After a beat, he speaks for the first time since the house, and he says, “They will not come near me.”

  My voice is a growl against the road, “Good for you.”

  Tiny stones press against my squished nose and smushed mouth. I’m a toppled-over statue on the road.

  “So,” he adds, his voice withering, “they cannot touch you.”

  Oh. He meant literally they cannot come ‘near’ him.

  Still, knowing that he is a shield against the critters doesn’t make it any easier to push up from the road. The fear of them is rooted so deep in my bones that I seem to have frozen into an ice-sculpture.

  He breathes a weary sigh before the heat of the torch inches closer to me. Crouching down, he scoops me up by the arm until I’m staggering to a stand beside him.

  “Stay close,” he growls, lashes of anger still coiled around his tone.

  An aura of barbed wire is wrapped all around him, and yet my fingers tingle with the urge to reach out for his arm and hold on tight. The fear of the tentacle critters outweighs my terror of him, and I can’t place why.

  Surely, this dark fae warrior is far more vicious and brutal and unforgiving. Hell, I’m only alive because he means for me carry the weight of Spike’s horrible death for some time more.

  Eventually, the time will come when he makes a choice—deliver me into the kuris trapped in his unit, or deliver me to death.

  Then it strikes me like lightning from the sky and I can’t believe I didn’t think of it sooner.

  On my feet, I blink ahead into the darkness where the torchlight seeps into shadows. It’s there, above, that the cloud of critters rolls through the sky.

  So close. An end to my life that I have craved for too long.

  Beside me, the warrior shifts the torch in his grip. Once it’s secure, his free hand reaches out for the rope binding us together—the rope with enough leeway that I can reach the shadows, and maybe reach the critters.

  Wasting not another second on thoughts and hesitations, I do a Usain and bolt.

  The soles of my boots pound against the tarmac. A sharp wind lashes against my face like ice-whips, but nothing slows me down.

  This sudden burst of energy—this hunger deep in my soul to die—has me sprinting like a high-school athlete. Closer and closer, one leap after another, I’m getting nearer the shadows.

  The satchel and shoulder bag slam against my hip, hard.

  In a frenzy, I tug at the satchel strap and let it slip away from my shoulder. It falls to the ground, freeing up some of the weight slowing me down, and I race to the blackness.

  Behind me, I can hear the warrior, but the sounds all merge together into chaos. The drop of the torchlight, a single foreign word spat out as though it was a curse upon me and all my ancestors, then his pounding bootfalls against the tarmac as he comes after me.

  And he must come after me. The rope is too loose, and he knows it.

  I can make it. I’m almost there.

  Reaching out my hand, I aim it upwards at the corner of the shadows, at the edge of the thick black cloud. The air above me shivers; the critters turn restless.

  I’m so fucking close and still—they shudder away from me just as a hand snatches up a fistful of my hair.

  The grip yanks me back. My spine hits hard against a stony chest, knocking the breath out of me.

  Hand buried in my hair, he tugs my head back and back until my neck is arched and I’m looking up at his murderous face.

  “I am not yet finished with you,” he warns, a breathless edge to his voice. “You die when I decide it.”

  Tears bead on my lashes, weighing them down. Defeat slackens my face and with it, a sigh loosens from me. As all that hope comes spiralling out of me, my chest deflates.

  I blink my wet eyes up at him.

  His dark gaze shifts down, tracing the track of a stray tear gone rogue. Bringing his free hand up, he catches the teardrop with his fingers.

  The weight of the quiet between us is as light as a feather. One slip and I might just say something entirely dangerous.

  He shouldn’t be touching my face, not as tenderly as his fingertips dance over my cheek. His eyes should not resemble cracked black-stained glass, spears of pain breaking them.

  This is all so dark and fucked up, and I’m just suddenly realising something that I should have picked up on earlier.

  In my final plea, I beg him, “Let me die.”

  Flicking his gaze away, a small breath loosens from his lips.

