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My sight adjusts to the dim light of the dwelling.

I squeeze my eyes once, twice—and the third time is when the orbs glowing back at me mimic .

The faerie hound… is just a pup. Not a hunched, ready-to-pounce beast tucked away in the shadows. It’s just a pup.

A baffled look steals me.

A slack face staring dumbly at a curious one.

The pup tilts its head. Considers me.

A frown knits into my brow. I stare back at it.

Heartbeats pass between us, each less violent than the last—then, finally, I jolt out of my stupor and slowly drop to my knees.

“Hello…” I speak softly, an uncertain hitch to my tone, but kind and gentle all the same.

Its ears lift. Too big for its little head.

The white fur hasn’t faded to translucence yet, it’s a ball of snow, and so I guess it to be very young, a babe, not a juvenile, weened off its mother very recently.

I start to reach out my hands for it when something bolts through me—

“Nari.”

The broken whisper comes from the darkness of the lounge.

I startle, shoving up from the floorboards. Forgetting all about the faerie hound, I throw my wild glare to the dim room. My boots hit the woodboards with scuffs and clops—then I am frozen in place.

Two weeks, I avoided him.

Two weeks, he avoided me.

But that time is over, because he stands there shrouded in shadows—shadows that don’t curve over his shoulders or lick at his heels, not anymore.

No, now he is separate from the dark.

His ashen sweater stands against the black, not melting into it; his coal-toned breeches and boots to match don’t dissolve into darkness like they once did; the beige hue of his face, that lovely complexion of his; the dimples carved into his cheeks, the inky coils of his hair brushing over the arch of his eyebrows, the pink of his lips— those gleaming cerulean eyes … I can make out all of it in the dim dwelling.

Daxeel…

My heart flings itself through my body.

Breath pinned to my throat, it’s all I can do to just stand here, staring at him. That slack look has returned to my face, stolen my expression; it parts my lips and pries my eyelids open.

Daxeel isn’t frozen in place like me. His muscles don’t bolt to his bones and turn him into an unmoveable statue, like the fright does to me.

The only movement running through me is the sudden choppiness of my breaths trembling my chest.

But Daxeel moves.

He walks towards me.

Slow, patient steps—cautious, almost. Yet there is a tense urgency in him, in the flex and unflex of his hands at his sides, sooted and stained… with ash .

Is he here to burn me?

No that makes no sense. A silly intrusion into my scrambled, numb mind.

Still, he advances, his steps as soft as the look he bestows on me. And like that look, there is trepidation in his approach.

It takes him much too long to close the gap between us, a lifetime to walk the short distance from the lounge to where I stand, stuck, in the kitchen.

He finds me—reaches me… then stops just an arm’s distance away.

And still, I am unmoving.

Is this shock?

I should be speaking, shouting at him to leave and never return, to jump off the balcony and plummet. I should be backing into the door, running out of the dwelling, chasing my escape from him as he so ruthlessly chased his escape from me.

Yet, I am stuck. Rooted to the spot.

A victim of his soft eyes.

No words gather in me, no shout to rise in my throat.

For a long moment, we simply stare at each other.

Then those soft pink lips of his, they part, slow, hesitant, and he lifts his hand for my cheek. “Nari…”

The touch of his fingertips is fire igniting my soul.

I flinch and stagger back.

My cheek turns slightly, a rejection of him and his touch, a rejection I can’t summon with words.

Daxeel releases a breath, one I wouldn’t hear if the silence in the dwelling wasn’t so thick. His hand lowers to his side.

His mouth parts, uncertain, then he’s still for a moment, can’t summon the right words to speak before he settles on, “How are you?”

My lashes flutter, then—slowly—I arch a brow.

How are you?

If I had the strength, I would scoff at his grand question. I find I am numb.

“You look well.” That’s a lie, I hear it in the hitch of his tone over well . “I… I fixed the door…”

My answer comes too quick, a hissed threat, “ What are you doing here ?”

Pain tightens his voice, defeats his eyes and numbs him from the inside out, like he’s little more than a spectre moving through realms. “I brought a gift—”

“I assure you, I don’t want it.”

His mouth tilts.

A flicker of cerulean eyes aims at the corner of the kitchen.

I trace his glance to the hound tucked into the corner, ears up, eyes flaring between us—but unmoving.

The pup is as uncertain and tense as we are.

“Her name is Hedda,” he says, soft. “My mother told me about what happened at the tavern. Hedda… once she is grown more… She will keep you safe.”

I have no words.

No answer to give, not even one unspoken from my mind. I just look at the pup for a beat before I turn to find him again.

He watches me, a faint frown stitched between his brows. His fingers twitch, an obvious ache to reach out for me again, to touch me.

Before the sacrifices, I might have dismissed it as an evate thing, the need to touch me to appease the animal within, but now… that is all gone. And so the urges must be vanished too.

Unless…

The understanding strikes hard enough that I almost flinch before him.

Daxeel loves me outside of the bond.

He loves me as more than his evate.

I learn that now, and I see it as I look into the agony swimming in his ocean eyes.

I don’t know why it hurts me to realise this, but it does. It angers me just as much.

I consider the brokenness of the male before me, the dark circles around his eyes, the stains of what I suspect is black powder on his fingertips.

I offer him a truth. “You aren’t well.”

I know it.

He does, too.

He just has too much shame to hold my stare for more than a heartbeat, so he turns his gaze to the rotten floorboards between us.

“You should leave.” I run him over with my stare, lingering over the bruises on his knuckles and the blood grimed under his fingernails. “It is late.”

He gives a faint nod.

Still, he does not look at me. His gaze remains dropped to the floorboards as he reaches into the pocket of his breeches.

“You are losing weight.” That murmur is followed by the gentle touch of a coin pouch deposited onto the kitchen bench. “Eat.”

Without another word, he’s gone.

The draught from the door disturbs me.

I shove it shut behind him.

The breath I release comes out in a whoosh . I slump against the door, forehead on the wood.

And I stay like that for a while.

It’s only when the rustling sound comes from the netted bags abandoned on the floor that I draw away from the door.

I swerve a cautious look at the pup—the pup buried in the bags, rifling through all the starchy vegetables to find the good stuff. The good stuff being low quality cuts from the butchers down the lane.

I loosen another heaving breath before I drop to a crouch.

The pup stills, head buried in the bag, butt stuck up in the air, a stiff tail that warns me of nerves.

“Hedda.” I am not soft spoken in the way I address the faerie hound. I tell her off for digging through my bags.

The miniature beast worms out of the bag and lifts its curious face to mine.

“Hedda,” I echo, this time soft, this time with a smile. I reach out my hands. “Come here.”

I doubt she knows the command yet, but she knows the warmth I offer.

She pounces, big paws thumping on the floorboards, long legs flicking at all angles and no coordination, and a pink tongue flopped out the side of her mouth like a ribbon.

I scoop her into my arms and hold her to my chest.

My smile fades but does not disappear entirely.

I firm my embrace around her.

And I find I hold her the rest of the Quiet.

I carry her as I put away the food and hang the empty netted bags on the hooks by the door; I hold her as I shimmy out of my grotesque overalls and kick off my boots before I shimmy into a cotton set and climb into my bed; and I cuddle her for my full sleep while Eamon is gone to Hemlock House—and he doesn’t return until the Warmth inches too close.

I stir as he sneaks into the bedchamber. I hear him pause by the doorway, and I don’t need to open my eyes to know he is startled by the sleeping hound in my arms. But after a moment, he dismisses the matter for bed—fully clothed.