“It’s over. It’s done. You’re safe - no one will hurt you anymore.”
And just like that the paralysis gives me back my body and I slump into him, the pain evaporating but the tears remaining and staining into his suit. The sunset over his shoulder is nearly gone, as is my grip on consciousness, and I faintly feel one broad hand on my head, stroking my hair soothingly.
“You did well, my little beast.”
-12-
I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired. But here I am, sick and tired.
Dane tries to carry me back to the house but I worm my way out of his arms and start off on my own. I pray he doesn’t follow me but he does, loping along at my side.
“I’m fine,” I insist.
“You’re very obviously not fine,” He counters. I look down at my slightly-bloodied chest, where six perfect holes make a halo around the center of my breastbone. They’re healed up and browned like old scars, like they’ve been there forever instead of just a few minutes.
“Don’t you have to go and fight that lady, now?” I snarl. “Just leave me alone.”
He’s quiet, but his footsteps never stop parallel to mine.
“You could’ve told me,” I whirl to face him. “You could’ve told me that’s what the linking ceremony was.”
“I couldn’t, actually,” He snarls, touching his hand to his throat where the silver collar rests. Van Grier must’ve made them keep quiet about it - but why? Probably because he thought I wouldn’t go through with it if I knew it meant getting bitten in the heart by three long-fanged fae.
I let out a heavy breath. “Right. Sorry. Getting mad at you over something you can’t control is shitty of me.”
He’s quiet again, and it’s weird but I don’t say anything. We’ve been through a lot today, we’ve bashed against each other a lot today, and maybe he’s feeling just as exhausted by it as I am.
“The dress,” He starts as we make our way up the mansion steps. “It -“
He covers his mouth with his hand, and I frown.
“Something wrong?”
“No, I - I never said it looks very nice on you. It does. So. There.”
It’d be a half-assed compliment from anyone else, but from the guy who’s been doing nothing but calling me ‘slow’ and a ‘moron’ with a prideful face this compliment combined with his awkward slight embarrassment (Dane? Embarrassed?) might as well be a diamond in the rough. Somehow his embarrassment rubs off on me, too, and I flush, finding words hard all of a sudden.
“T-Thanks.”
We walk together into the main hall, and the house fae appears instantly, tugging on my hand.
“What is it?” I start to panic. Dane clears his throat.
“He says its dinner time.”
I breath relief. “Is that all? Don’t scare me like that, my guy.”
I suddenly realize I’m ravenous and let the house fae drag me to the dining room. Nothing like a bit of rich food to cover up latent trauma, am I right? Dane follows, and when I turn my head back to him to ask why he’s following me when he doesn’t need dinner, he looks away.
“I could use a chair to sit in,” He says gruffly. I look around at the dozens of chairs pushed up against the hall and blink.
“Um. Okay.”
I sit at my usual place at the long table, the house fae bringing me tray after tray of deliciousness; deep-fried calamari with a citrus dipping sauce, lettuce wraps with ground pork and ginger and shallots, and an incredible dark seaweed salad that tastes exactly like the open sea smells. I dig in eagerly, everything messy and so delicious I forget Dane’s still here. Sitting across from me and a few seats down, he’s taken off his gold mask. I look up at him, expecting him to be disgusted, but instead he’s….grinning?
“You -“ He stutters, bursting into laughter. “You eat like a food goblin.”
“Thanks.” I frown into my lettuce wrap, trying suddenly to look graceful.
“No that’s - that’s a real thing,” He insists. “They steal human food and hoard it in hollowed-out trees, and when the tree gets full they sit down and eat it all in one night. They can’t digest it, so they just lay there for months while their bodies try to slough it off.”
“Huh. I admire the dedication.”
“You would,” He laughs again. Not a sneering chuckle, or a snicker, but that clear, full laugh that sends shivers down my spine.
“Hey, I happen to like food, okay?”
“So do I,” He says, in that certain way that implies he wants to know when he’s getting fed.
“Tomorrow, at ten a.m.” I sigh around a sip of water. He seems to relax a little more in his chair, leaning his silver-haired head back on the head rest.
“Tomorrow it is, then.”
Something lingers between us and I struggle to put a label on it. It’s not hate. It’s not his glamor either. I only know that right now, at this table, being in his presence suddenly isn’t like rolling around in thorns.
“I’m going to practice apologizing on you,” he says suddenly. Oh is he, now? I sit up straighter, but he just keeps staring at the ceiling with his head back.
I wait.
And wait.
And wait some more. The house fae brings out a plate of mochi ice cream, the adorable pink rice-dough packets brimming with sweet strawberry ice cream.
“I’m sorry.”
I dust rice flour off my nose and look up. No smirk, no sarcasm, not even a hint of belligerent bitterness. His voice sounds genuine - that same genuine I heard when he put me to bed from the tub.
“For trying to control you,” He continues, gemstone eyes still rooted to the ceiling.