  He untangles his fingers from my hair then moves swiftly for the rope. I’m trapped as he snatches me closer and I go stumbling into him. He loops the rope around his belt tightly; barely some inches between us to breathe.

  Numbly, I stand beside him. Arms limp, I watch him in the faintly flickering torchlight.

  There’s a dazed glaze to my sight as I look back and see that the torch landed diagonally on the satchel. He must have dropped it before coming after me. It still burns. The flames bring lighters to mind.

  Cigarette…

  Guess that’s what my stress is craving, second to death.

  “If you won’t let me die...” I mutter and reach for my shoulder bag.

  The warrior pauses and, clenching his chiselled jaw, cuts a dark look down at me.

  I pull out a lighter and cigarette. “I’ll do it myself,” I finish.

  As I bring the slim, silky cigarette to my dry lips, I cast a glance over the flame at him. Watching me, he wears a frown on his mouth, and those sharp shadows dig deep into the lines of his jaw. He doesn’t stop me.

  I shove the lighter back into my bag, then pinch the cigarette between my fingers. Purposely, I exhale a ribbon of smoke at him.

  Unfazed, he tells me, “We have similar tastes in my realm.”

  I arch a brow, taking the cigarette from my lips, feeling the dampness still running down my cheeks.

  Why tell me that, I wonder. Is he asking for one or sharing something of his world with me, that they have their own brand of smoking, too?

  Fleetingly, I think of the old countries lost to ash. Some had cigars, others had hookah, China had opium. I have a cigarette. And it seems that, even in another realm—a whole other world entirely—some other form of smoking exists.

  I draw in a long inhale of the cigarette, watching him over the cloud of smoke that spirals up from me. He stands there, hand on the sliver of rope between us, his lashes lowered on me.

  As I exhale with a pop, I tell him, “I really don’t give two shits about your world or your tastes.”

  If he picks up on my double meaning, on the newfound realisation buzzing about in my head, his face doesn’t show it. It is stone, a mask slipped on.

  Twisting the rope around his fist, he drags me closer. The muscles in his arms tense with the movement.

  I fight against the pull, but it’s no use against his lazy strength.

  Bringing my still-wet gaze up, I let my hand—cigarette still burning, pinched between my fingers—fall to my side. Moodiness settles on my face.

  Watching me, he reaches out with his other hand and grazes his fingertips over my wrist. My breath is stolen from my throat as he traces the outline of my thumb.

  Then he crushes the cigarette in his fist.

  “Anything you do,” he warns me darkly, “is with my permission.”

  Barely a moment to blink or sneer, he steals me away from the edge of the firelight and back to where the satchel and torch were dropped.

  As he tugs the satchel over his head and shoulder, I kick some small stones on the road with the toe of my boot.

  “This is human trafficking,” I mumble moodily.

  Lifting the torch, his eyes burn amber again, and he considers me for a beat.

  “Yes,” is all he says before he takes off up the road again, pausing to take the other satchel I dropped.

  I’m dragged alongside him, merely a handful of inches of rope between us.

  *

  Irony is never a funny thing, in my humble opinion. So when I feel the early twinges of pain twist in my womb, the fact that I’m already wearing a pad (from pretending to have my period earlier to give myself an alibi) does nothing to bring a smile to my face and instead, turns my mouth down at the corners.

  The warrior hasn’t spoken a word to me since he crushed my cigarette in his hand, as though the fact that it was burning meant little to him and he felt nothing at all.

  A few times, I’ve tried to sneak a peek at his hand, but I haven’t noticed any signs of a burn mark or even ashy stains on his palm.

  Fucking fae. Indestructible assholes, the lot of them.

  Still, he’s got goods that I need and what was it he said about me not doing anything without his permission? So there’s that.

  “I think I’m getting my period,” I mumble beside him, scuffing my boots over the road. “And I’m thirsty.”

  Torchlight catches his face as he turns to frown at me. He looks me over before he shoves the waterskin into my hands.

  I tug out the cork, then down a stream of water. Once I’ve had my fill, I re-cork it. “What about my period?”

