With a grunt, I reach to the rear of the shelf and scoop out a pile of boxes. Everything clatters to the floor and spills over my boots. Disappointment clings to me as I notice that the pads are brandless and the tampons have no applicators.

  Definitely a man.

  These things are a gateway to all sorts of discomfort and infections.

  My mouth tilts as I opt for the safer pads. I snatch up a box and, as I stand, rip it open. Some fall out, landing on my boots. I shuffle back away from the mess before I make to turn around—and bump into a solid caramel-toned wall.

  I stagger back, my boots crushing boxes and rolls of bandages.

  Looking up, I see that the wall is in fact Cliff, and he towers over me wearing that trademarked frown of his. He’s left the candles upright on the shelf by the door, and stands a mere breath away from me.

  He steps forward, his boot silent on the mess at our feet, and he advances on me. I’m backed into the cupboard, feeling the bite of the shelves on my back. My fingers dig into the box in my hand, crumpling the pads, and I keep my wide-eyes on his mercurial stare.

  His molten-tar gaze drops to my mouth and hangs there for a heartbeat too long.

  For a moment, I think he means to kiss me. But then he speaks—and my heart drops to the churning pit of my gut.

  “You are weak,” he says, a distant edge to his voice, almost as though he’s speaking to himself about me. “All your kind are.”

  My mouth flattens into a slanted line. I hug the box closer to my chest.

  There’s no fight or argument in me right now, not with the writhing in my womb and in my chest. It’s not lost on me, how dangerous this moment can be. So I clamp my mouth shut.

  Closing the distance between us, he moves in closer, his warm breath ghosting over my forehead. His strong chin dips down as he keeps his stare locked on me.

  I look straight ahead at the dip between his pecs.

  An icy grip clenches my heart as he lifts his hand to me. Gently, his fingertips graze the length of my arm, ghosting over my prickled flesh. The tickling touch leaves a hot trail in its wake, all the way up the curve of my exposed shoulder.

  A shuddering breath escapes me. I blink at his chest, my mind not raging like I would have expected, but just … silent. I’ve gone stiff and numb all over.

  Involuntarily, my lashes flutter as his tender touch grazes along the side of my neck, a loathsome pleasant sensation, one that ignites a fire in my belly.

  Just reactions, I tell myself. Doesn’t mean anything.

  His hand moves down, over the bump of my collarbone—and I don’t stop him. Not sure I even can summon the strength to push his hand away.

  All I can manage is a hushed, trembling breath, “What are you doing?”

  It gives him pause. His fingertips falter on the strap of my exposed bra, something he never paid much mind to before, but now captures his entire gaze.

  “Do you know what this means?” His voice is a growl as the pause shatters and, after a thudding heartbeat, his fingers glide down the strap. “Your markings.”

  The fire in my belly explodes as his fingertips slip around the curve of my breast, grazing over the freckles hidden behind fabric.

  “One set,” he murmurs to himself, “maybe two—and you are from them.”

  I blink up at him, his stare latched onto the lace of the bra. My breath shudders for a beat, my heart writhing in my chest.

  Licking my dry lips, I manage, “I’m from who?”

  “These markings,” he says, dancing his fingers over the lace. “I find myself wishing you had more of them.”

  My question is a breath, “Why?”

  “More, and you would be from my kind. But you are from them.”

  Numbly, I shake my head. “I don’t follow.”

  He lifts his gaze to mine, locking me in place. I swallow back a lump in my throat at the sheer intensity of his pitch-black stare.

  “There are two of the fae,” he tells me again. “The litalves and the dokkalves. The light ones and the dark ones.”

  His gaze shifts to my pinched mouth. He told me this already.

  “One or two of these markings,” he explains, lifting his hand to my face, “and you are a descendant of a human and a litalf. More of these markings, and you are from—”

  “Your people,” I whisper, stunned. “The dark ones.”

  He looks at me, his lashes low over his dark eyes. His hand lingers a touch away from my face, as if ever-ready to reach for my cheek and jaw.

  My lashes flutter, the numbness in my mind starting to crack like glass.

