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The shout of panic tore out of my mouth without any doing on my part. “STOP!” Danya’s body rocked sideways. She slammed into the table, her hip colliding with the wood. But that wasn’t what drew twenty pairs of stunned eyes toward me. It was her sword, splintering into a thousand shards, the quivering steel needles shooting through the air and hitting the wall above Ren’s head so hard that they drove an inch into the pitted stonework.
He held out his hand to me and said, “Take it, or I carry you.” I gave him my hand. “We’ll be back in the morning,” he said to Ren.
“You never wore the dresses I put out for you,” he murmured into my hair. “I don’t want to talk about dresses,” I whispered. “Fair enough. Let’s talk about food, then.” “Food?” He nodded. “Don’t share food with that prick again, Little Osha.” “What?” “Swift. Earlier. Back in the war room. You were trading that cake back and forth with him for ages.” “It wasn’t cake.” “I don’t care what it was. Just stop sharing food with him.” There was a dangerous edge to his voice. One that dared me to challenge this order. If he hadn’t learned by now that I wasn’t one to be told what to do, then perhaps he
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“You were worried about me,” Fisher said roughly. “No! I…” “I saw the look on your face. In the map room when Danya wanted to lop my head off. You were afraid. For me.”
“Malcolm’s a high Fae vampire. The very first. We were cursed thousands of years ago, and the Fae turned into something very like Malcolm. When a cure was found, my great-grandfather and most of the other Yvelian Fae took it.
“You were with him, weren’t you? For all those years you were missing.” A tightness formed on Fisher’s face. “I can’t tell you that,” he said. I can’t tell you that. Witnessing the strain around his eyes worsen, some part of me recognized it and knew what it felt like. As if he were trying to resist or push through something. As if he wasn’t in control… And there it was. He wasn’t in control. “You’re bound, aren’t you?” I said, dismayed.
don’t think you hate me at all.” He laughed but took another step forward. “You think very highly of yourself, then, don’t you?” “I know that you want me.” I didn’t step back, even though my body was screaming at me that I should. “I can want to fuck you and still hate you, Little Osha.” I shook my head, trying to ignore the heat in his eyes. “No. That’s not it.”
name, remember that, Little Osha.”
But there was something else tying me to him. Pulling me in like I was trapped. A part of me knew that Fisher himself was the trap, and I was well and truly snared…
“I can’t wait to hear what kind of sounds you make when I thrust into you for the first time,” he purred. “I’m going to make you pant for me, Little Osha. And when we’re done, I’ll close my eyes and replay the sound of you moaning in my head every time I stroke myself to completion.”
I’d never been timid in a bedroom before. I was in way, way over my head this time, though. I fought a wave of nerves as I let my knees fall open, and Fisher unleashed a strained growl. “Perfect. You’re absolutely fucking perfect. If Danya does rip my head off tomorrow, at least now I’ll die happy.”
“You smell so, so fucking good,” he said thickly. “Back in the forge at the palace, I caught a hint of this. I knew then I had to taste you. This smell has been haunting my fucking dreams.
Beneath my palms, the wolf tattoo emblazoned across his pecs came to life. The ink flowed beneath his skin, crossing from him to… to… sinners, it flowed along my fingertips, spreading over my skin, flowing just like his smoke over the backs of my hands. A delicate little bird took shape on the inside of my right forearm.
“Shit,” Fisher breathed. I pulled my hands away, afraid of more ink making its way over me, but Fisher just shook his head, grabbing one of my hands and putting it back on his flesh. He didn’t say anything else. Didn’t warn me if any more of his ink would come venturing over onto my body.
I stopped laughing. “I was cleansed. When I was fourteen. They do it to about seventy percent of the girls in my ward.” He came and stood very close to me, his head bowed over mine, nostrils flaring. “What do you mean… cleansed?” “I mean… they sterilize us,” I whispered. I figured he’d known last night.
“Did you know, the Yvelian Fae are the youngest of the Fae houses? By a thousand years. There was a dispute between these two brothers, and they splintered off to make their own court.”
‘Never forget. Monsters thrive best in the dark. Commit all you read here to memory. Prepare for war!!’
Gracia took the superfluous punctuation to mean that the situation, should these Gilarian Fae creatures ever show their faces, would be very dire indeed.
“Don’t call her Sunshine,” he commanded. “Why not?”
“Lupo Proelia. Kingfisher’s wolves,” he said, sighing. “There are eight of us, usually.
“What do you want me to do about it?” he replied. “She has a mind and a mouth of her own. I am the keeper of neither.”
magic.” My mind spun. “That’s why metal was so hard to find, then. Madra took it all. She wanted to keep the quicksilver away from the people. She knew there might be people like me within the city, capable of controlling it.”
But if he dies first, he’s condemned to wait here for me to die before he can move on. He’d be trapped here, in a non-corporeal state, unable to touch anything or anyone. Unable to be heard. That’s the sacrifice he made when he decided to give me the gift of life.