Page 6 of Blackwarden

Truth be told, my accommodations appeared to be perfect—like him.

The only flaw was the fact that everything that surrounded me, the bed coverings, the leather on the comfy chair in the sitting area, the walls, the floors, the towels in the bathroom, were all black .

And it reminded me of him . As if the rugs and the curtains and the brocade overdress that I wore were made of the same thing he was made of—Dark Fae magic.

“Are you...part of this mansion?”

I don’t know where the question came from exactly, but I was happy I’d asked it, because a flash of confusion crossed his face before he smothered it with a smirk. I found it hard to hide my momentary enjoyment at confusing him.

“What makes you think I could possibly be part of a building?” Mirth stained his words in such a mocking way.

“I don’t know. It’s magic. You’re magic. It’s dark and scary. You’re dark and scary. It can read my desires. You can apparently feel my emotions.”

He smiled, showing elongated incisors that sent a shiver of fear down my spine.

Like the creatures painted on the walls in the hall, he was a predator.

A beast. I clutched the arms of my chair so tight my fingers ached.

A Dark Fae, like him, had killed my husband for no more reason than saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.

I reminded myself that I was a sacrifice.

For what, I had yet to learn, but the girls who were brought to the Gatehouse never returned.

And I wouldn’t either.

“You poor humans know so little about Fae,” he sighed.

Perhaps his words were intended to scare me but they ignited a searing frustration in me instead.

It was electric and alive, scurrying under my skin.

Not because he was wrong. I truly only knew what I’d read in storybooks and from fairy tales passed from one generation to the next.

I was mad because he didn’t know me well enough to establish how much or how little I knew about anything.

But what I knew for certain was that one Dark Fae had murdered my husband and another one was sitting across from me.

I leaned forward, pulling his attention to my face, a momentary spark of bravery searing through me.

“Then educate me, Keres, because I’d love to know exactly what you are and why I’m here.”

The muscles in his jaw tightened before he eased back in his chair, his eyes never leaving mine.

His expression had melted back into that annoying stoic mask he seemed to love wearing.

I hated it. I’d rather have the smile he’d just flashed a moment ago, even though it was terrifying.

I’d rather have the reminder that he wasn’t a placid man sent to be my guide between the human realm and the Unseelie Court.

He was a Dark Fae male—a monster disguised in beautiful skin.

“I’m sorry to disappoint, Ms. Greene, but on the contrary, the Gatehouse is actually—”

He stopped abruptly, squeezing his eyes closed, his eyebrows drawing together in what looked like pain. I took in a sharp breath. He recovered quickly, but my curiosity was officially piqued. He’d nearly given something away he shouldn’t have, and I needed to know what it was.

“Breakfast first, then you can ask your questions,” he said, a stain of frustration in his voice that hadn’t been there a moment ago.

But I wasn’t hungry. At least not for food. I was hungry for more information. My curiosity was strong enough that for the first time since coming to the Gatehouse, I wasn’t afraid of him. What had he stumbled over?

What was he hiding?

He glanced down at his plate, and I tried not to act surprised when two eggs resting in black glass egg cups appeared beside a thick slice of buttered toast. A tiny salt safe melted into existence beside his plate with a cup of tea.

I leaned away, trying to get myself as far away from magical breakfasts and mysterious Fae as possible while still staying seated.

He grinned at me as he lifted a spoon to crack the shell of one of his soft-boiled eggs.

I glared at my own plate. I had no idea what I could possibly request for breakfast. My whole life had been tasteless porridge, ladled into old, wooden bowls that were chipped from years of heavy use.

My family wasn’t rich and neither was Bastion’s.

The house my husband and I had made our marriage home had been the one he’d grown up in—modest and cozy.

When Bastion died, I’d sold everything, before I moved back into my parents’ home.

I needed the money more than the memories. All I’d kept was my new family name.

And now, none of that mattered. I was at the Gatehouse.

The newest sacrifice to the Unseelie Court.

I pictured the most extravagant thing I could possibly imagine eating for breakfast and waited.

With agonizing slowness the air around my plate glimmered and shifted as a bowl of fresh fruit appeared.

Figs, plums, apples sliced to look like flowers, berries that couldn’t possibly be ripe at this time of year.

Beside this a slice of cheesecake drizzled with thick red syrup.

When I glanced up at Keres he was smiling again as he chewed a bite of toast with deliberate slowness. Even his swallowing was elegant, and I lost myself in the way the muscles of his neck moved, a work of art far more beautiful than the terrifying mural that covered the walls of this place.

“Now you understand,” he said, a lustiness to his voice that hadn’t been there before. “You have but to ask for whatever you desire.”

His words were like fire, writhing through me and settling low in my belly.

He’d said it before, but I guess I hadn’t entirely believed him.

It was hard not to, with a bounty of out of season fruit that looked so delicious my mouth watered.

My hand hovered over the bowl, again the tickle of concern that this wasn’t safe, that this wasn’t real, wriggled into my consciousness.

Like the evening before, my stomach made the decision to trust the food for me.

I popped one of the berries between my lips.

My cheeks ignited, a warmth building deep in my stomach at the way Keres watched me with dark intensity as I slipped another piece of fruit into my mouth.

The heat plunged deeper into my core as his eyes followed the fruit to my lips.

How was he able to elicit such a reaction?

