My face is stuffed into the dirt. I get a mouthful of it, muffling my shouts. Arms twisted behind my back, the soldier loops the chains around my wrists. Before he yanks me up to stand, he thrusts my face into the dirt once for good measure.

  Spitting out a mouthful of dirt, I stagger to stand, my legs wobbling beneath me. I’m spun around just in time to see that Cliff is gone—and so are the three other soldiers.

  They have taken him away. They will take me away.

  We were so close to safety, but it’s all over now. Our entire plan—well his plan—has been blasted to smithereens by a letter.

  Someone must have made it back before us, allowing them to intercept us. But … Cliff allowed me to be taken, himself too.

  He must have another trick up his sleeve. It’s the only string of hope I have left to cling onto.

  53

  I’m dragged through miles of darkness, thick with crooked and charred trees—not the ones that illuminate the way for my human eyes.

  Eventually, we come out of the thick to see a greying fortress ahead, surrounded by a moat. I swing my gaze around the dark fae who loiter around the blue glittering water in the moat. Cliff is nowhere in sight.

  But horror strikes through me as soon as I spot where the soldier is taking me.

  The tug of the sleek black rope twists around my wrists, making sure I have no chance of running no matter how hard I could pull or struggle. Yet, even as I think it and the urge to be free claws at my icy gut, my body has gone ... submissive, limp almost.

  My bones feel like jelly and my flesh feels like a thousand spiders are creeping beneath it. And still, I walk towards those massive, looming wood crates at the mouth of the fortress.

  And I know he’s taking me there—because it’s stuffed full of scabby-looking humans. The kuris, stolen from the world I left behind I suspect, and caged in like pigs in a slaughterhouse.

  The soldier takes me around a packed-dirt path that winds downhill to the mouth of the bridge. It curves over the moat, and my footsteps are unsteady over it.

  By the time he’s guiding me to the nearest cage, my heart has lunged up into my throat and started to choke me. Can’t find my breath, it’s trapped within my constricted chest somewhere.

  He reaches for the latch on the cage door. The kuris inside slink back at how near he comes to them, but the soldier has little interest other than shoving me inside.

  I stagger, only catching my balance when the door latches shut behind me.

  Looking around, I see the boniness of the other kuris. How their clothes hang off their shrewd limbs, the gauntness of their faces.

  Their gazes cut away as they start to rediscover their spots in the cage. Some loiter, others slide down the wooden poles to sit on the dirt. None clique up together—and I suspect the reason is the total despair that lingers in the air.

  The despair clutches me quickly.

  All hope I planted in Cliff’s lack of fight when we were intercepted has started to ribbon out of me. As it leaves me, I sink down to the hard ground and wrap my arms around my legs.

  Setting my chin on my knees, I watch a lone blade of twilight-blue grass shiver in the warm breeze. I watch it for a long time, so long that my lashes begin to flutter and my head lolls forward.

  Eventually, I doze off.

  I’m only woken when I hear the creak of the latch being opened, and as I blink awake and look up, I see a stony-faced dark fae in the doorway, dressed in full general leather armour and a dark crown fitted perfectly atop his head.

  His eyes are on me.

  His face gives nothing away as he hands off a small pouch to the soldier who opened the door. The soldier gestures for me to stand.

  I think this strange general ... I think he’s buying me.

  My legs are half asleep as I stagger over to the door, unsure of myself and the stranger. But I try—I try with all the scraps of might I have left—to keep my trust in Cliff’s final turn away from me.

  He saw that I was taken. He knew it. And he did nothing.

  That’s got to mean something, since he fought so brutally for me at the camp of his army. He wouldn't just let me go now, not after everything.

  I trust that he has a plan as I approach the general.

  His coal-black eyes trace me closely. He steps aside and stretches out his hand, gesturing for me to pass by him.

  Silence radiates from him as he leads the way to an awaiting carriage parked on the moat’s bridge. What gives me pause is that, when he open the door, he holds it for me and I hesitate.

