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Twenty

CIANA

W ith my heart beating high in my throat, I darted my gaze between the people surrounding Kurai.

He made a promise to them? He’d die if the promise wasn’t fulfilled? But he couldn’t fulfill it without putting us in danger?

A lot of the details remained unknown to me, but I got the most important part of what was happening: Kurai was in the immediate danger of being killed by the very same people who had helped him free us. And somehow it was all because of me.

“Fuck this.” A man grabbed me from behind. “I’ll get my joy one way or another.”

“Gefred! Let her go!” Kurai bellowed, leaping toward us.

Another man slammed into him, knocking him to the ground. Then the woman jumped on his chest and shoved her sword against his neck.

“Don’t move or I’ll—” she raised her sword to deliver a blow before she even finished her warning.

He crossed his daggers, blocking her attack.

“You really don’t understand the purpose of giving a warning, Malis,” he grunted .

She growled like a feral animal when he tossed her off his chest.

“Malis!” The man who held me, Gefred, flung me aside. Lowering his head, he rushed Kurai.

Kurai slipped to the left, gracefully avoiding the impact, but the other man was already waiting for him. He tossed a rope around Kurai’s neck. The rope slid off his golden collar and caught him just under his chin.

My body went cold with terror.

“No!” I screamed. “Don’t hurt him, please. Take whatever you want. “Here!” I stretched my arms with leilathas toward them. “Take it, use it, feel it. Just please, please let him go.”

Malis tossed me a distrustful glance. The third man, the one who’d brought in the loot a few minutes earlier, rushed to me first.

“Never thought I’d get to try it,” he muttered eagerly, unfurling all his tendrils at once.

“Hey! Who said you’d be first, Raimus?” Malis stomped her foot, heading to us promptly.

The other two men paused, staring at me. With the rope around his throat loosened, Kurai drew a frantic breath.

“Don’t, Ciana. You don’t have to do it.”

“But I want to,” I said, holding out my arms to Raimus.

My emotions weren’t worth Kurai dying over them. It was that simple.

Raimus’s tendrils plunged into my leilathas . I winced at the invasion of another being into my feelings but held still, making no effort to resist.

“Yuck! What the fuck is it?” Raimus spat out, yanking out his tendrils and quickly retracting them back into his arms.

Malis stopped in her tracks. “What do you mean? Isn’t she supposed to taste joyful?”

“Supposed to. But that’s not what she tastes like. She fucking hates me!” He pursed his lips, looking deeply offended.

I didn’t know Raimus enough to truly hate him. But I couldn’t hide the fact that I severely resented this whole situation. Fear for Kurai’s life pounded in my chest. Try as I might, I couldn’t muster even a drop of joy for their consumption.

“Well, great,” the man with the rope dropped his arms. “Fuck the Joy Guardian. He’ll die anyway now. But I was so hoping to finally taste some joy. Fuck my luck.” He tossed the rope away with force.

“Are all these Joy Vessels defective like her?” Gefred surveyed the other three humans who kept to the cages, watching us from a safe distance.

Peter and Maria looked rather miserable, and the defiance on Shyanne’s face didn’t promise much joy to anyone either.

Unsure what to do, I went to the only place I wanted to be at that moment—closer to Kurai.

“You promised them joy?” I asked.

He nodded.

“And now, you will die because of it?”

“Well.” He arched an eyebrow, which gave him a slightly mischievous expression. “That may not happen for quite some time.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Raimus bristled, then turned to the man who used to have the rope. “Sakin, did he not give us his promise?”

Sakin glared at Kurai. “He sure did. We all heard him.”

He looked at the others for confirmation, and they nodded too.

“Right,” Kurai agreed. “I promised you joy, but I didn’t exactly say when, did I?”

“Of course you did! You said after we help you get her.” Malis pointed at me with her sword.

Kurai shrugged. “But I didn’t say how long after. It could be a month or a century from now. I could wait until I start aging before doing anything about it. And since I’m only a hundred and six years old, that would take quite a while. ”

“Fuck!” The man next to Malis spat. “I knew it was stupid to deal with a Joy Guardian. They are all slippery, lying fuckers.”