  From his people…

  Freckles, three in a crooked line, ‘kuris’.

  The fae are only stealing the marked-ones into their armies. The kuris. The descendants.

  “You are the distant child of my natural enemy,” he tells me, a hush falling over his tone. His hand presses against my cheek firmly for a moment, then relaxes, cupping the side of my face. “You are the descendant of the ones I will destroy, just as I have destroyed your kind.”

  I turn my face away from his touch. His hand doesn’t follow.

  “What am I supposed to say to that?” I ask, watching the cupboard door flicker amber in the candlelight. “How is that supposed to make me feel?”

  He is quiet for a moment.

  He dips his head, his hot mouth grazing over my temple, and he murmurs, “Feel,” he echoes. “I feel much around you.”

  His lips part, as if ready to plant a kiss on my face, but he stops himself, hardening against me.

  He draws back.

  I can’t summon the courage to look at him.

  Darkly, he adds, “And I should feel nothing, for what you are.”

  27

  Appeasing my growling stomach, the pot of soup is at a simmer as I follow Cliff’s strides into the lounge. He marches over to the fireplace, an almost storm to his movements, and he smacks the candles down on the mantle, sticking them in place.

  Lashes of danger nip at my heels.

  I keep a safe distance and slip onto the farther armchair by the kitchen door. It’s not as close to the hearth as I would like, chillier back here, but the tension that winds up Cliff’s muscles and stiffens his body has my senses screaming to stay out of his way as best as I can.

  Cliff clatters around as he dishes out two servings of soup from the pot into bowls. It’s unlike him to make noise when he doesn’t need to. As he stands and turns to me, he hands me the bowl without so much as glancing at me.

  I take the bowl with clammy fingers. It slips in my grip a little, but I’m quick to clutch onto the bowl with both hands and steady it. Bringing it to me, I toy with the spoon, stirring out the heat.

  Cliff moves past me with his own serving of tomato soup—a favourite of mine—and opts for the couch facing the hearth. He sits at the edge, the nearest spot to me. Yet he won’t look my way.

  And shouldn’t I be glad about that? Relieved, at least?

  I don’t know how I feel. It’s as though a switch has flicked in my mind and turned everything off, and I simply exist in auto-mode.

  Nothing but static in my head, I eat my soup, but I don’t really taste anything. I’m waiting for that burst of overly ripe and salted tomato to hit my tongue. It doesn’t.

  We eat in silence until there are just dregs left in my bowl and Cliff is on his second serving. He finishes first, setting the bowl aside on a side-table.

  Out the corner of my eye, I watch as he brings his hands together between his spread thighs and leans forward—and he looks at me. No, he watches me.

  Ignoring him, I use my finger to finish off the residue of my soup.

  As I set my bowl next to his discarded one, he finally speaks—

  “A litalf-kuri will have trouble in my realm,” he tells me, his mind still caught up on all of that. “That is where you will be at your weakest. There will be no sun or moons, only darkness and a world you do not belong in. Humans and kuris like you are not expected to survive beyond some decades in our world.”

  My frown flickers to him. “Humans don’t survive much longer than that even in our own world.”

  His mouth tilts down at the corner. A battle is clashing in his black eyes, the embers on fire. “In ours,” he says, “you have the chance to live centuries. Time moves differently there. Yet without the proper care, you will fall to your weakness like so many before you.”

  I blink at him. “You’re talking as though I’ll be taken to your world, and that’s a certainty.”

  “It is.” He leans back on the couch, threading a hand through his thick black hair. Tendrils fall back into place over his forehead, the tips brushing over his eyebrows. “The kuris will be sold as slaves.”

  Heart sinking, I cut my gaze down at my lap. There, my fingers have found each other and twisted; my skin pulls so tight that white blotches have blossomed all over my knuckles.

  The early sting of tears prickles my eyes. Yet, I’m not overly surprised. I did have this thought earlier that we were being taken back as slaves. It’s what they use us for now, so we either faced a slaughter at the end of the road or a life of forced servitude. Guess I was just hoping for the quick death.