  If I let my mind spiral into the worst, I would ask myself if it is custom for dark fae generals to hold doors for their newly purchased slaves? But I have to keep faith in that this is all a part of Cliff’s plan.

  The carriage ride is long and tiresome. The dark fae speaks no words the whole way that we rock and sway with the carriage movement.

  By the time the carriage rolls to a slow stop, my eyelids are low and heavy. But I blink enough to make out the faint outline of my surroundings when the general swings by me and opens the door.

  I slide out after him, my shoes landing on the stone of a courtyard illuminated by candles and lanterns.

  I look at the dark fae as he moves around me.

  For a moment, I think shadows have stuck to his eyes, but then I realise that it is his eyes—they are a deeper shade of black than any pools of tar I could ever dream up.

  And coming up the courtyard to stand at his side is a human.

  Blonde-haired, narrow and dressed in a black lace slip; she’s pretty woman, around the same age as I am, but with a ghastly jagged scar running down the side of her face. It warps the corner of her mouth and eye into something out of a storybook.

  Her smile is aimed at me. I simply stare back at her with the same surprise as what Cliff does.

  The general introduces the human, “My wife, Vale.” Then a dark smile takes his face. “My friend Cliff seems to have had much the same idea as I. Or,” he adds, casting a withering look at Vale, “he has made a similar mistake.”

  Vale whacks him on the arm with more courage than I would have expected.

  A frown pinches my face. Uneasy tendrils wind back up into an uncertain ball in my tummy. This general ... he is not only married to a human, but he knows Cliff and suggests that he knows of our relationship.

  What if he hasn’t taken me from the kuri cage to be a slave? It’s possible Cliff sent a messenger of sorts to the friend he was looking for before he faced whatever fate awaited him when he was taken away.

  “Cas ...” I stammer in the face of such a powerful-looking dark fae and the exhaustion clinging to my mind, body and soul. “Caspan?” I finally manage with a choked voice.

  In answer, he only nods once. A budding balloon of relief explodes within me. I step forward, my hands reaching out for the pair of them. Vale takes them in her slender ones for a beat.

  “Do you know where he is? Is he all right?” I ask.

  Caspan holds up his hand. It’s Vale’s turn to shoot him a dark look.

  “We’ll find out soon,” she says, turning her scarred face to me. There’s no pity in her gaze, but there’s a sharp edge that I recognise deep inside of my soul. And it’s only now that I notice the scars etched all over her arms.

  Yes, I know her spirit almost as well as I know my own.

  Still, I know nothing about Cliff or his fate. So my shoulders slump and my head falls with my face.

  To my relief, Vale calls down a servant and orders her to find me a room and a bath. So my escape comes quickly, and I’m swept up the stairs to a private guest’s room.

  That’s where I stay.

  I don’t come out when the servant returns to offer me a bath. I refuse to leave the bed when I’m asked to join Vale for dinner—apparently Caspan has gone off to aid Cliff at the Royal Court—and I bury myself deeper in the thick blankets when I hear Vale’s voice calling my name from the other side of the door.

  Fading in and out of sleep, I wait for Cliff—if he ever returns.

  It feels as though he’s gone for days and nights. But there is no sun or moon outside my window to help me tell the time, and I sleep too much to best keep track of it. So I wallow in a timeless pit of misery and failing hope, taking breaks only to snack from the duffel bag and smoke cigarettes.

  Feels like my fate is in the hands of those I don’t know. And Cliff’s too.

  I don’t even know if he’ll ever come back.

  But finally ... he does.

  The sheets rustle and stir me out of a light nightmare-fuelled sleep.

  I jerk upright and snap my eyes open. The panic eases the moment I see that it’s Cliff, slipping into the bed with me.

  All those tears I was holding back erupt, and I throw myself at him. His arms come around me, guiding me back down to the bed.

  For hours more, we just lie there together, neither one of us talking, assuring, romancing. We just exist together.