Kurai raised his head defiantly, spreading his shoulders wide. “I didn’t lie, Gefred.”

“Well, if I’m not getting any joy in this life, maybe killing you will at least bring me some satisfaction?” Gefred advanced on Kurai menacingly.

Tension tightened around us. It was more suffocating than the heat of a day storm.

I scrambled for what to do to defuse it.

My gaze fell on the crate that Raimus and Sakin had brought.

Dropping to my knees, I rummaged through it frantically, then grabbed the first piece of fruit I saw.

It was a large, golden pear that looked ripe and juicy, and I was hungry. I’d been hungry for so long now.

“Listen!” I jumped to my feet, holding the pear up like a grenade. “Let’s try this again.”

They all looked at me in confusion.

“What are you doing, Ciana?” Kurai furrowed his brow.

I stepped up to him. “Hug me.”

“What?” He looked even more confused but wrapped his arms around me promptly.

I leaned against his chest. And for once, I allowed my feelings for him to flood me without any restraint of doubt or fear. I let myself to truly enjoy this moment of warmth in his arms, of his scent around me, of the soft beating of his heart under my cheek.

“Come on.” I smiled at the fae around us. “Try it now. I promise you’ll feel joy.”

They shuffled closer but weren’t as eager to connect to me this time. Kurai shifted, trying to move me to the side to shield me from them, but I kissed his chest gently.

“Trust me,” I said softly, then addressed the fae approaching us. “Do you see this pear?” I rotated the fruit in my hand. “Pears happen to be one of my favorite fruits ever. Do you want to feel how much I’ll enjoy this one? ”

Slowly, their tendrils appeared. They reached for me, jostling each other out of the way.

“One leilatha for each.” Malis elbowed Raimus aside.

“But there are four of us, and she has six leilathas ,” Raimus pointed out.

“Fine, I’ll take two.”

“Why you?”

“Because I have a sword.” She yanked her weapon out of the sand. “And all you have is a sack and a crate.”

“I can end you with that crate before you even lift that sword.”

I snapped my fingers in the air, commanding their attention. “Are we doing it or not? Because I derive no joy in watching you fight.”

“Fine,” Raimus begrudgingly stepped aside, allowing Malis to claim both leilathas on my right arm while he and Sakin shared the two on my back.

Gefred aimed his tendrils at my left arm.

“Are you sure about this, sweetheart?” Kurai asked, his handsome features shifting with concern.

I nodded without hesitation. I’d do anything to save him, but it was more than that. Deep inside, I felt compassion for these people. I couldn't imagine how they went through life without feeling even a drop of happiness.

Shadow fae were so much stronger than my kind, healthier too. They lived to be at least five hundred years old. Yet they couldn’t feel even the simple pleasure of eating a sweet, juicy pear.

“If you want it to stop, just let me know,” Kurai said quietly, adjusting the daggers in their sheaths at his belt.

“I’ll be fine.” I turned a little to grant Gefred a better access to my arm.

The odd sensation of having so many different minds invade my senses filled me with unease. But Kurai’s gentle fingers caressed my neck. His lips pressed to the crown of my head in that familiar cherished gesture that calmed me. Tenderness trickled along my skin in soft, warm shivers.

Cuddling against Kurai’s wide chest, I brought the pear to my lips and took that first, most amazing bite. The juice filled my mouth, coating my tongue with fragrant sweetness.

I moaned from the pure pleasure of it. Hunger took over. And I devoured the entire pear, bite after bite.

“Mmmm,” I moaned again, tossing the short stem away—all that was left from the pear.

“It must be a very good pear.” Kurai chuckled softly at all my moaning.

I looked up at him with a happy grin. “The best one ever.”

“Fuuuck me…” Gefred drawled, echoed by the groans and moans of the others.

“I’ll never say I hate fruit again,” Sakin declared.

I turned to face them.

“The pear was good. But it’s not just the pear that’s important.

It’s where I am too. And who I’m with.” I hugged Kurai’s arms that he kept wrapped around me.

“It’s him. Kurai is the main source of my happiness.