  Looking straight ahead, he takes the waterskin. “The last time you warned me of that, you poisoned me.”

  Instinct has me making a face at him, all grim daggers.

  He ignores me.

  Good thing I’m wearing that pad from earlier, though it’s all uncomfortable by this point, and I’m itching for a fresh one.

  With a huff, I check my shoulder bag. I find a loose tampon way down the bottom, but that’s all. Not nearly convenient enough to fix myself up with if he doesn't let me stop for a toilet break soon.

  Oh, a toilet break.

  If we stopped at a home or a shop, I might be able to slip some painkillers from somewhere, and numb the pain squirming deep in my belly.

  “I really am getting my period this time,” I grumble and hit out at his solid arm and—owww.

  My knuckles burn from the impact. A wince twists my face into a scowl and I throw it his way.

  Maybe it’s knowing that he won’t kill me that gives me this newly birthed attitude around him, or maybe it’s that I want him to snap and kill me, but whatever it is, my scowl is reserved for him as I rub my aching fingers.

  He shoots me a withering look, exhaustion clinging to his heavy lashes. The urge to stop for a rest is readable on him, but he’s holding out as long as he can just to torture me.

  Torture.

  I think of what that word really means.

  I’ve seen torture inflicted on humans before. Spike, most recently.

  And I’ve seen their passive torture; the kind that turns our own minds into pits of darkness and drives us to the worst parts of ourselves. I’ve seen the mere arrival of dark fae descending upon a village turn a mother against her son ... sort of.

  But that was true torture, I think.

  I was hidden up a few floors in a flat when I saw it.

  The mother cradled her young boy on her lap. Tears streaming down her face, she sang to him as the light grew in the distance and she fished out her handgun from her waistband. When her boy’s eyes were closed on his own tears, she shot him in the head before she turned the gun on herself.

  I couldn’t help. And our group got the hell out of there.

  Those were the earlier days when there were more survivors.

  That is the fae’s passive torture—not whatever this warrior is doing to me. Sure, I’m suffering in a way. Spike’s screams never seem too far behind me; I hear them on the wings of the wind rushing around us. But is this real dark fae torture?

  I mean, even after I poisoned him, it was Spike who received the butt of his wrath. The warrior threw me to the floor, grabbed my throat, held a dagger to me—but not once did he strike me, cut me or strangle me.

  It only cements my suspicion from earlier. No, not my suspicion—my realisation. This dark fae has a soft spot for me of sorts. He maybe feels something he shouldn’t, and that is what is protecting me—that is what is keeping me alive where so many others of my kind were not granted the same mercy.

  Is it mercy?

  That question aside, I turn my gaze up and study him.

  He holds the torch on the other side of him, so the light that crawls up his profile is dark amber and shadowy. It licks and slithers over his tanned, smooth complexion, skin that makes me think of olive oil from the depths of Italy, freshly poured.

  Even his eye looks darker on this side of the light; a pit of glistening tar.

  Now that I really look at him, I can’t deny his beauty and I’m stolen back to the moment I first saw him on that bony steed, coming into the village. And now, the breath is trapped in my chest and I stop dead in my tracks.

  He pauses, then turns to frown at me. His hand slides onto the rope, as though ready to tug me back into line. But something stops him.

  Is it the hurt expression I wear on my face, a look I feel in my hollow chest but cannot explain?

  “Do you hurt people?” I ask, my voice a hushed, weak sound.

  His lashes flutter, a stunned blink.

  “I mean,” I add unsurely, flashbacks of Spike invading my mind, “for no reason—hurt people just because you can?”

  I’ve seen that, too. Deaths, drawn out too long. Blood, shed in too big quantities. Limbs, severed when no fight was put up.

  I’ve seen the worst of his kind as I’m sure he has seen the worst of mine.

  But who is he?

  “I have killed more than—” he begins, but I cut him off with a shake of the head.

  “No,” I start. “Do you hurt my kind for pleasure? Some of your people ... they take delight in hurting innocent people. Do you?”