  And that’s enough for me.

  54

  Cliff has done something for me, I realise when I wake on the feathery bed. His chest is pressed against my back, moulded to me, and he holds me to him so tightly that it’s almost as though he’s afraid to let go.

  But I’m not only wrapped in his arms. I’m in a cocoon.

  His wings.

  Leathery, like bat wings, and as I wander my gaze around, I notice small tears and holes that have amber edges, like they are burn marks. I wonder, with a dropping heart, if he was punished after all at the Royal Court.

  Now is not the time to ask.

  Whatever has happened, it has brought him back to me, and I sense he only wants to exist with me in this moment, in this bed. The inevitable conversation will have to wait.

  The cocoon is firm, so there isn’t much wiggle room. Still, I manage to lift an arm and trace a particularly large hole with the tip of my finger.

  Cliff stirs behind me. I feel his lashes flutter against the sweet spot between my neck and shoulder, and his breaths take a turn from relaxed to excited.

  In our leather wrappings, he runs his hand from my tummy, back to the mound of my hip. It travels downwards, slipping off the sheet that conceals me, and he leaves me with just my underwear to cover me.

  His thumb hooks onto the strap of my knickers. Slowly, he guides them down, just enough to expose me.

  The only foreplay he gives me are the kisses he trails along my neck, the nip of his teeth on my sensitive flesh. But I’m ready for him.

  Prodding myself back, I meet his naked form and feel him stiff against me. Already prepared.

  Sleep doesn’t mist over us, but instead a lazy serenity has enveloped us as he tightens his hold on the meat of my thigh and nudges into me. The head slips past all that’s exposed before it settles at the opening of my core.

  He slides inside of me fully.

  And I know, this is just the beginning of a long while exploring, tasting, and revelling in each other. It’s the first time together that I feel protected.

  Maybe I love him a little for it.

  Maybe I love him a lot for other things.

  One thing I know for certain is, when he finishes inside of me and I feel the warmth spread, he is nowhere near done.

  55

  It isn’t for hours—or at least a whole night in this eternally dark realm—that we finally untangle ourselves. Those ribbed marks on his back peel apart for his wings to retreat before he slips out of the damp, sweaty sheets and starts to dress.

  For a while, I just watch him. He picks through a spread of fruits that the servant brought sometime during our trysts. We paid her no mind, none at all. Our eyes and focus were for each other only.

  As I watch him, proud in his impeccable nude form, my mind wanders back to the fears and doubts I suffered in his absence.

  “What happened?” I finally ask in a hoarse whisper.

  Before he answers, he takes a goblet of water from the serving tray and brings it to me. Settling himself on the edge of the round, feathery bed, he passes me the goblet and murmurs, “You need water. Fresh from the springs,” he adds, as though it makes a difference to the sudden burn in my throat.

  Sitting up against the pillows, I bring the water to my lips and drink much too quickly.

  As I do, he tells me, “I was granted a pardon, with conditions.”

  I draw back for a gasp of air.

  “Conditions?” I echo, studying the softness of his definitely weary face. How long has it been since we really rested?

  “We have found an ally in a litalf,” he confesses. “With his help, we will peel apart the barrier between the light and the dark realms—and we can invade.”

  Fear bolts my heart to my chest. My back stiffens. “So you have to go to war again … already?”

  A small, bitter smile takes his lips. “I am what I am, Cora-lee. I am a warrior. Conditions or not, I would run to those bloody battles as they call to me.” His smile fades and he faintly shakes his head. “No,” he adds. “The conditions come after we conquer their land and consolidate it with our own. I must stay there as a royal figure.”

  I lower the goblet to my lap and stare at him, at the shadows clawing up his solemn face. “Banishment?”

  “Of sorts,” he admits, a grudge to his tone. “It is only for ten years,” he says. “But I must be a royal figure there to enforce our power.”

  A horrid confession falls from me, “I can’t be without you for that long.”

