I could have gone my entire life without seeing anything like that.

  Somehow, it’s much worse than a decapitated head or severed body. The image is burnt into my mind when I hear the sinking of a blade crunching into a skull, and I know Cliff has finished the job.

  The screams stop abruptly.

  I stay crouched on the floor, beside the growing heat of the fire, in danger of being consumed by ravenous flames. I try to catch my breath, but the screams were so wild that my throat burns with a strangled pain.

  Bootsteps storm by me.

  Through teary eyes, I look up as Cliff marches through the lower flames and snatches up the torch. He turns on me, his brow furrowing as our gazes lock, and he pauses for a mere heartbeat before he advances on me.

  Scooping me up by my underarm, he hauls me out of the door and down the porch steps.

  At the edge of the firelight, he stops and looks over his shoulder at the cottage. The flames have reached the door and are starting their ascent up the frame, devouring.

  I throw a glance up at Cliff. His mouth is turned down at the corner, the frown still etched into his face. Black eyes reflect the flames.

  Now, I’m no dark fae-reader, but it looks as though he regrets that this cottage is burning. It looks as though this is the last thing he wanted.

  Loosening his grip on my arm, he turns his face to me. His hand slips away then reaches up for my jaw. A moment’s hesitation snares him before he presses his thumb to my lips and, slowly, he wipes it along my plump flesh.

  I drag myself closer to him. His fingers slip away and shift to the nape of my neck as I bury my face into his chest and nuzzle into him.

  Frozen for a moment, he’s stiff against me. Then his arm comes to loop around my back and he holds me to him.

  We stand there as the cottage burns. He watches, I stay huddled against him. Neither of us speaks.

  He holds me the whole time.

  36

  Of all the things I could say about Cliff, being predictable in his unpredictable behaviour is one of the most honest. I honestly expected him to shut down after he held me at the cottage—but for whatever reason, he hasn’t.

  I mean, he’s still what and who he is. There’s no warm cuddly moments to be found with him. He doesn’t kiss me in the dark, tell me how much of his heart I hold in my grip, or caress me.

  What he does do is let my hand clutch his as we trek through the rocky plains leading to Perche National Park. Already, some lots of thinning trees have sprouted around us in the blackness. And all the while, I hold his limp hand in mine, my fingers clenched tight where his are relaxed.

  With my free hand, I fish out my third cigarette since leaving the cottage. The stress of it all is still coiled tight around my stiff bones, and it’s all too much for my mind to start processing yet. There’s too much to unpack. So instead of dealing with all that mess, I smoke.

  It helps for a while. I’m distracted by the taste and the movement as well the heat of Cliff’s lifeless fingers that mine are hooked around. At least, I’m distracted until that familiar skittering sound rolls ahead in the thick dark.

  Despite knowing that they can’t come near me with a dark fae beside me, a shudder is quick to crawl up my spine and tremble my shoulders.

  “I’m hearing them more and more,” I mutter, side-stepping closer to him. I lean my temple on his muscular arm, bringing the cigarette to my mouth. “They’re everywhere now.”

  And to think, just a week or so ago, I’d never encountered those critters before.

  Beside me, Cliff stares straight ahead. His face is a stony mask. “With every unit that returns to the dark realm,” he tells me, “another cloud of morke is released into this world.”

  Morke.

  So that’s what those sloppy tentacle fuckers are called. My mouth twists with distaste and I flick a lump of ash onto the crunchy, dried-out grass.

  “More of your kind are returning home, then,” I state the obvious.

  “My unit will be one of the last,” he says.

  Pulling my head away from his arm, I look up at him, studying his profile. Shadows lick up the chisel of his jaw, snaring at the corners of his dark eyes. He looks focused, determined to finish all of this. Maybe even what he has with me.

  What do we have?

