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CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

W e’d made it out of the park and into the streets once more, but we were by no means free of our pursuers. As the moon sank towards the horizon, more and more stars were glimmering overhead, mocking us as we charged down back alleys and circled away from danger.

My little spectre had hidden our scents within a bubble of air magic alongside the concealment and silencing shields she’d erected too.

I envied her flippant use of magic, my veins burning with the desperate desire to use my own power to its full potential instead of having to scrape by on the dregs I could claim from grasping her necklace for a few moments at a time.

Before my captivity, I’d owned an entire cavern filled with jewels and riches where I used to bathe amongst my prized possessions and fill my magic to the brim. Though I supposed that was the least of what I’d lost since falling prey to the magic of my captors.

We slipped down another narrow alleyway, the dank smell of rotting vegetables coming from a heap to its rear, suggesting we were behind a tavern or perhaps close to a marketplace.

Her fingers tightened around mine and I glanced at her as she stilled. She hadn’t released me yet, though I had to think that was in part because she didn’t wish to lose track of her precious captive. Still, it was quite the change from the way she’d bound me when first forcing me beneath her heel.

A clamour of footfalls sounded from the street ahead and I grabbed hold of the closest door, jerking it open before pressing her inside. She shot me an irritable look at being herded but I only nudged her deeper into the darkened gloom of the building we found ourselves in.

She released her hold on my hand, drawing a dagger and stalking ahead, ever insistent on taking the lead. I let her, casting a look back over my shoulder to make certain the door was secured before following her into the dark of a large kitchen.

Shouts broke out in the street, the voices muffled slightly but still loud enough to make it clear that there was a large group of Fae out there. She didn’t slow until a crash of breaking glass rang out and the sounds from the hunting Fae moved into the building somewhere beyond the wall before us.

She glanced back at me, moonlight gilding her cheekbones from the small window in the back wall and I was struck with the force of her gifts, my gut lurching, heart leaping.

I was too powerful to be suckered in by her magic, but she still caught me off guard like that sometimes, the power of what she was making my thoughts scatter momentarily before I forced them to realign once more.

“In there,” she hissed, jerking her chin towards a small pantry with its door standing ajar to reveal rows of produce lining the shelves.

“Are you kidding?” I deadpanned and she only narrowed her eyes, stalking back to me and taking hold of my arm so she could shove me towards the cupboard.

I growled at her as she pushed me inside but she didn’t balk.

She never did. She was probably the only Fae I’d ever known who truly didn’t fear me.

I supposed her desire for death made her immune to feeling terror over the idea of it but it still surprised me that she was willing to risk the wrath of a Dragon so casually.

The space inside the pantry was barely big enough for me to stand within, let alone for her to squeeze in too, but she shoved me back against the packed shelves and forced her way into the non-existent space beside me all the same.

I grabbed the door and pulled it closed, darkness enveloping us almost entirely, only a single sliver of moonlight making it through the crack at the edge of the door.

Her profile was illuminated as she peered out into the kitchen, her fingers weaving a concealment spell into place so that no one would even notice the door from the outside.

I shifted slightly, my body pressed to hers so firmly that it was impossible not to think of how close I had held her in Zayad’s chambers, how soft her skin had felt beneath my fingers and how her rough exhales had made me ache to hear her panting in ecstasy beneath me.

It had been the work of the Siren’s magic but that didn’t make it any easier to forget.

She’d fallen prey to it too, her body bending to mine, her want tainting the air in a way which I kept replaying in my head over and over again.

But even then her mask hadn’t slipped, that hardness in her eyes still flashing sharper than any blade.

“If you were so desperate to finish what we started back there, you could have just asked,” I murmured, brushing a lock of hair behind her ear and causing her to turn that heavy scowl on me.

“If I was interested in that then I could have it with far less effort involved than hiding in some cupboard,” she drawled. “Besides, you’re too afraid to follow through on that promise, aren’t you Dragon? Don’t want to risk ruining yourself on the likes of me.”

