Still plunged in my daze, fresh blood spills down the back of my neck; I have a head-wound apparently. Mutely, I force myself to crawl forward, my trembling hand reaching for the discarded gun on the road.

  I loosen a choked sound as my fingers touch the warm metal, and I have it safe in my hand again. I don’t look up at the dark fae to see if he notices me or what I’m doing—I hear the dagger be ripped out of Paul’s head, then the slam of his body hitting the ground.

  As fast as I can manage, I loop my finger around the trigger and roll onto my side. I aim the gun up at the shadow—the shadow that’s starting to clear in my sight.

  With his back to me, I can better see the damage of the bomb. The cut on his side is wide, gaping, and near-black blood spills from it, soaking his black leather trousers. The belt of weapons secured around his waist are slick with blood—both ours and his own, likely.

  And those scars have darkened; black and leathery, something that reminds me of the skin that bats have stretched over their wings. But these are just magical scars from another realm where my people don’t belong, and whose people don’t belong here.

  The fae turns, his back muscles rippling as he moves, and my gut flattens with a newfound weight. Fear chokes me as his ember eyes land on me—then shift to the gun I have aimed right at him.

  Aim for the head.

  Aim for the head.

  But the damn fae knocked my head against that van good, and it’s all I can do to keep the gun aimed up high, let alone aim it perfectly. My hands are trembling too much for a steady shot.

  Then, I pause. I fucking falter, and it’s my mistake, my error to bear—because he gives me this look, this flat-mouthed, grim look of bother. Lashes lowering, he bows his head, releasing a soft sound that is faintly reminiscent of a sigh, and keeps his gaze on me.

  It’s almost as though he doesn’t want me to shoot at him, not for himself, but for me … as though he doesn’t like what he’ll have to do.

  Of course that’s insane. He’s a dark fae warrior and this is his calling. Murder, blood, gore. It’s in his bones.

  I pull the trigger.

  The blast is something I’ll never get used to—nor his speed.

  He twists, I shoot again. He twists—and I have two bullet lefts. I shift my aim to his head and shoot. And he ducks. I shoot again.

  It takes me a moment to learn if I even hit him. The last bullet definitely missed—it’s gone off to the other side of the road. But the first two … there are two fresh streams of blood coming from his shoulder that tell me I did hit him, just not where I wanted to, and not anywhere close enough to save myself from torture.

  He rolls his jaw, his gaze cutting down to his shoulder. Almost leisurely, he threads his fingers through his hair, biting down on the inside of his cheeks, then drops his hand to his side.

  He looks at me from beneath those thick, dark lashes, and my insides chill instantly.

  Then in a blink, he’s moving for me.

  11

  I have barely a heartbeat’s time to scramble to my feet. The head-wound has the ground swivelling beneath me, and my feet unsteady.

  Still, I’m standing—barely—and I stagger up to the pavement.

  Distantly, I’m aware of Spike’s voice as though he’s shouting out at me, saying something or other, maybe warning me that the warrior is right behind me. But I can’t hear much else other than the blood pulsing behind my eardrums. And I know I can’t outrun him.

  So why do I even bother?

  Survival instincts, maybe. Whatever it is, I stumble into the wall, using it as support to turn myself around. Then, I’m spent.

  My lashes are drooping as I look ahead and …

  The dark fae is just standing where I was when I shot him. In his hands, he turns the dagger around, over and over, and he considers me with a molten gaze fuelled by magma.

  Slowly, he tucks the dagger away in his weapons belt.

  Then he’s storming towards me.

  I cringe back against the wall before the first hit comes—and it does. His fist catches me right in the gut; a choke seizes my throat. I double over, eyes rolling back, and time stands still for a moment. Just as I’m about to drop to the ground, his hand balls up again and he brings it down on my spine.

  The force knocks me to the pavement. I don’t hear the slam of my impact, but I feel it burning all over my body like fire.

  I’m sprawled on the ground, face-first. Cheek pressed against the rough little gravel-stones, tears dampening my cheeks.