  Ugh, that’s a question for another time when my brain can actually handle all the shit that’s been thrown at me. Right now is not the time. I’m still trying to keep the image of that severed jaw out of my mind. Can’t go messing myself up more with memories of Cliff slamming into me…

  I still wear the torn underwear from his rush to be inside of me. They are tied up at my side, secured in place to keep the pad from slipping away, but I feel that lump of fabric on my hip like a constant blaring reminder of the despicable act I let happen—no, that I wanted to happen.

  I was just as much a part of that as he was.

  Yet that’s something I can’t entertain at the moment. I just keep my mind numb and follow the instincts of my soul—which is to hold his hand and glower up at him.

  “What then?” I ask, a sharp edge to my voice, like the cut of a sword. “What do you do when you’re finished here and back in your world?”

  Looking straight ahead, his jaw ticks which darkens the shadows in along his cheeks. “We turn our attention back to the litalves, and we take their land,” he says, his tone darkening.

  I scoff, shaking my head. “Will it ever be enough for your kind?”

  In answer, he gives only silence.

  “What happens when you run out of people to slaughter?” I press.

  Still, he’s silent. And he’s silent for a long while, even as we venture into the treeline of the forest and, despite my moodiness, the fear has me tightening my grip on his hand.

  He doesn’t pull it away, either.

  37

  Deep in the woods, Cliff decides to stop in a clear circle hugged between trees. He untangles his fingers from mine, then dumps the satchels on the dirt.

  Thank you, I want to say bitterly, but I bite my tongue. I’m in desperate need of a change of pad, we’ve been walking for so long.

  Cliff impales the handle of the torch into the dirt. It stands upright.

  Before he can stalk off to collect firewood, I tug on the rope. He turns to look at me—for the first time since we left the cottage, he really looks at me. And I catch the shuttering of his face.

  “I need a minute,” I tell him, fishing out a pad from my shoulder bag.

  Suspicion darkens his eyes as his lashes lower. He watches me for a moment, a moment that thickens the air between us.

  I arch my eyebrow at him. “Do you really think I’m going to make a run for it in the middle of the forest?”

  This convinces him. He flattens his lips for a beat before he sighs and, relenting, unloops my rope from his belt.

  “Be quick,” he orders me. “And stay in the treeline.”

  Nodding, I back off to the nearest, fattest tree that I can duck behind. I hear the clatter and snap of him collecting firewood in the circle, then the scuff of his boot on the dirt as though he’s stamping out a place for us to camp.

  Despite his command, I take my time. I have some business to do and, when I’m done, I use a fresh wipe from my bag to clean myself. It’s as close to a wash as I’ll get out in the forest with no signs of fresh water around. Besides, the wind is starting to cool which tells me that we’re shifting seasons, and maybe the cooler seasons aren’t the best time to be washing in rivers and streams.

  So I make do with what I have before emerging from the treeline.

  Cliff looks up as I wander over to the packed-dirt circle he’s made in the small clearing. In the centre, there’s a perfectly pitched tent of firewood and now the torch is laid flat over the dirt, the flames tucked under all the twigs and branches. He built a healthy fire.

  My hands find my bruised wrists. As I rub them soothingly, I wander over to him.

  Crouched down, Cliff rummages through the satchels until he tugs free a blanket of fur. Something too heavy to have been tucked away in one of those bags—and so I’m now absolutely certain that those satchels aren’t like any to be found in our world. There’s something enchanted about them. I know furs, and so I know their weight.

  Though, I don’t know this particular kind.

  As Cliff drapes it over the packed dirt beside the fire, I eye its pale grey colouring, so like murky quartz. The first thought I have is wolves, but the length and plush appearance shuts that guess down quick.

  I wander closer to the rug before lowering down to my knees and running my hands over it. A serene look slackens my face. The blanket is softer to the touch than the highest quality fur that my family owned. I can’t place the animal it came from.

  “What is this?” I ask, twisting around to flop down onto my bottom.

  Pulling the satchels onto the blanket, Cliff drops down beside me, facing the flames. He digs through them again. “Fur.”

  A snort catches in my nose. “What animal?”

