of those moments when I have to recognize that fairies are very different from humans. Their anger is bigger and more ferocious than anything a human can conjure. And they’re so much quicker to snap.

Des’s face contorts into something merciless, and I’m pretty sure he’s close to completely losing it.

“Please don’t kill anyone on my behalf,” I say. It’s nearly happened before.

He laughs, but it’s angry. “All the beads in the world couldn’t make me agree to that.” The Bargainer comes back over to me, clasping my wrist between his hands.

His face still looks furious, but the longer he stares at me, the more that fury melts away. “Now, cherub,” his words roll off his lips like honey, “the first repayment of the day: you’re coming home with me, and you’re not leaving until your debts haveallbeen paid.”

Chapter 16

March, seven years ago

Des sits onmy desk, one of his boots perched on the back of my computer chair. He leans back against my window, sketching. Students walking to and from the dorms right now should be able to clearly see him. I live on the second story of the girls’ dormitory, and my room faces out onto campus. Anyone loitering outside tonight should be able to see Des’s big, hulking man-back.

But they don’t. And I know they don’t because if they did, our dorm’s house mother would be up my ass in about two seconds tops.