“You weren’t, really,” I blurt. “Just the blood thing -“
“I was,” He asserts. “The blood thing especially.”
Dane, the arrogant fae I know and hate, admitting he was wrong? I’m almost tempted to pinch myself in case I passed out after the linking ceremony and this is a dream. One question rings in my head.
“Why?”
“Because I thought -“ He breathes out, his lock of hair fluttering. “I thought it would protect you.”
“My Brightness, you mean.”
“No,” He says simply. “You. Brightness be damned.”
My heart punctures through my ribs. And that’s when it hits me, and I laugh.
“Okay, yeah. I told you before; apologizing doesn’t mean you have to pretend to care about someone. Just care about being a good person -“
His head snaps down, gaze focused like an emerald-blue laser on me.
“I’m good at a lot of things, little beast - but I’ve never been a good pretender.”
I thought I knew what it was like to be afraid. But I realize now, sitting in this chair and staring at my half-melted mochi, a tornado of uncertainty and confusion swirling in my gut, that I never knew what fear really was. It’s submerging yourself underwater with a shark, it’s running into a burning building, it’s standing on a precipice and looking down, and right now it’s a long, long way to fall.
I don’t know what he means by all this. And part of me doesn’t ever want to know. I know how contradictory Quinn can be, how all fae can be. He doesn’t really mean what he’s saying, right? Or at least, it means something far less emotionally significant to fae than it does to humans.
To a human, just now it sounded like he admitted he -
I stand up, throwing my napkin down. “I-I’m super tired all of a sudden - I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He doesn’t stop me, but I can feel his eyes on my back the whole way down the hall, and it makes my heart beat harder than being struck by his glamor.
****
There’s a limit to how much my mind and body can take, and it was about ten miles back, a bright red line that I never should’ve crossed. But here we are, exhausted and sitting in this gorgeous bath that’s become my second home by now.
Away from Dane a
nd his scorching eyes, it’s easier to be logical. He doesn’t know me, and I don’t know him. We’re essentially co-workers under the same shitty boss, but that’s about it. We have no shared interests, no similar hobbies, and today at dinner was the first time we conversed without ripping each other’s heads off.
So the fact I’m even entertaining the idea of what he said about wanting to protect me as true is bonkers bananas. It’s for my Brightness. It has to be. There’s no other option. I want to constantly jump his bones because of his faeromone glamor, and nothing more. He’s insufferable, he constantly interrupts me and makes fun of me and calls me little beast -
He called me ‘my little beast’ today.
I sink down in the tub and blow bubbles in the water grumpily, the hot water nowhere near as hot as my face. A thousand other things should haunt me in my sleep - the fact I was bitten in the heart three times today, for instance, the fact that the high fae are going to be forced to fight now because of the scars on my chest, the fact if Vil wants to threaten them with death he has to threaten me - but all that lingers are those three words. ‘My little beast’.
His. No one else’s.
It’s garbage of me to read too deep into it. It’s the sort of thing nervous girlfriends would do, and I’m neither nervous nor his girlfriend. Do the fae even have concepts of ‘girlfriend’? Probably not. It’s probably all orgies all the time. And if that’s the way they do things, more power to ‘em.
I sit up straight in bed at three in the morning, still thinking about it all. How dare he call me ‘his’, when I know he’s at Seventh Circle all the damn time screwing around? Maybe fae just don’t have a solid concept of monogamy? Or maybe my possessiveness is going off the charts for no goddamn reason at all? Yeah, the latter for sure. We hate-kissed. In the grand scheme of things, that means nothing.
I stare out the window at the moonlit garden outside and breathe out, long. Why the flying fish fuck am I letting a fae keep me up in the wee hours of the morning, thinking? Why am I losing sleep over someone who tried to freaking choke me? Who killed my upstairs neighbors and then made everybody forget they even existed?
Angry at myself, at him, at my stupid brain that can’t seem to get over the idea that he’s not an option and never will be, I roll over, chucking every thought that floats up into the dumpster of oblivion until I force myself to sleep out of sheer spite.
I thought the night was hard - the morning is way harder.
I nervously pace my room, chewing on a piece of raspberry jam toast from the silver cart. The house fae pours a cup of black tea and hands it to me, and I take it with shaking fingers, spilling some on the carpet.
“Oh shit,” I hiss. “Sorry.”
The house fae whisks it away with that magic napkin of his without a pause, making a tittering sound at me.
“No, I’m fine,” I sigh. “I’m just -“
I turn and look at myself in the full-length mirror. My outfit from yesterday - plaid skirt and white t-shirt. My hair brushed, my face greenish. God, why didn’t I go out and buy at least a little makeup after I got the twenty thousand from Vil? I look like death warmed over and left to rot in the sun.
