Wonder what it looks like now. Still hurts like all hell, but how has the healing gone? Is it all congealed, crispy blood or a lumpy line of that glazed-like blood that reminds me of the inside of a jellybean?

  For the dark fae warrior to decide to heal the wound, he must suspect it to be worse than I thought. Maybe he needs to get us moving on soon and he’s concerned that the injury will slow us down.

  Who knows why he does the things that he does. I sure as shit don’t.

  The pressure from my neck lifts and it’s like a breath fills me out of nowhere, flooding me with relief and oxygen. With a lift of his thigh, he nudges me off of him.

  I push up from his lap, avoiding his gaze, and slip down to the floor.

  Spike’s gaze burns hot into my red cheek.

  There’s no secret about it. I’m not the mule, my wounds are healed—though this could all be to avoid me slowing him down—and I slept on the rug with a blanket and in direct line to the fireplace. If the warrior has a favourite ... well, it’s pretty damn obvious that it’s me. But again, that’s a big if, isn’t it? Really, he’s focusing his attention more on me so that I heal and recover better, and we can head on soon.

  I slip a plate off of the coffee table.

  Throwing a cautious glance at the dark fae, I check that it’s all right to start eating. But he just shifts on the couch, watching me with that familiar frown between his brows. He rests his forearms on his thighs, hunches over a little, and considers me with firelight eyes, mirroring the flames in the hearth.

  I clear my throat and look down at my plate of lemon-juiced asparagus.

  Lifting a strip up by the stalk, I nibble on the grainy end, and that triggers Spike into eating too.

  He pulls his plate onto his lap. And we eat in silence.

  The warrior watches me for a while longer before he reaches for his food. My heart leaps into my throat as his hand cups the soup bowl.

  He tucks in, finally yanking his frowny gaze away from me.

  I chance a glance at Spike. His brows are all furrowed and bushy, and on his juice-stained lips (he must have been guzzling some orange juice in the kitchen while I was in the bathroom) he wears a grim look.

  Suspicion has his eyes narrowed, and I know he is wondering why the hell the dark fae healed me.

  In answer, I just shrug.

  He shakes his head and scoops up a spoonful of beans.

  I’m cautious about my meal. Asparagus seems the safest option, so I take my fine-ass time nibbling on them down to the final stalk. By then, the warrior has finished the last of his soup and he trades the bowl for the large plate of rice smothered in soy sauce.

  He doesn’t get a single mouthful of the rice before it happens.

  The plate falls from his hand and thuds to the rug. Rice splatters.

  I turn my widening eyes on him, my heart suddenly stopped in my chest. I swallow back a lump just as a wretched gurgling sound crawls up the warrior’s throat and then—

  Holy shit.

  He leans forward just as black blood comes spilling out of his mouth in dribbles. His hand clutches his throat, then slides down to his chest, then another hit jolts his body.

  More blood, tar-black blood, drips from between his parted lips.

  Scrambling back from the tarry puddle forming on the floor, I drop my plate; lemon juice spills all over. I kick away from the fae, my but scooting back over the rug.

  Spike just sits there, his eyes wide and mouth parted, and watches as the warrior shoves up from the couch.

  The floor thuds beneath me as the warrior storms out of the lounge and into the kitchen.

  I glance up, tears in my eyes and see that the fae slams his hands down on the kitchen sink and lets it all come out into the basin.

  Distantly, I’m aware of the tear falling down my cheek—and I don’t quite know why I shed it, if it’s for the fear of consequences, if it’s because watching someone—some beast—spill up his own blood is a frightful thing, or that I’m pretty fucking sure he’s not going to die from the poisoning, because I really did expect something more dramatic than some spilled drops of blood.

  A shudder rinses my body.

  With a look back over my shoulder, I notice that Spike has stood up at some point and backed up to the wall, his wide eyes now on me.

  He knows.

  But he doesn’t get the chance to accuse me—yet.

