The undead king glares at the gore-stained soldier, though the fairy pays the king no heed as he saunters forward, his eyes lit with dark delight.
There’s only one person who looks at me like that.
“Enchantress,” the Thief says, “how you beguile me even now.”
It’s a horrible sensation to hear that mercurial spirit of his projected through someone else’s body.
“I had thought to simply watch and enjoy the bloodbath, but—” he stares at me with sick fascination, “I want you to notice me as I have noticed you.”
Next to me, Des’s wings manifest, spreading out behind him. Around us, shadows fill the room. The Thief of Souls notices none of it.
“Baptized in blood, given over to your wildest nature, if I could touch your mind, maybe then I’d be satisfied.”
The gore-stained soldier closes in on me, drawing in near enough for me to smell the rot clinging to him.
Des steps in front of me, his wings shielding me from view.
“It’s not my fists you need to protect her from,” the Thief says. I can no longer see him, but I can feel his eyes all over my skin, watching me from dozens of different soldiers. “A single secret can cause so much trouble—isn’t that right, Desmond?”
My mate says nothing, and unfortunately, I can’t see what expression he wears. His wings, however, begin to fold up, which is at least some indication that his emotions are steady.
The Thief continues. “And we both know you have more than just one secret,” the Thief says. His eyes slip to me. “Has the King of the Night told you about me and Galleghar?”
What is he talking about?
I step up next to Des and take a good look at him. He’s wearing his secret-keeping face. The longer I gaze at him, the more uneasy I feel.
The Thief raises his eyebrows. “I take it he hasn’t.” He shakes his head in admonishment. “I know you have a reputation to uphold, Desmond, but one would think you’d at least be open with your mate.”
The Bargainer’s eyes move from the soldier’s to mine.
“Cherub,” he says, and I can tell he’s choosing his words carefully, “I have … been dishonest with you.”
He looks so foreign, so fae.
My heart beats a little louder.
“I told you I knew nothing of the prophecy of Galleghar Nyx or how he and the Thief were connected, but those were lies. I have read my father’s prophecy. I know why he is after you and what he fears. I know when and how he sought the Thief out, and I know how he must be stopped.”
My eyebrows pull together, even as I glance over at Galleghar. The traitor king’s gaze moves to me, and I can see lethal promise in them.
My siren bristles at the threat.
Come closer, fallen king, so that I might better carve you up.
“Desmond, aren’t you going to tell her the rest?” the Thief chimes in. He’s still staring at me, giving me that same uncanny look he used to when he was the Green Man. “Tell her how you learned of my true identity and where I lived. Tell her how you kept that knowledge from her—tell her and the rest of your friends.”
Each statement out of the Thief’s lips is a toxin, slowly poisoning my thoughts.
Has the Night King been deceiving me all this time?
You may have your wiles, enchantress, but you are not one for puzzles. A shame, really, when your mate so clearly is. He’s figured out quite a bit more than you have.
“Desmond,” Janus says, taking a step towards us, “is what he’s saying true?”
Des watches me, not answering, so I answer for him.
“It is.”
I feel my knees weaken as Janus and the others begin to talk at once, voicing their frustration.
Des is smarter than this. Everything I’m learning right now doesn’t align with what I know of my mate. He may be secretive and a little wicked, but he’s loyal. Whatever’s going on, whatever deception the Thief is trying to capitalize on, it must be some sort of smokescreen.
I capture Des’s hand, holding it between my own. There are so many things I want to tell him. How messed up it is that he kept me out of the loop. How I swear to God I will kick him in his fine ass if he continues to make a habit of lying. But more important—
“I trust you,” I say softly.
Des’s gaze is steady, but his eyes, his eyes burn like dying stars. He squeezes my hand. “You are my life, cherub.”
With that, he reaches for the sword strapped to him, unsheathing it in one fluid movement. He strikes down the gore-stained soldier standing before us. Around the room, the sleeping soldiers tense.
Des backs away from me, his wicked wings spreading wide until his staggering frame seems to fill the space.
“Till darkness dies,” he vows to me.
And then he disappears.
Chapter 33
Des is on his father in an instant, sword brandished. That’s the cue everyone seems to be waiting for.
With a battle cry, Malaki charges at the sleeping soldiers just as they rush in to meet us. Janus takes to the air, and Temper lets out a low laugh, her power rippling along her skin.
“Soldiers, stop!” I shout, pushing as much glamour into those two words.
The sleeping soldiers should stop, but they don’t. Instead they continue charging forward.
The hell?
Five of them close in on me at once, and I barely have time to grab my daggers before I start blocking blows.
I don’t understand.
That thought runs on repeat in my head as I fight my assailants. I duck as a double-sided axe swings over my head, then strike out with my daggers.
I should’ve been able to glamour them all.
“Freeze, soldiers,” I say again.
“I’m afraid they can’t follow your commands,” one of the soldiers says. But it’s the Thief who’s speaking. “They’ve been warded against your glamour,” he says.
Warded against it? I go cold all over. Any advantage I thought I had is gone.