I chuckled darkly, shifting so that I was gripping the shelf behind her with both hands, my arms boxing her into place before me. “Stars forbid.”

The door to the kitchen banged open and several Fae burst into the room, one shifted into his Teumessian Fox Order, leaping up onto the table and sniffing its way across it.

The three in Fae form started knocking cupboards open, breaking things as they went and causing someone upstairs to cry out in alarm.

“Bounty hunters,” she groaned, her words contained within the silencing shield just for me. “The Talons mobilised the entire city in the hunt for us.”

“Clever,” I commented and she sneered.

“Flamebringers aren’t clever, they’re like an anvil just bashing away blindly in hopes they crush the right thing while never worrying about the destruction they leave in their wake along the way.”

“Like destroying this fine dining establishment in their hunt for a pretty face and a sack of gold?” I teased.

“Precisely. And not one of them is clever enough to realise that the last thing they’d want is to find me when I’m cornered.”

“Oh I don’t know,” I disagreed. “I’m starting to think I like you best when I have you cornered.”

Her stormy eyes flicked to mine but there was no spark of amusement in them, only cold, hard rage.

It was so unpredictable that fury in her.

Sometimes she played these games with me, other times it seemed the mere suggestion of them made her want nothing more than to slit my throat and bathe in the blood which flowed from it.

“Tell me whose blood you carry in that vial,” I breathed, not even sure why I cared to know but she was like a puzzle missing half its pieces and it had been so long since I’d had anyone to puzzle over that I found myself wanting to put her back together again.

Even if it was only so that I could take joy in ripping the pieces apart once more when I was done.

Her jaw ticked and I was certain she wasn’t going to tell me but as the Flamebringers started hurling pots and pans across the kitchen outside our hiding place, she relented.

“They were my sisters in arms. They were all I had and my own pathetic need for something more blinded me to the monster in our midst. He took them from me and I’ll reap my vengeance on him before I offer you my part of our bargain.”

She said the words coldly, a hardness to them which made it clear she had worked to place them in a glass jar which wouldn’t allow a single slip of emotion to pass through it.

I raised my hand to encircle her throat, squeezing just tightly enough for her to feel the strength of my grip.

“What will I see in those shuttered eyes of yours when I take you up on that, spectre?” I asked, tightening my hold until her breath was cut off, but still she didn’t flinch, her eyes remaining cold and hard.

“Relief,” she replied simply as I released her and there was something in that answer which I understood far more clearly than I liked to admit.

I knew the pain of what she was feeling.

But instead of being free to fight back against it and hunt down those culpable for causing it in me, I’d been trapped beneath the ground, a beast in chains watching the years pass me by and knowing that everyone and everything I’d ever known and loved was being stripped from me one after another in bloody violence or just the grip of time’s passage.

My gaze roamed over her face, that thin beam of moonlight making it no easier to read her than ever.

It was hard to concentrate on anything aside from the feeling of her body pressed to mine, my eyes on her mouth as I wondered what a kiss from her might taste like and how far I might wander down the path to damnation if I ever found out.

It had been a long fucking time since I’d felt the heat of a woman’s body against mine and the longer I spent in my Fae form, the more pressing the needs of this flesh seemed to feel.

Especially when I was locked so endlessly in the company of a creature such as her.

“Were you really down there all that time?” she asked and I blinked, wondering how she had realised where my thoughts had taken me.

“I was,” I agreed. “Those crystals you helped tear from my skin kept me…frozen. That’s why the madness didn’t take me while I was parted from my magic. Its why I didn’t age or wither in my captivity. I became a living, breathing statue, my only purpose to serve their needs.”

“Who were they?” she asked, suddenly keen to ask all the questions she’d denied having any interest in until now. “Who chained you in that place originally? Was it always the Reapers or did it have something to do with Stormfell? Is that why you were being held in my land?”

A whoosh of fire made us both snap our heads towards the door and the group of Fae hollered in excitement before turning and racing out of the kitchen.

“Time to go,” she hissed, our conversation forgotten as she disabled her concealment spells and threw the pantry door wide.