  “Why are you telling me this?” I ask, not looking at him. I watch my fingers work each other nervously.

  I feel his fiery eyes burn into my damp cheek. “To put it plainly, I cannot protect you, Cora-lee. Once we meet with my people, you will be taken to the other kuris, and from there I will have no power over your fate.”

  “So kill me now,” I whisper, turning my pleading eyes on him. “Or kill me when we’re a day from reaching your troop. Whatever you do, don’t let them have me.”

  He tilts his head to the side, lashes lowering over dark eyes. “I am them,” is all he says.

  Turning my wet eyes to the fire, I watch the flames lick along stacked logs. “What would my fate be if I was a kuri from the dark fae?”

  He is quiet a moment. Watching me. Always watching me.

  “It would simply be easier for you,” he finally replies, and there’s a decipherable hint of pity in his gentle tone. “You might adjust better and you would be expected to live longer. I have seen some dokkalf-kuris survive four centuries before they finally succumbed to their mortality.”

  “Four centuries,” I echo, the meaning of the words lost on me. An eternity that a human like me should never know or even truly understand. “That sounds awful.”

  And it does.

  Four centuries of slavery is a fate I would choose only for the worst people I’ve ever known. Someone like Spike, say.

  Cliff adds, “In the light realm, kuris tend to live as immortals.”

  So there is something worse than four hundred years of slavery—a true eternity of it. But are humans slaves in the light realm to the litalves, I wonder?

  “Should I want to go there instead?” I ask and shift around in the armchair to face him.

  He watches me for a moment longer before he takes the bowls from the side-table wedged between the armchair and couch. He stalks to the fireplace and refills them both, a second serving for me and a third for him.

  As he returns, he hands a bowl off to me. The soup is cooler now, so I stir less before I tuck in.

  “You should not want to go to the light realm,” he says halfway into his bowl. “They are perhaps more vicious to humans than my kind are. They,” he adds, looking up from beneath his lashes at me, “seek pleasure and fun in their torture of humans. Over thousands of years, they have devised methods of suffering humans—dances that never stop, fruit that rots bodies from the inside-out over years. The dark ones execute. We do not play as they do.”

  I lick my spoon clean then turn it around, seeing my warped reflection looking back at me. “You really hate them, don’t you?”

  His smile is dry and cruel. “Once the human world is truly conquered, and our missions here are complete, we will resume our war on the litalves. I yearn for that day deep in my heart.”

  I blink at him.

  I yearn for that day deep in my heart.

  There’s an intimacy about that, a piece of himself that he’s sharing with me—a piece I want so desperately to know in this moment, but recognise that it should be a stranger to me.

  It’s just my loneliness tricking me into false desires.

  “Equally matched in battle,” he adds, as though speaking to himself.

  My mouth turns down with a frown. I drape my legs over the arm of the chair, my boots resting on the table, and I lean my head against the back. “Do your kind just … live to be at war with them or something?”

  The black of his eyes flickers as he looks up at me. The spilled ink shimmers. “For a thousand years, we have been at war. Their land is impenetrable. Their light acts as a barrier against our dark.”

  The frown is still stuck on my face. “So why bother?”

  “We want their land,” he says simply, his lashes lowering. “Their seas, their fruitful earth. And revenge, too.” Before I can ask what for, he waves off my parting mouth with a flick of his hand, then goes on, “In the valley that separates our lands, there is a flaw in this barrier. We can break it apart and tip the scales of war in our balance, but we need something before we can do that.”

  “Something? Like what?”

  “It’s complicated,” he says with a dark look. “The litalves fight our magick with their own. It is… harder to invade their lands with darkness than it was here.”

  I mutter, fighting a small smile. “I hope you fail.”

  His smile is not so small, and he doesn’t fight it. He turns it on me, all dark shadows and cruelty. “Time will tell. And we are spending that time focused on your world.”

  I roll my jaw until it clicks. Folding my arms over my chest, I say, “Seems like you need your darkness to do anything. I wonder who really would have won in this world if you didn’t have that to back you up.”

