Page 15

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At the foot of the bed, a rumble disturbs my rest. Vibrations thrumming against the arches of my feet.

My face wrinkles into a scowl buried in a thin, stale pillow. I blink against the pilled cotton cover of the pillow, a fabric that might have been nice about a century ago. No matter how many washes, scrubs, soaps, it feels like it is still dirty somehow.

Doesn’t help that a pool of drool has soaked the pillow and been pressed against my chin and cheek so long that a rash is prickling at my flesh.

I forget the pillow when another rumble thrums against my feet—no, on my feet.

Face-down, arms splayed, my feet are pinned to the flimsy mattress, the kind meant for the lowest of slaves, and it takes my sleepy mind a moment to realise that my new faerie hound pup has curled up there, curved against the arches of my soles—and she is growling.

A nasaled sound comes from me before, pushing my front up on my elbows, I contort around to look down at the pup.

I expect to see her sleeping, lost in dreams, as she often is when she growls. At least, in the few phases I’ve been her new mother, that is one of the things I have learned about her.

Instead, I find that not only is she awake, her emerald eyes fixed on the door, but her fur is raised, her tail stiff, and her ears perched.

My frown runs over the ajar door, cracked open a couple of inches. A wedge of faint light stretches over the dusty carpet. I watch it for a beat, focused, listening.

I hear nothing but the faintest, distant clink of fireflies hitting their glass domes over and over.

I shift my gaze to the other bed.

Covers rumpled and toppled over the side, a divot in the pillow where Eamon’s head should be. But he isn’t there.

With another glance at Hedda and her heckled fur, I start the slow, sluggish process of contorting my body around under the scratchy blankets. I slip my feet out from under the pup’s weight—and it’s enough to turn her startled eyes on me.

I reach down to scoop Hedda into my arms before I throw my heavy legs over the edge of the bed. Heavy by sensation, not exactly weight gain from strict rations.

Though, Daxeel’s gift of coin will help with that.

An urgent violence rises through me, and I shove all thoughts of him from my mind, of his brokenness, of his defeat.

Good. He should be suffering.

I wish for him to suffer for the rest of his days.

I don’t quite know how well I mean that.

A huff tenses me as, holding Hedda to my chest, I wander to the light that trickles in through the ajar door. The soles of my feet slap on the wooden floorboards, much too loud, much too clumsy, much too sleepy.

I should be soft-footed. Light-stepped. I should move like a shadow for the ajar door, bated breath pinned to my chest, ears sharp for any new sounds that might come.

But I am just too fucking tired.

The edge of faint light touches my toes first.

I shoulder the door aside to make space for my clumsy steps before I peer around the wall.

The lounge is dead.

Dusty chairs, unlit hearth, no glowjars in sight.

It’s the kitchen that lures in my gaze.

In my arms, Hedda’s stiff body suddenly relaxes, as though a ribbon of tension is lured out of her. A sigh warms my wrist before she rests her chin there—and she has apparently decided that the intruder into my dwelling is no threat.

The narrow-eyed look I toss at him isn’t so kind.

Perched on the edge of the bench, leather-wrapped legs swinging, the familiar hybrid picks too generously at that sweet bread that cost me half a silver piece from the bakery, the sort of sugared bread that goes best with honey and ham, the kind that melts on the tongue.

My face would contort into a snarling scowl—if it wasn’t so puffy. Instead, it’s only my mouth that turns with the frown.

Dare watches me as he sinks his pearly-white teeth into the soft bread. His eyes startle me; one a pot of melted gold, the other as pale as seafoam.

The scar that slashes down his face almost melts into his complexion, marble and smooth, but the scar is ridged enough to be noticeable.

Behind him, just four glowjars are peppered throughout the kitchen, from shelves to countertops, and wash over his shoulders with a cloudy white gleam.

Dare swallows the hunk of bread before he starts, “There are two sword-and-dagger-types out there in the shadows. They have an awful interest in watching your windows.”

Instinct has my chin tucking to my shoulder, and I cast a tired look at the double windows overlooking the street. I see no such folk. But I am not surprised either. Depending on the phase, I do sometimes see them. Litalf officials, watching me, waiting to ask me more about the Sacrament, waiting for their moment to approach and lure me to Licht for questioning.

Often, when I do see them, I throw a crude gesture and get on my way.