  Please make it quick.

  One dagger hit to the back, right where my heart is, and it’ll all be over.

  I don’t beg, what’s the bother of it? I don’t want to keep on living this brutal, dark life.

  Just please—be quick about it.

  Of course, I shot him. So there will be nothing quick about this.

  I’m flipped onto my back and, for a moment, I don’t know how. Then I feel the explosion of pain on my side; cracked ribs from his brutal kick.

  My back arches and my arms wrap around my middle. A silent scream twists my mouth; as though all the sound inside of me is silenced. Even now that I want to scream at the top of my lungs, I can’t—I can’t make even a whimper.

  Nothing.

  Is this dark fae power? Is he doing something to silence my cries?

  I don’t know what I’m thinking—it’s the head injury. It must be.

  Maybe when he was choking me, I lost my voice completely. And now I can’t scream as he stands over me, running me over with a suddenly detached look. His mouth has flattened into a grim line again.

  He starts to blur as tears build up in my eyes. I look away, turning my cheek to him, arms and legs spread, ready for the final blow.

  And my gaze lands on Spike.

  Though glazed, I can see that he’s watching, wide-eyed. He trembles like a leaf in a storm, hands still raised.

  Didn’t bother helping, not even once. Not me, not Paul, not anyone.

  I knew I was right about him.

  After a while, the dark fae traces my stare. Spike seems to sense this. He jolts his arms up higher, alert, and his mouth moves. I can’t hear much, but I do catch the alien word ‘kuri’. He’s telling him all about his freckles. And he shows him the freckles, too.

  I don’t look back at the dark fae, so I don’t see his reaction. All I know is that Spike has been forgotten for now, and instead, I’m the focus once more.

  As he steps over me then lowers to straddle my middle, my face twists with a fresh wave of silent sobs.

  This is it. The end I’ve been craving since I hit puberty.

  Teeth clenched, I close my eyes. But my heart doesn’t hammer. It’s perfectly calm. Ready.

  I hear the zing of a knife being drawn from his belt, feel the shift of his weight on my bruised ribs. My groan is silent, still trapped under his spell.

  “She’s a kuri, too!”

  The shout rips through my entire being.

  My eyes snap open and I stare up at the dark fae and his hardened face.

  “She is!” It’s Spike, calling from the van. “She has the freckles—see for yourself, they are on her right breast!”

  Cheeks aflame, a whole new fear rises up inside of me.

  Something dark and moody passes over the warrior’s face. His ember eyes shift into pits of blackness, and he stares down at me. The short knife in his hand—with a blade the length of my middle finger—betrays that he meant to make me suffer, to draw out my death.

  After a long, terrible moment, he brings the wide edge of the knife closer to me until I feel its cold kiss against the side of my neck.

  His voice is low, thickened by an unearthly accent as he says, “Show me.”

  Instantly, I shake my head. The gesture frees trapped tears that are now rolling down my temples and into my hair.

  “He’s lying,” I try to say—but no words come out of my mouth. Silenced, still. Then, I suddenly feel the pressure in my throat lift. It comes out of me in a choke so forceful that it jolts my body against the fae straddling me.

  “Repeat,” the warrior growls.

  I manage a croak, “He’s lying.” Sounds as though I haven’t spoken in years and moths and dust have lived in my throat. Feels like it, too. “No freckles. None.”

  But of course he can see the faint ones on my face.

  His eyelashes lower over burning black eyes. In the fading firelight, amber flecks dance like glittering threats.

  “Lies,” he mutters, then he ghosts the blade down my neck.

  I arch away from him, but it only invites the knife to cut over my throat. He passes over it, though, and moves down to my right breast.

  I freeze. My fingers clench, toes curling in my boots, and a rigid ghost possesses me. Can’t move. Want to move, want to fight. But can’t.

  Is this fae power again?

  The blade slices suddenly, and a wince catches in my throat. I look down my body to where the knife cut; right between the bodice of my dress. The gash is long enough to reveal more of my body than I would ever dare to in front of a dark fae—or anyone.