  “Our darkness is our weapon, just as planes and bombs are yours,” he says icily.

  I hum something tired, letting my cheek press into the spine of the armchair. “Were,” I mumble, the early snare of sleep coiling around my head. “They were our weapons. It’s all gone now—all of it.”

  He looks away, clenching his jaw.

  “I don’t want to talk anymore,” I tell him before a yawn stretches through me.

  He says nothing and, after I get comfortable, I shut my eyes and let sleep come for me. I don’t let my mind linger on how easily it does find me.

  At some point, I wake up to Cliff turning his back on me. He’s stretched out on the couch, his folded arm tucked under his head. It’s as though he’s just settled for rest.

  I make to shift onto my side, but then I feel them—the blanket draped over my legs and the rope pulled a bit tight. I trace the rope to his belt; strapped to him once again.

  But he put a blanket over me. And not for the first time.

  I don’t fall back asleep. I just lay there on the armchair, watching him, watching the muscles on his back shift with each breath he takes. He’s like some sort of dark, avenging angel.

  I’m in a spot of danger, here. If I can’t reel it in fast, it might get worse.

  My mind is clearer now. Those tangled threads of thoughts making a web are starting to peel apart, and I can make sense of them now. One by one, I study them.

  I can’t explain it, and maybe I don’t want to understand it, but there’s something flattering about holding the attention of a dark fae warrior.

  There could be advantages, but he has made it clear that there will be none for me. Beyond this—our time together—he can’t protect me. So what good does this thing between us really bring me?

  Then there’s that deep, aching pit inside of me. Loneliness. I’ve carried it with me my whole life—and around this brutal, gruesome warrior who knows the ugliest parts of all life, I feel like I’m simply not judged for being my sad, self-pitying and weak-stomached self. Well, maybe he does judge me for the sickly thing, but other than that—I bleed around him, use the loo, try to kill myself, beg for death … and he still doesn’t bat an eye.

  Does he understand me where I don’t understand myself?

  This emotion budding inside of me for him, does it grow from selfish need?

  It’s a dark world and only the monsters survive it.

  That is what I am—I must be. How else could I be feeling all of this for my captor, a dark fae warrior determined to exterminate my kind? A beast who has so cruelly hurt me, forced me to watch torture, kept me bound by his rope.

  But worst of all, my heart really aches most for what he cannot do …

  Protect me.

  28

  So sleep did come for me in the end, but it was broken and filled with Spike’s cries.

  I wake drenched in my own sweat, my dress sticking to my clammy skin. That becomes a second, fleeting thought when I blink my glossy eyes open and catch amber orbs aimed at me.

  Leaning back against the couch, Cliff watches me—and he makes no effort to hide this as I flutter my eyes open. Dancing-amber eyes latch onto me, a frown furrowing the skin between them.

  To sever our locked stares, I bring my fists to my face and rub my eyes.

  I’m all bunched up on the armchair, my knees tucked up to my sticky chin. It takes a few seconds for me to untangle my aching limbs. Bones crackle and pop as I let a yawn stretch through me, arching me off the armchair until I’m in danger of slipping to the floor.

  My yawn finishes with a squeal and I sink into the chair as though it’s a loving mother’s embrace. Legs spread out, chin resting on my collarbone, I fix my stare straight ahead, trying to ignore the burn of his eyes on my cheek.

  To distract myself, I fish out a cigarette and light it. Not the best decision to smoke first thing after waking up, mouth dry and throat all itchy. But whatever. When have I been good at best decisions?

  A creak ripples through the couch as Cliff pushes up. He stalks to the fireplace before crouching down at the pot. Still some soup left, I see with a quick glance, and it’s covered in a layer of film.

  On the grate, he reheats the leftovers, and that’s when I realise we’re leaving shortly. Before we go, I have enough time for a second cigarette, a loo break (where I manage to stuff a pill bottle into the bra-wire between my breasts as he closes the door) and another serving of tomato soup. He checks his map and, despite the shove I got last time for looking, I still manage to sneak a glimpse in the firelight.