They don’t follow. They don’t approach.

“Don’t worry, little heartbreaker—my visit seems to have scared them off.”

My face twists before I shove out the doorway; my bare feet stomping on frosty-cold floorboards and my slitted gaze hooked onto Dare.

The closer I get to the kitchen, the better I can see around the hybrid sat on the centre bench.

Eamon peers around the side of the cupboard.

My shoulders relax; the release of a faint tension I hadn’t known was knitted through me until it left.

Sleep has Eamon’s eyes puffy and red, but it’s the annoyance of the intruder that has his arms folded over his naked chest.

I say nothing as I snatch the bread from Dare’s hand.

Cradled in my arm, Hedda growls at him.

Dare grins. “Miss me?”

“About as much as I miss the Sacrament,” I grumble and smack the bread down on the chopping board, out of Dare’s reach.

“We both know you can lie,” Dare tuts, “so I will take that as one. It can’t possibly be true.”

My words are wrapped in a huff, “What are you doing here, Alasdare?”

He arches his brow at me—and it silences me instantly. Words tangle in my throat and, slightly, my foot slides back until my heel knocks into the corner of the pantry cupboard, instinct drawing me closer to Eamon.

Dare notices my retreat but says nothing of it. He just keeps that gilded look fixed on me.

Eamon is the one who says, “He wants to know where Bee is.”

I frown through the sleep that swells my face and dulls my mind. My first thought I should probably be ashamed of. Who is Bee ?

But that’s quick to pass, and then I find in all my woken-in-the-middle-of-a-deep-sleep fatigue, I don’t care where she is.

I lift a shoulder. “Home?”

“Ah, but which one? The home in Licht…” Dare lowers his gaze to the silent Hedda in my arms who’s fallen half into her slumber again but tries so hard to keep awake for me, “or the one in the doomed human realm?”

“I don’t know,” I snap. “Either one. Who cares?”

“I do.” His look darkens into something of a warning, a soft smile that is anything but kind. “I care very much, moody Nari.”

“It’s the middle of the Quiet,” I mumble, but sink back into the corner of the pantry, the bite of the edge pressing into my spine. “It’s no proper time for visitors.”

Dare lowers his lashes, that lovely, awful smile still painted over his lips. “Will you hold onto your sense of propriety all your time in Cheapside?”

I blow a raspberry. It’s all the answer I can summon in my fatigue.

Eamon pushes from the cupboard and runs his hands over his face. “I’ll go with you.”

I throw him a bewildered look—one that he ignores.

His words are muffled by a stifled yawn, “We’ll search her flat in London first.”

“Wha-what about the tavern? We still need to finish painting, the tables aren’t sanded yet—and we haven’t even started on the kitchen.”

“I’ll return in a phase or two.” Eamon sighs and cuts me a weary look. “Bee is my friend. I happen to care that she’s safe.”

“She won’t be in the human realm,” I say it as though it is obvious, because, well, it is.

Dare arches a brow, and the gilded sheen of that one eye glides over me. The other eye remains pale, sharp, and it fills me with an unease. “Oh?”

“She’s obviously in Licht, right? At her mother’s?”

Dare suddenly loses all interest in anything I might say, as though he was hoping for something to go on, and I gave nothing.

I gave logic.

It isn’t enough to soften Eamon as he considers me. “Nari, she isn’t there. She isn’t at her dwelling in London. No one knows where she is.”

My mouth flattens.

“For all we know…” Eamon trails off, but I understand as though he spoke the words beyond a look, beyond the implication.

I nod something stiff and say no more.

Eamon leaves us for the bedchamber to dress himself.

Dare watches me. He makes no secret of how closely he studies me, and if I didn’t know him, I would think he was sizing me up before making a move on seducing me, or killing me, but I do know Dare, and he has other thoughts on his mind when it comes to me.

Suppose he was something of a friend for a while there. But since the Sacrament, since he left me at Forranach’s door, we haven’t spoken, not once.

I ask the stupid question, “How did you get in?”

He lifts his chin in a gesture to the double windows across the lounge.

I scoff. “Don’t you use doors?”

“Mostly not.”

I hum, curt.