  He looks at me, a frown on his face.

  I shift around to face him, the sheets falling from my bare breasts. I care nothing about it. “If I’m to stay here in Caspan’s home, and you are in a different land entirely for a whole decade—how can we … be together?”

  And that’s all I want, now that I think about it.

  No armies, no friends or allies, no obstacles. I just want to be with him, whether it’s in his decrepit home, back in the dark of my world, or out in that conquered light realm when the time comes.

  “I don’t have that time to spare,” I go on, my grip slackening on the goblet. “You said yourself that my people—the light kuris—don’t live long in the dark realm. In ten years, I’ll be older.”

  “You will not age here,” he says, then his hand comes up to my jaw and holds gently. He brushes his thumb over my cheek. “But even still, you are to come with me, Cora. I will take you to the first camps, then to the palaces, and soon, the whole realm. This journey is now ours to share.”

  I draw in a deep, shuddering breath. “I’m coming with you?”

  “As my wife,” he adds, a sudden sternness narrowing his eyes and darkening his face. “It can be no other way. If you are a mere lover or slave, I cannot bring you with me.”

  My mouth tilts. Feels like a ploy to get my hand in marriage.

  But really, isn’t that safety in his world? It’s the protection I’ve been begging of him for so long now. And finally, he’s giving it to me.

  “I’m not saying no,” I answer with a dark smile.

  He doesn’t mirror me. “I would not allow you to.”

  With a sigh, I turn back to the goblet. “Way to ruin what could have been a sweet moment.”

  He leans towards me, planting a firm kiss on the corner of my mouth. Against my lips, he murmurs darkly, “Sweet is not in my nature.”

  56

  Cliff kneels at the altar, his head bowed and his sword splayed at his side.

  His cousin, Prince Elden—the wickedest of all the dark princes—stands before him, a golden-leafed crown in his hands. Gently, he sets it down on Cliff’s head, and as it touches his dark curls, I can’t fight the smile from breaking across my face.

  Years in the light realm came to this moment. Years of battling, politics, keeping power in the princes’ absence, has brought him here. Finally, he has fought the disgrace of his mother’s betrayal, earned his place back within the royal family, and won his home back.

  Today is the day we move home. A home I have never seen.

  It is a happy day—and yet, bitterness comes with it.

  All I know is the light realm, even if it is now blanketed in the familiar darkness and yet to evolve to fit the black. All I know are candles and lanterns and humans kept as children and halflings. Those are the friends I leave behind to return to the dark realm; the heart of all three kingdoms.

  At least there’s Vale, I tell myself as I cast a look over at the kneeling, scarred human beside me. On her other side, Caspan kneels with the rest of the small party in the Royal Court.

  Vale and I could be friends, since our experiences aren’t all that different.

  Still, it would be nice if Cliff wanted to stay in the light realm. Of course he doesn’t. And already, he’s thirsty for his next battle—his next war.

  But where else can the dark fae take their bloodthirst?

  There’s only one place left. A world I’ve never known, heard about before my days here, or could have ever imagined existed.

  But once that is done, then what becomes of the dark fae? They will have conquered, but that’s not what their blood calls for. Their blood calls for blood.

  Maybe, just maybe, Cliff will be content a while longer with what we have achieved. More than his promotion and restoration, we have achieved what so few humans and dark fae can—the swell in my belly.

  Eight months and counting. Three miscarriages suffered to get here.

  I’ve got a good feeling about this one.

  Halfling or not, I know Cliff will love our child. Boy or girl, he will train it to be as fierce as he is. And yet I know, he will never love or protect another thing in this world more than he does me.

  Crowned, Cliff rises to a stand at the altar. He looks over his shoulder and his gaze finds mine instantly. We lock eyes, holding for a beat, then he’s pulling away from Elden and marching over to me.

  I’m on my feet before he can pull me against him and crash his mouth against mine.

  It’s not sweet. It never is.

  Sweet is not in his nature.