  Half-turned towards me, he fleetingly cuts his darkened gaze ahead to the shadows. My gaze drops to his chest, covered only by inky-black straps of leather, the smooth and scar-free complexion he wears (other than the two strips on his back). His body doesn’t wear the marks of many battles and wars, but something about him does carry that weight.

  At the thought he might target the weak, my heart constricts in my chest and I feel short of breath.

  After a long pause, he finally answers when I thought there would be no response other than to move along, “I have a natural hunger for blood and slaughter,” he tells me, his voice as faraway as his eyes. “It is in my bones, Cora-lee. But,” he adds, turning to me, seeing me for the first time since I probed, “I yearn for equal opponents.”

  A frown pinches my brow. “What do you mean?”

  “There are other fae,” he says, and my face slackens. “Light ones, your kind call them. The litalves.” He draws in a deep breath through his nostrils, his jaw tensing, then looks down at the road between our boots. “Their warriors match our own in strength, intelligence and ferocity. In this world,” he adds, his tone dipping, “the opponents are weak. In my world, we are all built to be warriors. This—what we are doing here—is not for war or to quench our thirst for blood. It is an extermination.”

  Fleetingly, I’m stolen back to the moment I aimed the gun at him on the street, and his face turned down with a grim look—he didn’t want me to shoot him, not for himself, but for me.

  “You don’t like to hurt humans, do you?” I ask softly.

  He shakes his bowed head, looking up at me from beneath his lashes. “I do not like to hurt your women,” he corrects. “Females from my world are equally matched for battle. Here, they are not.”

  Heat flushes my face, hot. “I’m just as much of a threat as a human man,” I shout at him. “I’m the one who shot you, I’m the one who hurt you—not Spike, and not Paul!”

  A small smile tilts his mouth. “You misunderstand me,” he says. “It is no pleasure of mine to harm any of your kind—but most in particular women and children. For those, I favour swift deaths.”

  “You’re not all like that,” I argue, my shoulders deflating. “I’ve seen it happen. Horrible things.”

  “As it is with your kind, there are differences between individuals,” he says, his brows furrowing.

  A singe of anger burns up my chest.

  Is there anything worse than losing an argument?

  Yes, many things, some of which I’ve experienced. But still, that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

  And it’s over, just like that.

  Hand loose on the rope, he gives it a gentle tug and with that one gesture, he severs the conversation. But I’m not done yet.

  Digging my heels into the road, I snatch the rope and fix a scowl on him.

  He pauses, a sigh loosening the tension in his shoulders.

  “What’s your name?”

  The tension returns. A ripple of stiffness rolls down his back, clamping up one muscle at a time.

  “I told you mine,” I say, relaxing my fight-form.

  He pauses for a moment. “Tell me something first,” he finally says. “About you.”

  I stumble to his side. “For your name, I might.”

  He looks over his shoulder at me, face like glass, firm but so ready to shatter. “Cliff.”

  A hum vibrates my throat. “Cliff,” I echo.

  His jaw chisels into his face. “Now tell me one thing.”

  I take advantage of the moment and fish out a cigarette from my bag. He doesn’t stop me and I make a point of taking a long, deep inhale.

  As smoke crawls out of my mouth, I tell him something I miss most in the whole world and all of its histories and pasts, “I figure skate. I mean, I used to figure stake. I wanted to ... compete one day,” I finish lamely, a blush on my sharp cheekbones.

  A frown carves shadows into his breath-stealing face, and I hate myself for all of this. The price to pay for his name was not one worth paying because now, he asks me, “What does this mean, to fig-oore skate?”

  “Skate on ice,” I mumble, flicking ash on the road between us. “It was a hobby. Well, it was more of a passion, really. But in my family ... with my parents, it just wasn’t something that I could ever pursue properly.”

  “Your parents,” he echoes, as though just realising that I have them, or once had them, as though it’s sinking in that this world held a life for me at one point in time, and that life ended the day the darkness came.

  With a nod, I seek aid from the cigarette.