  “Nothing you would find in this world,” is all he says before he pulls out parchment-wrapped parcels from the second satchel and a purple-stained glass bottle of something corked.

  He sets the loot to the side, twisting his back to me.

  My eyes latch onto the two ribbed, dark scars that run down his back, from his shoulder blades to those delectable dimples further down.

  “What animal?” I ask again. The urge to reach out for his scars bites my fingertips. I ball my hands up into fists to fight it.

  He turns back around to face me. “The fur is from voders. Rodents that inhabit the woods in our lands.”

  In each of his hands, parchment is spread open into mimicked bowls, and they both hold strips of tough-looking meat, sprinkles of herbs, cubed potatoes that glisten with some sort of preservative-oil, and a lump of bread.

  Fleetingly, I wonder what’s done to the food to stop it from spoiling.

  Taking the parchment-bowl, I bring the meal to my lap and pick through the foreign food lazily.

  “Was it voders that did that to your back?” I gesture to his scars with a nod of my head.

  He stills. His fingers stay pinched on the edge of a meaty strip, his shoulders bowed slightly, his head down. Then, his tension starts to unravel as he straightens and inhales deeply through his nostrils.

  Cutting a dark look at me, he releases the meat strip from his fingers.

  “No,” he says and throws his gaze to the fire. “Voders are large—around the size of your world’s cats, but they do little damage. Those are not scars that I wear on me.”

  A frown tugs my eyebrows together. Leaning back, I run my gaze over the black ribbed skin before I shake my head.

  “They sure look like scars.” I eye a cubed potato for a beat before I pop it into my mouth and—Mother, it’s delicious. The herbs are a clash of flavours, a battle of garlicky tones with sweet hints and a mouth-watering crunchiness. I toss another in my mouth.

  While chewing I study Cliff’s profile; his downcast gaze, the length of his lashes that cast dark shadows down his faraway-face. He picks at his meal, distracted.

  “If they aren’t scars, what are they?”

  “Marks of dishonour,” he says.

  I blink through the sudden spring of pity in my chest. “Punishment? Someone did that to you?”

  He loosens a sigh before setting aside his parchment-bowl. Wiping his hands together, he stares into the fire and pulls up one leg, resting an arm on his knee.

  I keep eating, not expecting him to answer me.

  But he does—

  “I told you I can’t protect you,” he says, watching the flames that lick orange and darkness up his olive-toned face. “I am a mere steed-soldier now.”

  I nod, though I don’t understand the meaning of that rank. I hardly understand the military ranks in my world, never mind his.

  “Once, I was a second-in-command,” he tells me, reaching for the purple-stained bottle.

  He uncorks it and the stench is instant—it floods the quiet forest air with a rich, spoiled grape smell. Something like wine, I decide. Something far more potent than any we’ve ever known in our world.

  After he takes a swig, he sets it down on the dirt between his legs and watches the flames still. “I was one battle triumph away from leading my own unit. By the end of our conquer over your world, I could have been made general.”

  I won’t forget what he is, the things he has done. I make an effort to hold onto the vicious memories I have of him in this moment, because for the insanity in me, my heart suddenly blossoms a bud of sorrow for him.

  It’s not that he didn’t get the promotion he wanted—though I understand that to his people, the ranks and working their way up them mean a lot more than it does to my kind. This is in their bones and blood, as he told me—it’s what they live for.

  And since they live so long, who knows how long it took him to almost reach the rank of general?

  Still, it’s his eyes that stir pity inside of me. His lashes lower until he’s looking at the dirt; no light reflects off the black depths. His eyes are desolate and bleak; utterly hopeless.

  “What happened?” My voice is a whisper, hushed by the fear of spooking him into silence and anger.

  How does any of this have anything to do with those scars?

  I leave my whirling thoughts to stay buried behind my tongue for the moment.

  Already, he’s opened up so much—he held my hand (sort of), he held me as the cottage burned, and he’s telling me about his life.

  Things are definitely changing between us. Hell, they already have. I just wonder if this line we have crossed means there’s no going back.

