“T-The glamor, remember?” I pant.
“I thought so, too. Until I heard you -“ His teeth scrape my throat. “That night, in your bed, alone. You thought about me, so strong and bright I heard you from a thousand miles away.”
“W-What -“
“I thought it was a hallucination from an enemy fae,” He laughs, the rumble in his chest vibrating against my skin. “Made to trick me. But no - I reached out and there you were; free of my glamor, thinking about kissing me, about telling me you -“
He slips his fingers over that perfect, tender spot, and I gasp.
“ - missed me.”
My dream. He heard my dream. He moves up to my ear, and I can feel his lips smiling against the shell as he says;
“It turns out I missed you, too.”
He speeds his pace, his two fingers gently rolling and squeezing and it’s not how I do it but it starts welling up in me all the same -
“I thought about you every day. About arguing with you. About your smile.”
That molten wave starts to crest and I arch my back into him, pleading for more soundlessly and all of a sudden it stops, his fingers still as his smile against my ear grows lopsided.
“I thought about teasing you.”
I buck my hips, desperate for him, but he just laughs and presses his lips to mine, the soft sweetness parting for his inquisitive, gentle tongue. It’s nothing like the rose dome kiss - so thoughtful and tender I can feel myself melting into a dizzy glaze.
“I thought about this exact moment,” His fingers begin to weave again. “A hundred times.”
It’s here, just over the horizon, thundering through my nerves and I can’t stop my moan.
“I’m going to -“
Everything stops again, instantly. I feel his hand pull away this time and he kisses the hollow of my throat.
“No, you aren’t. Not yet. Not until I’ve had my fun.”
And just like that, he’s gone, his warmth missing and the door to the feeding room sliding closed on a flustered, blindfolded me once again.
-15-
I stare at the ceiling of my room the next morning like it has all the answers. But it doesn’t. Just because it isn’t college-area, popcorn-finish apartment ceiling doesn’t mean shit. Ceilings are just ceilings - staring at them never works. It never solves anything.
But boy howdy do I try to make it solve my entire life.
It took me a while to get back up to my room - I was so dazed my Dane’s touch I felt like I’d been laying in the sun for too long. Heatstroke? Definitely a certain kind of heat. Ha ha me, you’re so brilliant. And so incredibly stupid.
How could you let him corner you like that? You knew it’d be trouble when you fed him, and you gave into it! What, is your spine made of jello? What happened to that pride you were clinging onto all this time?
“What good is pride,” I mutter. “If I actually like him?”
I missed him. Yesterday made that abundantly clear - the second he walked into the mansion, before his glamor could even get to me, I felt it. I missed him. All of him. His irritating way of calling me an idiot, his smirks, his broad shoulders and his long fingers and his cheekbones like cut glass and the way his arm shot out to keep me from tripping.
The little things. I missed all of those once-insignificant little things. When did they become significant? What was the tipping point, where my hate turned to longing?
“If you think any louder the whole mansion will hear you.”
I sit up to see Altair in my doorway, his smile bright and his dark hair pulled into a sleek braid and his sweater ugly but more beautiful on him than it has any right to be.
“Leave me alone,” I groan into my pillow. “I’m in the middle of a mental crisis.”
“You know what I’ve heard are great for humans with mental crisis?” He chimes. “Walks in nature!”
I groan again, but he chuckles.
“C’mon, it’s not far. You wanted to see the altar, didn’t you?”
I sit straight up in bed. The altar - the thing Dane went to for Barnabus’s blood. I throw on a jacket and latch myself onto his arm as we walk, urging him on faster. A figure with white hair approaches down the hall, and I freeze. Dane. Altair throws him a smile.
“Good morning, Danish.”
“Ugh,” Dane flinches. “Don’t.” He looks over to me, his pained look slightly amused. “Look what you started.”
“I started?” I find my voice even though the blush from yesterday’s memories starts to bloom on my cheeks. “You were the one who called my name -“
“We’re off to see the altar,” Altair interrupts me all of a sudden. His silver-pointed eyes are suddenly set and serious as he stares at Dane.
That’s right - Dane didn’t want me to know about how they choose blood. The altar is part of it. Dane’s faint amusement fades, replaced with steel and iron. There’s a tense moment. He could stop us again. He could demand Altair don’t show me it and I’m sure Altair would listen. I’d be left in the dark, still, with one word from him.
But Dane just looks at me for a second, long and deep.
“Alright,” He says finally. “Go, then.”
Altair smiles, looking between him and me, and then dropping my arm out of his. “You’re so easy to read, Danish.”
“What?” Dane glowers.
“I get it, she’s yours. I won’t lock arms with her.”
“No -“ Dane starts, and I swear I see his face faintly glow red. “Do whatever you want.”