And here I thought that perhaps we’d be able to pull this ambush off. But they’d been ready with their own magic—magic that stripped us of our enchantments and made them impervious to my power.
I hear the rip of fabric at my back and feel the sickening sensation of a blade sinking into skin. I feel the cascade of blood spill from the wound before the pain sets in.
When it does set in, however—Jesus—it stings like a bitch.
Before I can retaliate, another blow follows the first, slicing my arm open.
I stagger forward, right into a soldier covered in dried blood and unnamable bits, my wings manifesting in response to the pain and adrenaline.
Warm blood drips from my arm and my back. And still the attack keeps coming. It’s all I can do to parry most of the blows. Des might’ve trained me on how to fight, but I’m no match against five fae soldiers.
“Callypso!” Des roars.
Suddenly, he’s at my side, cleaving through sleeping soldiers. But then his father uses the distraction to appear in front of me, weapon raised.
“You will not be my downfall, slave,” he vows.
I don’t even try glamouring Galleghar. Instead, I do what any sane woman might—I kick that fucker in the balls.
Hard.
The reaction is immediate. He doubles over, a choked, hissing noise coming from between his teeth.
That’s all I see before the sleeping soldiers close in on me again despite Des’s best efforts. Blood is spraying around my mate as he carves through them, but there’s always more to fight, and none of them play fair.
“Thief!” Des bellows. “You and I had an understanding!”
An understanding?
The soldiers encircling me suddenly stop fighting, falling at ease.
“So we did,” one of them says.
I stare around at them. Among the group, Des’s dad begins to straighten. Beyond us, the other sleeping soldiers are still locked in battle, unaware that the fig
hting in this pocket of the room has stopped.
That thought has no sooner crossed my mind than Galleghar disappears, materializing once again in front of me, sword aimed. Before he can land a blow, a hand grabs his wrist, and twists, forcing Des’s father to relinquish the blade.
I follow the hand back to its owner, shocked to see it belong to a soldier.
“What are you doing?” Galleghar cries.
An instant later, Des flickers into existence at his back, locking him in a chokehold. “Awww, did you think you were the only one who made deals with this monster?”
My blood goes cold.
Des, what have you done?
Galleghar’s face twists into a grimace, and then he disappears, Des vanishing a split second after him. The two flash across the room, popping in and out of existence like fireworks.
I can smell blood and dark magic filling the air as the battle wages on.
Temper’s hair is beginning to levitate with her power, and she wears a wild grin as she fights her opponents. Malaki and Janus battle both in the sky and on the ground, using their wings to gain some advantage. The casket children have their fangs bared, their mouths bloody, and many of the sleeping soldiers have bloodstained blades.
It’s not going to be a clean win for either side.
And then there’s me, surrounded by a swath of sleeping soldiers who are now docile.
I glance around at them, pointing my dagger. “Why won’t you fight?” I ask, blood dripping from my wrist as I speak.
“I told already,” one of them says, “your mate keeps many secrets.”
I spin around, looking at each aggressor. From behind their eyes, the Thief of Souls smirks at me.
You and I had an understanding, the Bargainer had said.
“What’s the understanding you and Desmond have?” I ask, leveling the dagger at one of the soldiers’ throats.
“Really now, are you going to stab me with that?” the Thief asks, smirking at the blade.
Maybe. I don’t know. The threat is so obviously useless on him.
“What is the understanding?” I repeat.
Around us, screams echo through the room, accompanied by the wet sound of metal cleaving flesh. The air mists with blood. I can taste the barest tang of it on my lips.
“Wouldn’t you like to know.”
The Thief and his games. I decided a while ago that I’d had enough of them.
I begin to push past the soldiers. If they won’t fight me, I’ll go help one of my comrades who is facing overwhelming odds. But as soon as I try to push my way through the crowd of them, they close off my exit.
“Get out of my way,” I say, my skin brightening.
But they stand resolute.
I want to scream. Every moment that passes, my friends grow tired and more injured.
“I let my baser nature get the better of me, but your mate is right. I want to leave you whole and untouched—” a soldiers says at my back, “—for now.”
I turn to the fairy who spoke. She has long, wheat blonde hair that’s been plaited away from her angelic face. In her hand she holds a sickle sword.
Walking up to the soldier, I clasp her cheeks, looking deep into her seafoam eyes. The soldier remains still, the Thief’s gaze lit with interest. I glance down at the woman’s lips. “It’s not my mind you want to touch, is it, Thief?”
The soldier studies me before lowering her eyes to my lips.
“You want what you got only a taste of in Karnon’s prison,” I say.
Back then all he did was kiss me. He hadn’t done more.
I feel the hot rush of my power.
Kiss him. Kill him. Take it all at once.
I lean in, my lips so close to the soldier’s, my hands sliding up her cheeks. My fingertips brush that plaited hair of hers—
We will drag him under and make him give us everything.
That quicksilver gaze lingers on me for a second or two.
“Look up at your mate,” he says out of nowhere.
I frown. All my tightly coiled power is dissipating.
Not how this is supposed to be playing out.
“Why?” I say, my gaze unwavering.
“I want to make sure you’re watching.”