  “My mother was an admiral,” he goes on. Between his fingers, he’s somehow gotten a hold of a twig and he starts to break it up into tiny pieces, left to rain down on the blanket. “A general of the waters. She was highly respected.” He tosses the pulverised remains of the twig away. “Until she ran off with Malik.”

  “Malik?” I ask, picking apart the strips of meat. They taste all right, a little smoky and cheap, like beef jerky in the US, but edible.

  “An admiral of the light realm. A litalf,” he spits the word as though its venom and he must be rid of it.

  “She…” I blink at him for a moment before I shift around to face him. “She ran off with a light fae?”

  The shadow of his jaw darkens to the shade of the blackness all around our bubble of orange. He clenches his teeth, his fingers winding together.

  “Over the centuries, they spent much time in close negotiations,” he says. “And she disgraced her rank, her people, her duties, her house and her son—for one of our natural enemies.”

  A thought comes to mind. “Why are they not allowed to love each another?”

  “We are one world,” he says, cutting a distant look at me, “two realms. We have rivers that lead to seas that border their queendom, rivers and streams too narrow for all of our armies to sail through. That is not our only divide. Our kinds have been at war longer than our written word can determine.”

  “But it was her, right?” I ask, an uncertain frown titling down my mouth. “Your mother fell in love with a litalf. How did that disgrace you?”

  “I am part of my house. As is my mother. When she abandoned her rank and fled to the light realm to live with Malik, she brought dishonour on all that she left behind.”

  “So…” I glance at the back of his muscular arm, as though I can see the ribbed marks running down on either side of his spine. “So you were cut up for that?”

  “No.” Faintly, he shakes his head. “I was disgraced.”

  For a moment, I stare at him with my mouth pursed and the confusion written in the wrinkles of my face.

  Finally, I say, “I don’t understand what you mean.”

  “I am royal, Cora-lee,” he admits without looking at me. “A Royal Cousin, as is my mother. We are bound to the thrones and the king and the princes. And what one of us does—or does not do—reflects on all in that house. Royals,” he adds, his tone dropping, “wear markings like no other of the dokkalves do.”

  “And these are your markings,” I say, reaching behind him.

  He freezes, his muscles clamping up beneath the skin one by one. Before I can touch my fingers to his grooved marks, his hand shoots out and catches my arm. Lowering my hand to the ground, he stops me from touching him.

  “These markings,” he says, watching me darkly, “are openings.”

  “Openings,” I echo, frowning as he releases my arm from his death-grip. “To what?”

  “Wings.” He looks back at the flames. “I had them sealed with the black metal after my mother’s betrayal. My dishonour means I should never wear the markings of my royalhood again. Not until I earn back the house name and honour.”

  He has … wings…

  My voice drops to a whisper, “Show me.”

  His eyes widen with a glare that he flings at me. “They are sealed.”

  But that’s not why he won’t show me. The shame of it all is etched into the faint blush on his cheekbones, the rosy tint to his nose. He is embarrassed by what his mother did and—even more for telling me about it. Me, a mere kuri he can do nothing to protect once we reach his unit.

  Me, who he opens up to in the quiet of the forest.

  Me, who despite his best battles, cannot be defeated within him.

  This time, he doesn’t stop me. I shift onto my knees and, with his watchful stare hooked onto me, I reach around his back.

  My fingertips graze over bumpy skin. It’s all so rough that it reminds me of the edges of burn scars or even cheese graters, and I’m fleetingly worried I might cut myself on the markings.

  A warmth sways in my belly. A familiar sensation, spreading all over, down to my core and up to my swelling heart.

  I inhale a shuddering breath and shift around to his front. His dark eyes, embers once more, shadow my every move as I straddle him.

  Slowly, his hands come up to my thighs, fingers creeping beneath the hem of my dress. His eyes don’t leave mine as he runs his hands up my thighs, feeling the creamy texture of my freshly moisturised skin, until his hands come flat along the curve of my bottom.