“Your thoughts told me otherwise,” Altair teases, then winks at me. “He was getting very jealous.”
“Shut up!” Dane punches his shoulder, and Altair laughs louder and ruffles his hair and for a moment it’s like I’m watching two quarreling brothers instead of two eternal, powerful fae. Altair breaks off first, trotting ahead and calling for me to catch up.
“I’ll be back, um, soon,” I say to Dane. He doesn’t say anything, but I feel something touching my pinky, and look down to see his pinky moving for mine, catching it finally and curling around me and the motion is so small and tentative my heart flutters like a hummingbird’s wing. He breathes out.
“I’m going to practice my apologies again, right now. I’m sorry. In advance.”
“For what?”
“For what you’re going to see at the altar,” He says. I frown, but he lets my pinky go and walks away, a rueful smile on his face. “I didn’t want you to know, because I thought you’d close yourself off from people. I’m sorry.”
“Stop saying sorry, you’re freaking me out.”
“Isn’t that what I do best?” He smirks. “Go on. Altair’s waiting.”
“You can’t order me around.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” He laughs, then fixes me with his smoldering eyes and a light tone. “Except when I do.”
I blush ten shades of red and dash out the door after Altair before his glamor and my own body propel me to him.
“I’ll be waiting for you, little beast!” I hear Dane call behind me.
The altar isn’t far. It’s past the eastern pavilion where the linking ritual took place, past the sea of grass on that side. I follow him diligently, trying my hardest not to get lost by clinging to his dark shirt. Finally, we hit trees - huge, old oak trees as big as redwoods, and while I’m busy marveling at how many years they’ve been alive (since the dawn of time?) Altair leads me over a hill and I see it for the first time.
The altar.
It’s made of bright red crystal, shining so damn brightly from the sun lances that pierce the oak branches I have to shade my eyes, but eventually I adjust. It looks almost like two wings, the jagged crystal forming a halo of almost-closed feathers encircling a stone bowl on a pedestal. Surrounding the bowl is a ring of stone pillars, ancient and covered with moss, and Altair ducks between them and comes to a stop before the bowl.
“Be sure not to touch
it,” He warns. “The bowl, the pillars. Any of it. It’s made for fae - and stuff made for us usually doesn’t react well to humans.”
I nod and walk over, peering over the edge into the bowl. There’s nothing but smooth stone there. Altair shoots me a grin, and then pulls out a silver knife from seemingly nowhere.
“This part’s a little gruesome. Might wanna close your eyes.”
I shake my head. “No I - I wanna see. I need to see, to understand.”
He laughs and mutters under his breath; “College students.”
He slices his hand across the palm and I wince, but Altair doesn’t so much as blink. Either he feels nothing or he’s just used to it, because he spreads his palm over the bowl and lets the blood drip into it. One drips, two, three, and then the red crystal halo around the bowl springs to life, glowing with a bright crimson light. It’s beautiful, if a little eerie, the light covering everything within the pillar ring in bloody light, Altair and me face included. But Altair’s not done - he stares into the bowl as he touches the red crystal halo, moving parts of it this way and that until he says;
“There. This is it. Come look.”
I walk up hesitantly beside him and stare into the bowl. It’s filled with blood now - not from his hand, because I can see his wound’s closed up now. But the blood acts like a mirror, or a screen, showing us a very familiar apartment door; 207. My upstairs neighbors’ door. I can hear that heavy death metal music faintly booming from the bowl, and the door opens. Inside are a bunch of guys hanging around, but I only recognize two of them, the two that rented it; the red-head guy and a guy with long brown hair.
The two that are dead, now.
“Can you call Vanessa?” Brown-hair guy asks.
“Naw, she stopped answering my calls.” Red-head says.
“What about your downstairs neighbor?” One of their friends cackles. “I saw her when I was smoking outside through her window - she’s hot.”
“Shut up.” Red head frowns, and I feel sick to my stomach.
“I’m serious! Listen, I’ve done it before, okay? It just takes one of us to ring her doorbell and then she answers, and we walk in. It’s not hard, and if she tells anybody we can say she begged us to do it.”
I watch in horror as the four of them share looks, and then grins, and then they erupt into laughter.
“Fine,” Red head sighs. “But no hanging around - in then out.”
“That’s what I’m saying!” The long-haired guy puts his tongue between his fingers and waggles it, and I stagger back from the bowl like I’ve been physically hit. I feel Altair’s hand on my back, and my instinct is to lurch away, but I catch a glimpse of his star-studded eyes through my panic and instantly relax. He’s not human. He’s fae.
“It’s sort of like Dane’s ability,” Altair says softly. “Except very accurate. And timely. If we need blood, the altar shows us humans or fae who are plotting evil. It’s not an excuse, but -“ He frowns. “It’s the system that’s been established for as long as I’ve been alive. Since before me, made by the First Fae.”