I can feel a humming along my skin. Magic—dark, oily magic—begins to vibrate around me. It separates itself from the walls, the floor, and the ceiling, thickening in the air.
Around me, the other fairies are beginning to look around in confusion.
I narrow my eyes at the Thief, even as the magic begins to congeal into twisting clouds of smoke.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Look up.”
My eyes linger on the Thief for a long moment, but eventually I do look up, my eyes drawn to my mate.
I gasp at the sight.
Chapter 34
Desmond
The years may have passed, but my father still fights the same.
Like a coward.
I chase him through the darkness, the two of us becoming one with it before we return from shadows to men. Over and over and over.
“You cannot kill me,” he says as our blades clash. The two of us hover in midair, most of the fairies fighting below.
“So long as you suffer, I don’t fucking care.” Save for Callie’s father, I have never hungered for vengeance so badly. I want to skewer him like an animal and roast him over a spit. I want to carve him up and make him watch as I remove his organs one by one. I want to use every bit of torture I’ve perfected over the centuries to make him pay for my mother, for my siblings, for the threat he poses to my mate.
Galleghar parries the blow, the blades sparking at the force of the hit, then he’s gone again.
I vanish to darkness, sensing him reforming above me. I coalesce back into a man only for my father to dissipate into shadow once more. Now he’s behind me, now he’s across the room. I chase him, weaving through the battlefield around us. Malaki bleeds from his abdomen, and Janus is holding his arm close.
Temper might be the least hurt, but her eyes have started to glow; the sorceress is losing her mind and will to her power.
And Callie, Callie is facing off against the worst monster of them all. I have doomed her to him. Even now I quake at the thought of—
Galleghar reforms in front of me. I manifest in front of him, my blade poised. He aims his sword for my stomach, and my swing becomes a defensive strike, knocking his weapon aside.
Galleghar laughs. “You cannot kill me. Nothing can kill me.”
“Is that why you bound yourself to the Thief? So you could never die?”
A question hardly worth asking. Of course the fool picked the most malevolent being to cobind himself to.
“Secrets are meant for one soul to keep,” Galleghar says.
I nearly drop my sword. My mother used to say that to me when I was a boy. When the sleeping soldiers began to whisper it, I wondered why.
Galleghar strikes out again, and I meet the blow with my blade.
“That bitch who whelped you said that to me.” Galleghar says behind our locked blades. “Did you know that? Over and over she’d whisper that into my ear like a taunt. But the joke’s on her because she’s dead and the only miserable thing she cared about will die a horrible, grisly death.
“My little spy,” Galleghar continues. “The Thief sees her from time to time. Has he told you that?”
Cold-pressed rage drips into my veins.
If what he says is true …
“He loves to torment the dead, and even for our kind, his attentions are uncommonly wicked.”
The two of us are still locked by our blades, the metal grinding against each other.
“At least your mother will get a break soon,” Galleghar continues. “Once I kill your mate, the Thief’s attention will be wholly occupied. I almost pity that slave of yours. He will make her do things that would make even whores blush.”
I feel my icy hatred expand.
�
��He might even make you watch.”
I shove Galleghar’s weapon back, our swords unlocking. There is nothing I’d love more than to run him through. But I haven’t survived this long by giving into my temper.
Several sleeping soldiers break away from their fighting when they notice I haven’t disappeared. They leap into the air, their wings unfurling, their weapons pointed towards me. I disappear and reform only long enough to kill each one.
The soldiers’ lifeless forms fall from the air, and I heave several breaths, my body bloody, as I approach my father once more.
Galleghar’s eyes flick briefly to the falling dead.
“All that power,” he murmurs, “I’m almost proud to see how strong my blood flows.”
“You could’ve spared yourself all of this,” I say. “I’m only fighting because you wish me dead.” Because he learned of his fate, and thus made it his mission to kill every last one of his offspring.
Galleghar laughs, like I’m some fool, rather than a seasoned king and criminal.
“Don’t delude yourself, son. That is not the only reason.”
I scowl at him.
“Don’t you feel it?” he asks. “Our brutality is right there in our magic, simmering through our veins. If I’d chosen a more peaceful path, I’d still have died by my broods’ sword. We are a poisoned lot.”
As if in response, the shadows begin to whisper.
I glance down at Callie and the group of sleeping soldiers that encircle her. Her wings are out and her skin glows. My beautiful, lethal siren. One of soldiers steps towards her, a sick look in his eye.
Callie …
Dread pools in my belly, the likes of which I have never felt.
“What could you possibly offer that creature?” I ask Galleghar, still staring at the showdown between my mate and the monster Galleghar unleashed on this world. That ancient evil is nearly unmatched in power.
“Oh, quite a bit, my ill-conceived son,” my father replies. “Freedom from his eternal bonds, power, life as we know it … and a kingdom.”
A kingdom of spirits and rotted flesh. The Land of Death and Deep Earth.
“How could you promise him something like that?” A kingdom to conquer. That would be like me offering another the Kingdom of Fauna.
Dark Harmony (The Bargainer Book 3) Page 26