It was terrifying. He was terrifying. Gorgeous, mysterious, but terrifying.

I looked down at the fruit in front of me and tried to ignore how he continued to stare.

We ate in silence, his eyes rarely leaving me long enough to tear another bite from his toast. When he was finished, he leaned back, propping an elbow on the arm of his chair as he cradled a cup of tea.

He looked dreadfully comfortable, arrogance dripping from the way he held himself.

He gazed at me with hungry eyes, like I was a honey cake fresh from the oven.

“You’re burning with questions, Ms. Greene.”

I wiped at the corners of my mouth with the napkin from my lap, giving myself a few more seconds to frame my first question.

“Why, exactly, am I here?”

His expression didn’t change. He’d anticipated this question. I’m sure I wasn’t the first girl to ask him. Which made me wonder...

“And how many girls have you dragged to the Unseelie Court?”

He sat up straight, setting his cup down and leaning both elbows on the table. There was something about the change in formality to his posture that caused goosebumps to bloom down my arms.

“You are here as terms of an agreement made between the Hag Queen of the Unseelie Court and the Council of Magistrates as concessions for a very long and very bloody war between our people. I believe you know it as the Fae Wars.”

“And my second question?”

He spoke volumes with his expression, tipping his head to the side and furrowing his brows in mock confusion. I worked my jaw in frustration.

“Don’t act coy. How many girls have you taken to this Hag Queen of yours? ”

He leaned closer to me, cradling his face in his hands.

“Why does it matter, Ms. Greene?”

“Answering my question with another question, is not actually answering.”

He smiled before leaning back again, letting those long fingers drag down his cheeks. “Isn’t it?”

I sighed, folding my arms in a huff. This was impossible. “You promised to answer my questions.”

“I said you may ask them. I never promised to answer.”

He was right. He hadn’t said anything about actually answering. My cheeks burned with embarrassment, and I pushed away from the table, done with whatever game he was playing.

“If you won’t answer them, then why should I bother asking?”

“Perhaps you should ask the correct questions.”

“Uuuuugh!” I stood so fast I nearly knocked the chair down behind me.

He watched me with curious humor as I bolted from the dining room, only to stop dead in the hall trying to get my bearings. I should have known what direction to go, but every time I’d been brought to or from the dining room, I’d been thinking of something other than where I was.

“It’s really a rather small place. Do you need an escort?”

His voice was so close, I flinched as I turned and slammed my back against the door frame. He towered over me, midnight in his eyes. Shadows clung to his shoulders, wrapping around him as he took a step closer, causing me to tip my head up to see his face.

“I’ll find my own way,” I snapped.

He smirked. “Enjoy your morning, Ms. Greene.” His voice ripped a shiver from me before he continued down the hall without looking back.

I stood there, staring at the space where he’d just been.

My head was swimming with all manner of confused emotions.

Heat seemed to creep into my cheeks from the pit of my being.

This was stupid. He was Dark Fae, wielding some kind of shadow magic to make himself more alluring to a pathetic human such as myself.

It didn’t matter how beautiful he was, he was a monster, just like all the others, capable of murdering humans for no reason.

I retraced my steps down the hall, eventually following the mural I’d regretfully admired before. It was like the illustrations I’d loved so much as a child. I couldn’t pry my eyes from the monsters of the Unseelie Court frolicking along the wall.

I stopped at the place I’d noticed before, with the girl that looked like me.

The details were murky, as if whoever painted this mural had been working from old memories.

The woman was medium build with mousy brown hair that fell around her shoulders in waves.

Her face was nothing more than shadows. Unlike the other women, she wore a brown dress with long sleeves and a tattered hem.

Lumbering behind her was a massive winged creature with all black skin and hair and demon horns that curved over its head like Keres’.

The creature was significantly taller than the woman, with broad shoulders and a muscular torso tapering to a trim waist. Its hands ended in long taloned fingers that hungrily stretched toward her.

The unusual thing was that the monster had been drawn with far more detail than the girl had. Almost like the girl was...unfinished.

I glared at the mural for so long that everything started to look different, like a word being spoken until it sounded foreign. I shook my head, trying to clear my thoughts and gazed around at the other monsters in the mural.

I shouldn’t have. The hair on the back of my neck rose as I realized what I was looking at.

Only a slight distance from the woman was another girl being held against a tree.

She was naked and a green fleshed female monster with four arms clutched one of the human girl’s breasts to her lips.

Another hand disappeared between the maiden’s legs.

While the girl’s face may have been one of pain, it could have just as easily been one of pleasure.

I couldn’t stop staring, wishing I knew if this was a depiction of a crime or of two lovers.

I was too scared to look at any of the others.

Instead, I wrapped my arms around my shoulders and hurried down the smaller hall perpendicular to the main one.

I needed the security of my suite and if I was correct, it was to the left.

I glanced down the length of the hall to the right, morbidly curious if I’d catch some dark monster lurking at the end.

There were a number of doors. One of them was wide open with welcoming light spilling out and on to the wall across from it.

The contrast of warmth against the creepy shadows of the Gatehouse was a stark warning that this place was not entirely as it seemed.

But I couldn’t let my curiosity get the better of me.

Not while the memory of Keres so close was achingly fresh, the depictions in the mural still lingering in the forefront of my thoughts.

I rubbed my upper arms trying to ward off the cold of fear then turned and rushed to the safety of my room.