  Veins turning to ice, I shudder a breath and, finally, break free from the stiffness that plagued me. Is it instinct that has my hands flying up at the warrior’s face?

  I claw out at him, my bitten-down nails doing nothing at all. But I switch my aim for his eyes—I don’t get the chance to connect before his large hand snatches up my wrists then slams them to the ground. He pins them above my head, the bones screaming in protest.

  Undeterred—as though I hadn’t fought at all—he reaches his other hand for my ripped bodice and yanks back the material. My bra is revealed, and it’s a hammered heartbeat before he’s tugged it down and shown my entire breast.

  Tears are spilling out of me now. My face twists with a stifled sob, but it escapes anyway and jolts my body. He pays me no mind.

  Tilting his head, he clearly sees the three dotted freckles down the side of my boob. He considers the marks for only a moment before he’s pulling up my bra to shield me. His weight is lifted from me a moment later, and the aches in my ribs can finally breathe.

  He stands over me, his dark eyes shifting between me and Spike who hugs himself closer to the van.

  Then he lands his gaze on me. “You can be useful.”

  With that, he storms off to the middle of the orange-glowing street. He reaches for the bloody remains of a steed. For a beat, I watch him—I’m still sprawled on the pavement—snatch up leather satchels and water-skins and ropes.

  When I blink out of my daze of shock, I roll onto my side. A groan rumbles through me, but I push through it and manage to get onto all fours.

  “Get down,” Spike’s urgently hushed voice snares out at me.

  I shoot him a scathing look meant for murder before I shakily get to my feet. But that’s as far as I get. Don’t get the chance to run or free or stab myself in the neck with a discarded weapon.

  The dark fae is marching back towards me, two satchels bundled in one hand, the other hand loosely holding onto a coil of black rope.

  He moves for me first, not so much as glancing at Spike still tucked up by the van. He’s not a flight risk, but I am.

  The warrior snatches my bruised wrists. He’s quick to bind them with the black rope—which I notice with a wiggle is far smoother than our rope, but as strong as handcuffs. Then he drags me over to Spike.

  In silence, in utter and absolute defeat, with tears streaming down my face, I watch it all happen but I don’t really feel any of it. We are both tied to his weapons belt with the rope, he slings the satchels over Spike’s neck for him to carry, wraps fabric around his middle wounds, then moves through the remains of the massacre that happened here.

  He pauses at every human body, running a dagger through their hearts as if to ensure they are dead—or to collect their blood in some sort of cultural tradition, maybe. I don’t give it much thought.

  Feel like a zombie, just moving because I must. A zombie in tears.

  Then he picks up a lit torch and hands it to Spike for him to carry—looks like he’s the mule. I flicker my gaze down to my body and it’s clear why I’ve not been given anything to carry.

  Besides my torn bodice and the bruises on my ribs hidden by my dress, my legs are scattered with cuts and bruises, and there’s a thin stream of blood coming down my left arm from my head-wound.

  And still, I’m alive.

  I don’t want to be alive. I never wanted this—to be captured, to be a slave. I wanted to have a dagger through my heart or a bullet through my head.

  Without much heart in my voice, I mutter, “I’ll kill you the first chance I get.”

  It should be enough for him to snap my neck.

  Instead, the warrior turns on me. Firelight dances in the tarry blackness of his eyes and warms his beige skin-tone. He looks down his narrow nose at me, his strong jawline clenching tight, and he puckers his mouth in thought.

  He moves in a blur, leaning forward. I jerk back as he snatches the hem of my dress and—tears a strip right off. He’s standing again, shoving the material into my mouth, then winding it all the way back to the wound on my head.

  I frown—he’s muzzling me and yet binding my head-wound at the same time. Surely a coincidence.

  And my plan for a quick death has failed all over again.

  So when I get the chance, I won’t do what I promised him. I won’t kill him. I’ll just take my chances and slit my own throat. If I can take Spike down with me, all the better.

  And sooner the better, too.