“They were going to -“ I swallow. I’d come that close to -
“Yeah. But listen, they didn’t,” Altair tries a smile. “Me and Dane got them and met you and - it worked out.”
I feel my legs wobble, and I walk out of the pillar circle and sit on a small stump. “Sorry I’m just - I can’t do this as fast as you can.”
“Do what?”
“Process everything.”
“Oh I take forever to process serious stuff, too.” Altair agrees, sitting beside me on the leaves, his smile crooked. “Literally.”
I get the joke, but it doesn’t make me feel any better. Altair lets me sit in silence, and together we watch the majestic oaks creak and groan in the sun. This is what Dane didn’t want me to know, and I get it, now. It weighs heavy on my mind, a dark spot there staining deep.
I didn’t want you to know, because I thought you’d close yourself off from people.
“He really does care too much,” I mutter at the ground. Altair looks up.
“Who?”
“Dane. The world isn’t a pretty place. I know that. He doesn’t have to try to protect me from it.”
“That’ll never stop him from trying. That’s just how he is.”
“Yeah,” I smile at the leaves, the way the sunlight dapples through them. “I think I get that, now.”
I see Altair grinning at me out of the corner of my eye, but then he stops. He looks over his shoulder, and all of a sudden his regular clothes are replaced with this true form, and he stands up, radiating shadow.
“May,” He murmurs. “Come here.”
“What’s wrong?” I stand, but he motions for me to be quiet, to take his hand. I do, my pulse thrumming. What’s he looking around so nervously for?
“We have to get back to Monster Garden,” He says softly. “As fast as we can.”
I nod to show him I understand - it must be something awful if he’s this afraid. He pulls me by the hand through the woods, the trees going from peaceful and serene to suddenly looming over us with long shadows. I swear I feel the air go still and get thick, like an invisible, heavy fog. Even breathing feels harder, my panting coming in labored as I try to keep up with Dane.
Something flickers to the side of me, and I tilt my head to look but it’s gone. That was movement. But nothing lives in the Monster Garden - no animals, no birds. Only -
“Shadow fae,” Altair whispers. “And we’re too far out.”
“Can’t we do that melty thing you high fae do to the world and get back fast?”
“That’s only for crossing realms, not traveling within realms.”
“Then what do we -“
The shriek of something inhuman rakes across my eardrums, and my vision is a blur of Altair’s dark matter clothes, of the stars within them, of the leaves of the ground and his shouting as red blood splats across the tree trunks. There’s a moment where the dark matter cloth parts, and I see it in perfect clarity; there, standing tall among the trees, is a massive thing on stick legs and with stick arms, made entirely of moving darkness. It has no face, just two yellow-glowing eyes where its face should be, suspended above its rail-thin shoulders. Another shriek, and another one rises up from the tree’s shadows, rising so fast I blink and it’s moving towards us fully-formed. Both of them have something coppery glinting around where their necks should be. Collars?
“Bright Lady,” Altair swears. I feel something hot dripping down my side where he is and look down - red seeping into my clothes.
“Holy shit, you’re bleeding!” I scrabble, my Senior high school lifeguard training flashing through my brain fuzzily as I press my hand to his side. Pressure first.
“We have to run,” He insists. “They caught me by surprise. Bright Lady - I shouldn’t have discounted them.”
I can’t see how bad the wound is, but his olive face is turning greenish on the edges, and he winces with every step. I lean him into me and act like his crutch, and we hobble through the woods together.
“I thought high fae were -“
“Powerful?” Altair winces. “We are. But shadow fae are dangerous to even us. They drain Brightness, so the longer you fight them the worse off your odds. And there’s -“ He looks back over his shoulder at the screeching. “- Way too many for me to deal with alone.”
We reach the sea of grass, and plunge into it, stomping desperately through the strands. Altair’s body leans this way and that, showing me what direction to head in. The shrieks behinds are more than two - four, five now, all of them sounding furious and hellbent on destroying us.
“Why are there…so many?” Altair wheezes. “They never travel in packs like this.”
“Are these the same ones that got Barnabus?” I pant.
“Definitely,” Altair agrees. “They never travel in packs, unless -“
“Unless what?” I urge him on.
“Unless they’re bound by a Brightened.”
All my skin prickles cold - a Brightened? Is that who attacked Barnabus, almost killed him? Is that who’s after us now?
“One of Giselle’s?” I ask.
“Probably. Keep running, if we can get to the edge of Monster Garden we’ll be safe - the rules of invitation apply to all fae, not just high fae!”
“Won’t Barnabus have to -“
“They surprised him at the border,” Altair flinches. “But he’ll be safe inside it with us -”