  Storming back into the lounge, the warrior wears fiery eyes that light up the room, and a furious twist to his face. His eyes shift between Spike, huddled by the wall, and me, crouched on the floor with my own vomit on my hands.

  I loosen a shuddering breath.

  It didn’t work. It was enough to hurt him, make him ill—but he’s standing there, tall and strong, inde-fucking-structible.

  Well, shit.

  Guess I should have eaten the soup at the same time. I would have died before he got the chance to punish me.

  But—I can’t believe my luck when—he barges past me and heads straight for Spike.

  Falling onto my bum, I turn and watch as Spike backs up into the bookshelf. It rattles as he lifts up his hands.

  “It was her,” he whispers, his voice trembling. “It wasn’t me, I swear—I would never, I could ...”

  His words fail him as the warrior stops in front of him. His back muscles are tense balls of lead with beige skin pulled tight over them.

  Slowly, he looks over his shoulder at me. And the embers in his eyes burn through my soul.

  I shake my head and point frantically at Spike. “It was him! I was with you in the bathroom!”

  “So was I!” Spike shouts, so terrified that he jumps on the spot. “I told you she would do this,” he adds, looking pleadingly at the fae, “I told you she would deliver on her promise. This is what she does, who she is.”

  The fae snatches Spike by the side of the neck, then hauls him over to me. He throws him down on the floor so hard that I hear his knees crack. Spike flips around, looking up at the fae—but his murderous eyes are for me, and only me.

  “I’ll kill you the first chance I get,” the warrior echoes words I once swore to him.

  I pale, feeling the drain of blood plummet to my worrying gut. Numbly, I shake my head—but it’s all I can muster, and it’s not enough.

  He reaches for me.

  I scramble back, but I’m not fast enough. His hand snatches my neck up and, in a swift and strong tug, I’m lifted onto my feet and slammed back against the wall.

  My grunt is muffled by the grip pressing against my throat.

  The warrior brings his face to me, the tickle of his nose on mine itching me. “Tell me your name.”

  I blink, surprise slackening my face. His grip loosens just enough for me to croak out, “Coralie.”

  “Cora-lee,” he parrots in his earthly accent, thick and barbed, “how I will make you suffer.”

  I see the wink of a dagger in his hand.

  And I shut my eyes, tight.

  Please, make it quick.

  Please, kill me softly.

  23

  I feel the ground collide against me before I even realise that the warrior has thrown me to the floor.

  I smack down, hard. A wheezy groan catches in my chest and, rolling onto my side, I crane my neck to look up at him.

  He doesn’t look down at me. The fae has turned his attention on Spike.

  And oh-my-fucking-god...

  I can’t look. But every time I do shut my eyes or turn my face away, Spike’s scream turns to screeching and curdles the air.

  Please don’t make me watch...

  The urge to cry those words rattles my shivering throat, but I scrape up no courage to speak them.

  “You will watch!” The warrior’s voice booms through the lounge, sending shudders through me. “For each time you look away, I cut deeper—to the bone.”

  His promise has me sobbing, hard.

  I watch. Not to help Spike, but to help myself. It’s the screams and the blood; I just can’t see any more of it than I need to. And maybe if I watch, this will all be over a lot quicker.

  I twist.

  Biting down on my forearm, I muffle my scream and let the tears fall from my clenched eyes to the floorboards. This is for me—this whole performance, this show he’s putting on.

  He gets the results he’s after.

  A gurgling retch crawls up me and I have just a second to pull away from my arm before it all spills out of me; everything I dared to eat over these past few days.

  The sobs make it all the worse. With every hiccup that jolts my body, I’m forced to choke on my own sick until the tension uncoils and I can cough it all out.

  And yet—he doesn’t stop. He doesn’t pause his attack on Spike, other than to wipe his blade clean or consider his work briefly.

  It goes on for a while. So long that, eventually, I don’t have it in me to cry anymore. I’m just flopped down on my side, a puddle of sick behind me, and wet lashes clouding my sight; too hazy to see much other than smears of blood, the faint outline of a body on the floor, and a tall and broad silhouette standing over the mess.