After a heartbeat or two, he threads out a needle-like weapon from his thigh holster, and I will be horrified to know its purpose. He uses it to pick his already clean, neat fingernails. His fingernails are very litalf, trimmed and only slightly greyish, not black like a dokkalf’s.

He watches his work as he says, “Rumour has it, Eamon must make a bloodline babe with a human.”

I’m quiet. My jaw tenses, but no words come.

“Bargained,” he edits himself.

Melantha mentioned something like it.

I didn’t consider it too closely afterwards, because I am selfish, and I only thought of me in that conversation.

Perhaps I should have brought it up to Eamon, asked him of his visit with his mother, the expectations they are pushing onto him to continue the ancient bloodline.

But with Eamon, it is the tavern or nothing at all. He speaks little about anything else.

I know him, and I know he is hungry for it, hungry to fulfil a dream, one he wasn’t sure was ever within reach, because while he had hopes and plans, everything was pinned on the outcome of the Sacrament, pinned on the survival of his loved ones.

“Would it have been easier for you—” Dare lifts his sharp gaze to me, and now I know this is his payback for my earlier, cutting words “—if your father always made it clear that you were a bloodline babe, not a loved one?”

Before I can retort, he jumps off the side of the bench and his boots smack down too loud for Dare.

It jolts my bones—exactly what he wanted—and I lean back into the cupboard’s edge.

Dare closes the distance in one, slow step. He leans into me, the sweet bread on his breath. “You still haven’t thanked me, little Nari. For saving your life so many times—or for taking out the threat of Lord Braxis. Shall we start small? Thank me now for removing your betrothed? Or…” he grins, but there’s nothing warm or friendly about it, “should you be thanking Daxeel for that one?”

Silent, my brow tugs together once, twice—and before I can ask anything about it, or even let it sink in that Daxeel and Dare killed Taroh, before I can feel the gratitude or the shame, Dare slinks closer.

He drops his mouth to the shell of my ear, and his whisper is so gentle that not even Eamon will hear it from the bedchamber, “You won’t see true family around you when you are too focused on their flaws.”

He draws back a step and makes a point to touch his fingertips to the pup resting in my embrace.

Hedda doesn’t growl. Doesn’t stir.

And so she knows him.

She knows Dare—trusts him.

I shift my gaze up at him.

Dare turns his back on me and stalks for the lounge. He moves fast. Like a shuddering shadow, he’s at the windows, just a moment before Eamon steps out from the bedchamber, a satchel slung over his chest.

I frown at Dare for a beat, his words slowly sinking into my mind… then they sink into my heart.

I think I hurt his feelings.

Uncertainty weighs me down, tugs my mouth into a frown, but still, I drag myself over to Eamon for a hug I draw out too long—before I turn on Dare.

He watches me.

I reach out my fingertips for his face.

Still, he just watches.

Slowly, my hand fists in front of his nose, and I press my middle finger to the pad of my thumb—I flick him on the nose.

He blinks.

I smile, small. “Be good.”

Dare lets a smile steal his lips. “Never.”

He inclines his head, and I think he knows this is the closest to a thanks he’ll ever get from me, but more than that, I accept his offer of family and friendship—so I treat him as I would treat a brother.

Eamon kisses my temple. “I might be gone some phases.”

I aim a quizzical look at him.

Eamon’s mouth tilts. “If we don’t find her in the human realm, I’ll have to go to Licht.”

“It’s not safe for us there.”

“It will be fine. I will be questioned, but that will allow me to move through my web.”

A web of recruiters and officials. Those who know things us ordinary folk don’t.

I give a faint nod, reluctant, but I do understand.

Eamon’s favourite is me. I don’t doubt this. But he does love the kinta, too; a friend, lost.

“Move swiftly,” I tell him, and it’s enough to lure a smile from his tiredness.

I watch them leave.

The dwelling is quick to feel… empty. Unsafe.

For a while, I stand at the windows and study the dark pockets of the alleyways and lanes, thick shadows that a litalf official could be hidden away in.

I watch for a long while before a tall, muscled silhouette steps out of the narrow mouth of a butcher’s lane.

He is shadow, he sunkissed marble, he is ocean eyes.

Daxeel is out there.

He steps out of the dark—to let me know that he is there, watching… perhaps to put me at ease. With Daxeel out there, officials might not be.

I turn my back on the window and return to bed.

I sleep well. So does Hedda.