” The warm feeling in my chest reflected in the eyes of the people connected to me.

“If you steal me from him, my joy will be gone, and you’ll never feel any of it ever again,” I said firmly.

“Happiness can’t be forced. It needs to be shared freely.

That’s why we can’t be anyone’s property, do you understand?

Making us unhappy won’t give you anything. ”

I glared at Gefred since he happened to be the closest.

He winced.

“And now she’s getting angry,” he muttered, promptly retracting his tendrils.

The others quickly followed, sensing the shift in my emotions.

“That’s nothing compared to what you’ll find in me if you try to abuse any of us,” I warned.

With a last tender squeeze, Kurai released me from his embrace .

“Take whatever you want from the camp. Leave the humans alone,” he told his people.

“But what will we do? Where can we go?” Shyanne asked. “The assholes who took us will be back sooner or later. There’re more of them, you know? We need to get out of here.”

For a human in Alveari, freedom was a flitting thing. If set free in the desert, neither of them would make it far before being captured again, and that was only if they didn’t get eaten or starve to death before.

“You’ll have to come with us,” I said.

Kurai didn’t object, but his brow furrowed in a frown of concentration.

He was on the run from the law. And now, he found himself suddenly responsible for the survival of not one but four humans who couldn’t make it a day in the desert without water, when he didn’t even have his tendrils to support any of us.

While the male fae returned to their looting of the camp, Malis paused on her way to the tents to ask, “Are you all going to return to Teekse with us? Because I don’t think we can feed you all as often as humans like to be fed.”

I took Kurai’s hand before he had a chance to answer.

“I think we should go to Teneris,” I said.

“Why Teneris?” Kurai stared at me in surprise. But the three humans nodded with relief.

“I was told it’s currently the safest place for a human to be,” I replied.

Kurai gave me a somber look. “Prince Rha, the ruler of Teneris, has a sarai too, Ciana. You’d be trading one cage for another.”

“There is a difference between cages, young man,” Shyanne pointed out. “Trust me on this, I’ve seen enough of them by now to know the difference.”

Kurai’s eyebrows rose at hearing “young man” from the woman who was less than half his age, but he politely didn’t correct her. Age comparison between humans and fae remained tricky. Regardless, as a Joy Vessel, Shyanne certainly knew more than Kurai about being kept in cages.

“Prince Rha provides safe and comfortable accommodation in exchange for an occasional dinner attendance,” she continued. “In this world right now, that’s the most a human can hope for.”

Peter nodded. “I never got even a glass of wine pushed on me in Teneris.”

Maria drew in a shaky breath but said nothing.

“Prince Rha promised a big reward for the return of his Joy Vessels,” Malis said quickly. “We may get some gold for them yet.”

“You still want to sell us?” I glared at her.

“Sell? We just helped you avoid being sold, Sweet One. You want to go to Teneris. We’ll help the Joy Guardian deliver you there safely. What’s wrong with getting a little compensation for our efforts?”

I supposed it was fine if Malis and the others got paid for helping us to get to Teneris.

I didn’t trust any of them, not after I’d watched them attacking Kurai just a little while ago.

But traveling through the desert was potentially far more dangerous than the company of four raggedy looking desert dwellers.

We might need whatever help they could give us.

Kurai still looked hesitant.

“Are you sure that’s what you want?” he asked me.

I took his hands in mine.

“We can’t keep running forever, Kurai. We can’t keep hiding like outlaws when we did nothing wrong.

We have to start building a normal life somewhere.

You see…” I inhaled deeply. “I don’t need a man to burn the world down for me.

I need him to make this world a better place for all of us to live in. ”

He held my gaze for a long moment.

“Let’s start somewhere.” He nodded, and I exhaled with relief.

“Do you know the way to Teneris from here?” I asked .

“I’ll figure it out,” he said confidently.

“That’s what I like about this guy.” Malis smirked.

“He has neat tricks in that satchel of his, and he sure knows how to use them. Hey, boys!” She jogged over to the looters.

“Pack up for a long journey. Break down the tents too. We’ll have a bunch of delicate, fragile humans to keep alive for the next little while. ”