  I shot this dark fae twice. His shoulder bleeds because of me. I threatened to kill him, hell I tried to kill him.

  Just because of some stupid freckles, I’m still alive. But that sure as shit shouldn’t mean I’m safe.

  No, I’ll be made to suffer for what I did. And I’m just not cut out for torture, you know?

  I need to think of a way out of this, and fast.

  I can’t be the slave—the prisoner—of a dark fae warrior.

  I won’t.

  12

  I’m a prisoner now. Captured by a dangerous dark fae warrior.

  Just an hour ago, I watched with my own eyes as he struck a dagger up through the underchin of a man who was the closest thing to a friend I had in this world.

  Just an hour ago, I should have died alongside him. Instead—even after shooting this dark fae, trying to kill him as he has killed so many of my kind—I am still alive. Taken by a dark fae beast.

  And I’m not alone.

  Spike is with me, too. ‘Kuris’, he called us. That we both have a set of three freckles in a crooked line is what makes us kuris. Whatever that means, I have no clue—I only know that it spared my life when I wanted to die. I wanted to go out with the rest of my group.

  I’m tired.

  So, so tired of it all. The hiding, the running, the fleeing, barely scraping by on tins of nearly out-of-date foods we find in dusty old shops, forever quiet streets and villages, the dangers lurking in the dark, the fae armies hunting and burning us to ash, and the latest danger of those tentacle-creature clouds that took some of us out before we even had the chance to take our final stand.

  Can’t you see I’m tired? That I don’t want to be here, trapped with one of those beasts? It’s not a salvation of any kind to me. Salvation comes in pill bottles and bullets to the brain, not in slavery.

  I can’t do this.

  Already, my heart is jumping up into my throat, trying to break free of the confines of my chest, my eyes burn with the eternal sting of tears, and it’s all I can do to keep my shallow breaths steady enough to stop myself from spiralling into a panic attack.

  I need to get the fuck out of here.

  Or I need to kill this beast trapping me.

  Either way, I need to be free.

  13

  I’m dying all over again. This time on the inside.

  I ache for the burn of vodka down my throat and the warmth of a pill-bottle in my grip. Instead, I can only feel the prickly sensation of thirst burning me, and all that my hands touch is my side as I twist my arms around to my bruised ribs. The rope around my wrists doesn’t allow for more than that.

  This warrior, this dark fae—my fucking captor—has no intention of letting us go, or even delivering us a swift death. He means only to make us suffer.

  At the top of the gravelly road, where the land lumps up into a mound, the warrior stops us—and he makes us look down at the fiery road of the small village. He makes us watch for a time too long at severed limbs and pools of blood, all glistening under the flames of bomb-fires and a leftover torch.

  The fire is spreading, reaching from the insides of abandoned cars and jumping across the road to the wood-faced houses bordering the street. It isn't terribly long before we’re watching limbs and corpses burn.

  I can’t help it. The sting of stomach acid crawls up my chest and settles in my throat. It bubbles there, preparing to throw me into a heaving fit.

  I shut my eyes and look away, as though that will somehow prevent the mess I’m about to make all over the gravel. But I hardly get the chance to steady myself and fight off my climbing nausea—

  A large, warm hand snatches my face. It clutches so tight that I can feel white spots blossom all over my aching jaw as I snap open my eyes.

  I meet the ember-glare of a furious warrior.

  The dark fae looks down at me, his lashes low, his eyes burning like the flames down the hill. His bowed upper lip twitches as he snarls at me, “Watch.”

  Yet, he makes the decision for me. His fingers dig harder into my face, pushing out my cheeks and lips until I resemble a goldfish, and he twists my head back around to face the village below.

  I blink away tears I didn’t realise had come.

  After a few thrumming heartbeats, his hand slips away from my face. It’s then that it hits me—the smell, no the stink of burning flesh.

  And now it really can’t be helped.

  My body is thrown forward with the force of it. Instinctively, my hands reach for the fabric strip bound around my head. I wrestle it out of my mouth just in time.