  It’s all I can do to simply wait ... wait for my turn.

  Isn’t that what this is all about? Him, drawing out Spike’s slow and torturous death in front of me, leading up to the climax of my end?

  Kill me softly seems a silly wish now. It all seems like nonsense now that I lie on the floor, watching the tall, muscular silhouette turn against the haze; turn towards me.

  How could I have fooled myself for even a moment that I could kill him with a bit of rat poison? Ok, a lot of rat poison. But still, whoever said that fae bodies work the same as ours do?

  Everything I did was based off of hopes and assumptions that their anatomy matches ours on the inside as closely as it does on the outside—close enough.

  Now, I’m in a state of frozen tears on the floor as soft-soled leather boots step silently towards me. I watch them draw closer, feel the rising tickles of fear climbing up my spine and swarming my tummy. But I’m so spent that I can’t even manage to roll onto my back or shimmy away from him.

  I don’t weep for the dead body on the rug, the one that seeps crimson over pale-cream threads, and is as motionless as I am. The one who died by at least a hundred cuts to the flesh over my mistake.

  I don’t cry for him. I cry for what this all means for me.

  All I ever wanted for myself was a quick, silent and peaceful death. A fate not written in my stars. A destiny for another.

  The warrior steps one leg over me.

  Standing over my limp body, his stare burns a hole into my damp, paper-white face. He watches me for a long moment in total silence.

  He brings his boot to my side and rolls me onto my back.

  Defeated, I flop and blink up at him with tears clinging to my lashes.

  Still, even through the haze, I see his burning eyes as clearly as I see the fires that his armies light to devour entire villages and towns in blazes of destruction. That’s what he wears in his gaze, destruction.

  How he wants to utterly destroy me.

  His voice, jagged like a serrated blade, scrapes against my shuddering spine, “You did it.”

  It is no accusation. He knows as well as I do that it was me who poisoned his food. It was all me.

  There’s no use fighting it. I let my eyes shut on the wetness, then turn my cheek to him. My mouth thins, lips sucking inwards, as I bite down—preparing myself for the first strike of many.

  Death by a hundred cuts.

  A whimper escapes me as he suddenly moves; I feel the air disturbed all around me, whooshing through my hair. Then the zip of a dagger spears so close to my nose that I swear it cuts me, and it sinks into the floorboards.

  Before I can flutter my eyes open, I feel him—he slams down on me, straddling me, his body curved over mine. His breath is hot on my cheek.

  I blink my eyes open; directly in front of me is his hand clutched tight onto the hilt of the dagger sunken into the wood floor. And there is a single bead of blood swelling on the tip of my nose.

  Turning my face to his, I swallow back tears and lift my dazed gaze. His ember eyes are gone; now, they are blazes devouring entire cities.

  His free hand swings up. It snatches my jaw so tightly that my mouth puckers out, and he brings his face closer to mine.

  I’m quieter than his footsteps. Maybe the less I respond, the less I weep, the less he will entertain the torture. If I’m silent, he might end up making it a quick kill.

  See? I’m a fool with too many hopes and wishes and not enough of a grip on reality.

  His mouth grazes mine. Surely he must smell the sick on my hoarse breath.

  “Poison,” he spits out, as though the word is the very rat poison I poured into his soup. “A fitting attempt for a human.”

  I loosen a shaky breath, one that trembles my entire body beneath him.

  “Your kind are the weakest creatures I have ever encountered,” he hisses, nose-to-nose. “You are the vermin of all worlds and realms; the plague of all.”

  Are you going to talk me to death?

  Just be quick about it; take my throat out. Whatever you do, just don’t draw this out.

  I might get my wish—

  He yanks the dagger out of the floorboards with the slightest effort.

  I catch it wink through the air before its kiss presses against the side of my neck. He holds the dagger to me, a snarl twisting his face into something fuelled with utter hatred.

