Page 45 of Blackwarden

Rosalin

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I woke on the cold floor, disoriented, the world spinning as I tried to push myself up. The warmth of a body touched my arm, and I turned toward it.

Blue hair, dark skin, black horns. Keres.

I touched the tip of his pointed ear but he didn’t stir.

“Keres?” I rolled toward him, cupping his face in my hands, my stomach bottoming out. “Keres,” I whispered. My eyes flooding with tears as his eyes remained woefully closed.

He’d used too much of his magic. He was immortal, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t be killed. I gathered him into my arms and pressed my face against his neck, smothering my tears in his hair. I’d lost him—my Blackwarden, my second chance. He’d protected me so many times and I’d lost him.

“Please, Keres.”

His arms wrapped around me. A sob broke free in my relief.

It was real and hot, washing through me as he gathered me against him, tucking my head under his chin and ceaselessly hugging me.

I melted into him, ignoring the silk robe slipping from my shoulders, savoring the heat of his bare skin, the scent of him.

I was lost in his arms, and I never wanted to be found.

“You remembered,” he said into my hair before kissing my head.

He pushed us up, pulling me onto his lap, my legs immediately enveloping his waist. I snuggled against him, wrapping my own arms over his and digging my fingers into his long hair. I refused to let him go. Not yet.

Maybe never.

My time in the Unseelie Court was blurry, but based on what I could remember I didn’t want to remember it clearly.

I pulled back to look at him, cradling his face in my hands as his eyes washed over my face.

I was seeing the real Keres for the first time with all my faculties, and my heart intact.

I’d always found him beautiful, but he was.

..painfully gorgeous. The way the light glazed his black skin with a silver sheen that accentuated every muscle, the curve of his lips, the line of his jaw.

I struggled to look away. He was Dark Fae, as he’d said, in every sense of the term. So inhumanly beautiful.

A line of blood trailed down his throat.

“You’re bleeding.” An insatiable urge to check him over for other injuries flashed through me as my hands roamed over his shoulders.

“It’s nothing.”

“I...I’m so sorry,” I said through another sob. “I couldn’t help you.”

He leaned forward, pressing his forehead to mine. “Never apologize again, Ms. Greene.”

I pulled back enough to glare at him as a smile crept across his face. I must have looked completely confused.

“Glorious creature, you broke the curse.” He held my chin firmly in place.

I wasn’t prepared for the ache his gaze left in me.

The smile slipped from his face as his eyes fell to my lips.

I didn’t wait for him to kiss me. I crashed into him, hungry for the taste of him.

He moaned into my mouth, the sound sending sparks of heat through me as my fingers followed the lines of his neck to his bare chest. I eased back from him breathless, remembering the moments before he pulled me through the portal.

I remembered his name. That wasn’t what broke the curse.

I’d told him I loved him. I’d confessed in front of the Hag Queen.

I loved him. It didn’t matter what face he wore; I loved him .

Somehow, a Dark Fae wormed himself into my angry heart, and I didn’t know how or when, but I wouldn’t change it for the world.

He was my midnight apple, and I loved him.

“Rosalin?” The sound of my name from his lips was the sweetest thing I’d ever heard.

I smiled as I kissed him again.

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I’d struggled to help Keres to his suite.

After using so much of his magic to escape Bevgyah and then to open the gate back to the human world, he was beyond exhausted.

I’d forced him into bed to rest. Even though he’d begged me to stay with him, I feared my presence would only be distracting.

I knew I, for one, would struggle to keep my hands to myself.

Instead, I told him I was going to see if I could find anything in the library on warding the portal, or his Gatehouse against anyone coming through, and he reluctantly let me slip away.

I don’t know what I thought I was going to find, but when I entered the library the braziers flared to life, a stack of books waiting for me on a side table next to a comfortable chair.

“I missed you, too,” I said to the ceiling, the nearest brazier flickering in response.

Diving into the books I skimmed quickly, finding most of them were in Old Fae.

I’d have to give these to Keres when he was well enough to read through them himself.

I set them aside and focused on the ones I could read instead, trying to find something on wards or hexes that might keep certain people away.

I worried that if we didn’t do something, once Bevgyah managed to find someone to open the portal she’d come for him.

I couldn’t lose him. Not again. I had almost lost him forever, in the cruelest way possible.

I shivered realizing he had been forced to see me every day, unable to call me by my real name, unable to speak with me without risking the Hag Queen’s punishments.

And now that I knew what those punishments were, I shuddered to think of how often he might have had to endure them.

I squeezed tears back with a deep breath and set the book aside, an overwhelming need to make sure he was alright washing over me. I slipped out into the hall but stopped short.

The mural was gone.

I was frozen in place, staring at a blank wall.

I ran my fingers along where I was certain it had been, but there was nothing.

Just the textured black walls. No dragons, monsters, or naked humans.

No trees or landscapes. I traced the length of it all the way to Keres’ suite where there was something.

It was small. Two silhouettes with their backs to the outside world. One of them had horns, the other leaned against him, her brown hair obscuring much of her details. It was rushed. Each brush stroke was intentional but rough.

When had this been painted? I looked up at the brazier, my mind reeling.

“Did you paint this?” The brazier dimmed.

But I knew in my heart who painted the mural.

It made sense. He painted the portraits with such pristine detail, why wouldn’t he be capable of painting this mural as well.

I had vague memories of the same type of mural on the walls of Bevgyah’s palace, the only other place he spent significant time.

I touched the silhouettes, certainty blooming in my chest. Something about them helped ease my fears that I wasn’t just another human passing through Keres’ long life. Maybe he cared for me as much as I had come to care for him .

“Can I stay here?”

I don’t know why I asked out loud. The brazier outside Keres’ door flared brighter in response. I smiled at the ceiling before I turned and slipped into his room.