“I shouldn’t be nervous,” I announce to the air imperiously, like it’ll help somehow. And it does, a little, but it only lasts until the timer on my phone beeps at 9:55 am. I jump to shut it off, and smooth my hair down. “Fuck. Fuck, okay. It’ll be fine. It’s just food to him. Just food. Just food.”
I repeat it quieter and quieter as I stiffly walk down the hall and make my way to the pool room. I thought I’d get there early and set up, but lo and behold, Dane’s outside the feeding room, sitting languidly in a chair. His black t-shirt and leather pants are simple, his combat boots loud as he stands up when I walk in.
“Am I too early?” He asks.
“N-No,” I manage, opening the door and slipping in. I grab my blindfold and pull the stool tubside, hiding my shaking hands behind my back. He follows after a second, running his fingers through his white-blonde hair and looking a little lost.
“Do I -“
“I pick out the herbs,” I blurt. “You just change and. Um. Get in.”
I hear the tub fill itself, the steam from the hot water making everything in here seem a billion times warmer, more suffocating. Was the room always this small? Dane pulls the hem of his shirt over his head and I dart my eyes away immediately - that sinful v of his pelvis laced with dark blonde hair all the way down is enough to send my head spinning.
No. No dirty thoughts, May. It’s just food. It’s just food, for fucks sake. Think about taxes. Horrible, awful taxes. Student loans. A weak job market waiting for you after you graduate - anything else! Anything other than the way his chest is smooth all over and sculpted where it counts and the way that v is like a delightfully svelte runway to his - HERBS. Herbs. I close my eyes and focus on the smells. Myrrh, tarragon - no, that’s too faint. The metallic sound of him undoing his buckle, the thought of what he’s freeing with his long, graceful fingers and holy shit I need to change my fucking underwear already? This is so stupid, I’m so stupid for doing this, fuck the fae, fuck magic, fuck this stupid fucking fae magic that turns my body on its head. Taxes, goddamnit, taxes!!!!!
I desperately start filling out a tax return form in my head, line by line, number by number, the scent of cloves catching me fast and hard. Strong cloves and sweet orange flower and refreshing mint - not rosemary? How weird. I expected rosemary, but then again none of the other high fae have smelled like their feeding herbs. The combined smell is heavenly, heavenly enough to make me forget to put on my blindfold before I turn around.
I forget, but at least he isn’t facing me? No, that doesn’t make it any better because he’s fully naked in front of the tub, his ass and long legs and the graceful arc of his spine above it, and I blink because there, on the expanse of his beautiful back, sits scars.
Scars tissue, white and mangled, in dozens of perfect circles all centered on his back - some low, some higher up, but all of them the same size and circular, like he’d been -
“Impaled,” Dane answers my question for me in a tense, quiet voice.
“B-But - there’s so many of them -”
“Van Grier decided I wasn’t being respectful enough,” He murmurs. “Ash wood stakes hurt more than bullets for a fae.”
Stunned and brimming with sudden rage, I look away numbly as Dane lowers himself into the tub. I tie my blindfold and take five measured steps to my stool, feeling around for it and for the lip of the tub. I sit down and expect to hear him scoff, but he says nothing and that makes me even more nervous, somehow. All I can hear is the gentle water rippling around his body. The silence is killer, so I tilt the herbs over the tub’s edge and the smell soothes me a bit.
“He’ll pay for this,” I grit out.
“That’s what I’ve been hoping for these last three years,” He answers, sounding tired.
It dawns on me then. “Is that why - when I poked you with the broom -“
Dane’s quiet, and then; “It doesn’t excuse what I did to you.”
“No, but…“ Jesus Christ, if I had known, if I’d been impaled over and over as viciously as he had and someone lashed out at me with something resembling a wooden stake - he’s right. It’s not an excuse. But it makes more sense than before. Before I’d just pinned it on his anger issues, but lashing out at a perceived repeated threat - that’s more like PTSD.
“Enough living in the past,” He says, dully. “I’m starving.”
“R-Right.”
I push my rage at Vil to the back of my mind and focus on the task at hand. I can feel Dane even without touching him - just by being a foot or so away I can feel him like a pressure on my skin, a constant, pulsing block of heat just inches away from me. The scent of the bath’s cloves and his own rosemary scent combine into something heady and stronger together than alone. My hands shake, and I desperately try to still them before p
utting them on his shoulders, sliding them up the tub to steady them, over the lip of the enamel and onto the skin of his shoulderblades. Sharp shoulder blades, sharp and yet wide enough to feel like wings. His skin is so hot under my fingers, so much warmer than any of the other high fae, burning like smooth metal heated over a bonfire. I reach his shoulders and stay there for a second, feeling the way the muscle and bone come together and rise up into mirror images of each other. He isn’t soft like Quinn, or rough like Altair - he’s sleek, everything proportioned beautifully and in gradual increments of marble skin. I inch slowly up to his neck, thick and strong and ribbed with tendon on the side, and I can see it clearly in my head; that one tendon that always flares when he sets his jaw angrily.