  “What you witnessed,” he whispers darkly, “will haunt you to your final day, Cora-lee. You will carry his blood and cries with you as your suffering—that is what will cost your mind the most.”

  I blink, fresh tears rolling down my temples and into my gunky hair. A frown starts to crease my face as I study him, his red-blazing eyes, the loathsome twist of his mouth.

  He’s ...

  He’s not going to kill me...?

  “Why?” The word trembles from my shaky, puckered mouth. His grip tightens on my jaw and I wince. Still, I force out, “Why won’t you kill me?”

  I tried to kill you. Many times. With bombs and guns and poison.

  After all of that, he won’t end it for me?

  The snarl fades from his face. Something dark and sinister takes its place, his mouth tilting into a cruel smirk.

  “You are alive because you want to die,” he says, his voice hushed and soft, almost ... gentle, as though he means to soothe me. He’s taunting me, the sick bastard. “What you want most of all is for me to kill you—and so to keep you alive is your punishment. That is your pain.”

  I have no control over any of it.

  My face turns with a fresh bloom of agony and I twist away from him. Straddling me, his weight on my hips keeps me locked in place, but I manage to pull my upper body away and cross my arms over my face as the first sob jolts through me.

  I ugly-cry. Hard.

  And after a while, his weight lifts from my body, and his near-silent bootsteps fade away to the couch. I hear its leather creak as he sits. And still, I curl up into a ball, and I sob my heart out.

  Of all the fates, this one might be the worst.

  Death is still too far from me.

  24

  The sobs that hit me were the kind to leave you stiff, motionless and numb on the floor for hours after. And that’s exactly what they did to me.

  Only, as my lashes close on my fuzzy sight, and that after-sob-sleep starts to climb over me, I’m yanked out of the daze.

  The fae snatches me up by the arm and hauls me to my feet.

  Surprised, I choke on a gasp, staggering into the realm of the awake. Feel as though I was drowning and he just pulled me out of the water.

  I get a moment to catch myself before a satchel is shoved into my arms. Staggering back from the force, I hit the wall and blink down at the bag. Then I look up at the fae.

  He swings the strap of the other satchel over his shoulder, then takes the torch from the fire before he turns on me.

  Locking eyes with me, he lowers the torch just right so that the flames still burn, and he sets fire to the rug.

  He wants this place to burn, even if it is not his town, his village, to destroy. Another army will march through here according to his map—and this is their place to take, not his.

  And yet, there’s something about this place he wants to see burn to ashes. I know because, when he takes me outside, he stops in the middle of the street—and he makes me watch with him as the house is devoured by ravenous flames.

  At some point, I double over and throw up the bile leftover in my stomach. But in the daze of it all, I can’t even determine if I vomit for Spike’s end, the blood and the stink, the exhaustion, or the smoke in the air.

  I hope it’s the smoke. And I hope it kills me.

  Of course, no such luck.

  As he ties me tighter to his weapons belt, I’m doubled over and retching nothing but air. He makes no pause for me; he jerks the rope and off he drags me into the dark, bitter world.

  TWO DAYS AND ONE NIGHT LATER

  We walk for a hell of a long time.

  Days, nights, I don’t know. But it feels like years.

  Aches still cling to every bone of my body, bruises turned yellow and purple on my pale skin, and the weariness of what I’ve just endured—it all slows me down, which slows him down.

  Finally, we stop—not because I am beyond exhausted, staggering beside him, my shoulders slumped and head bowed over. We stop because a darker, thick cloud rolls overhead.

  I hear them.

  Skrt, skrt, skrt, slllppp, sllllppp, slllppp.

  Those skittering, sloppy beasts.

  The critters.

  25

  The moment I snap out of the cloud of fright, I drop to the ground. The tarmac hits me hard, knocking the wind out of me, but I keep low and utterly still.

  At my side, the warrior tilts the torch my way and studies me. The flames burn the exposed flesh of my arms, searing my skin, and I feel the early itch of heat tickle the back of my head where my wound once was.