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“Does this mean you forgive me for the lilac wine?” “Don’t push your luck, fairy boy.” “Cherub, hasn’t anyone told you? I don’t need luck. I deal in favors.”
“You know I trust you, respect you, and above all else, love you. But gods give me grace, Callie, I will have a reckoning with you if you go rogue on me.”
I can fucking glamour fairies. Hold on to your tits, world. Callie. Is. Back.
“He’s watching you, enchantress, always watching you. My master has developed a taste for slaves.” My siren pushes through. “You can tell your master I’ve developed a taste for killing evil fuckers,”
“Do you expect me to give you a formal apology for every person I’ve slept with? Because if so, I damn well better receive the same from you.” “You are insane.”
“The darkness is loyal to its own—it won’t hurt another fairy that wields its power.”
“That means the Thief is one of my kind—he’s a Night fae.”
“The Kingdom of Flora fell,” the adviser continues.
“Fauna is gone as well,”
“In my imaginings, we did this. I scrubbed the world’s filth off you, until you were just you in my arms.”
The sarcophagus is empty.
“You’re not bait, love. The fire is the bait. You’re an iron-manacled trap set to crush willful fairies.”
“Sweet siren,” he says between kisses, “you better sharpen those claws. Tonight I don’t plan on being nice.”
“I want to fuck you until you’re mindless with want. I want to feel you squeeze my dick as you come around me. I want to die buried inside you.”
“Oh my God.” Des leans in close. “Leave God out of this, cherub. He has nothing to do with it.”
“I can’t believe I let you stick a finger up my butt,” I finally say. I’m such a smooth pillow talker. I sense rather than see him smirk. “Says the girl who once got me to come in my pants.”
“He had hundreds of concubines,” Des finally says. “Hundreds. Just take a moment to imagine that.” Hundreds? That’s like having a wife for every day of the year.
“He killed babies—their babies—and they still cried for him.”
“Did you know that when I executed my father, I was expected to inherit the harem he left behind?” He gives a humorless laugh. “Doesn’t that make your skin crawl? To inherit a lover like some sort of heirloom?”
Ew
“I put the men in trees because, as the Green Man, I could. I took the women savagely and caged them like I have been caged.” I feel the sick heat of his anger and his excitement as he talks. “I hid the men and showcased the women,” he continues, “and oh, how I enjoyed watching all those fairies fear the unknown. It’s been so long since any of them felt true fear, but now they do.
“Who opened the tomb?” Des repeats. “Suck on my prick!” “Mmm, tempting,” Des says, cocking his head. “Is that a genuine offer?”
“Oh, and a word of warning: look at my mate again with anything other than respect and benevolence, and you’ll lose your eyes.”
“On the night the dead man rose—the night Galleghar rose,” he clarifies, making it clear he knows exactly who lay buried in that grave, “it was a shadow that retrieved him.”
I glance over at Des, who’s beginning to pose frozen fairies like they’re Christmas reindeer, each position a little more compromising than the last.
“I’ve killed hundreds, maybe thousands of fairies—some outright, and some indirectly after I drained them of too much magic. I have a hidden room filled with countless fairies who are all but dead.”
“Once a fairy dies, the bond is broken, and Typhus loses their power,” Des says from where he stands. “Dead men can’t uphold oaths.”
“I love you so much. You’ll never really know.” His features sharpen, and the look in his eyes intensifies. “The way fairies love… It’s the same way we live. It’s immortal, violent, irrational, and unbendable. “I understand your words, cherub, because there are aspects of my love for you that are, simply put, unfathomable.”
“I bound myself to my soul mate. Would you say that counts?” I smile into my drink. “Are you admitting I have a piece of your soul?” His eyes dip to my curving lips. “More than a piece, cherub.”
Immediately, my eyes home in on the hickeys ringing his neck. He could’ve removed them—it would only take a pinch of magic—and yet there they are. In fact, not only did Malaki not remove the hickeys, he’s also pulled his hair into one of those little buns, further displaying them. Someone should tell him hickeys were only cool in middle school.
“And I will be there for them all. I will be there when the last of your mortal friends draws their final breath. I will be there through it all, and I will tease you and infuriate you and lavish you with whatever it is your heart desires because the only thing mine desires is you.”
“The Thief of Souls can wear the faces of the dead.”
“How do you even live with such a creature?” Janus asks, his gaze sliding back to me. Despite how shaken he is, he looks halfway interested. I smile, baring my teeth at him. “I try not to piss her off.” I guffaw at that, my skin dimming. “All right,” the Bargainer concedes, “I do try to piss her off, but only because she has especially twisted ideas of revenge.” Janus shakes his head. “You two are a fucked-up pair.”
“I love you, Callie, down to every feather and scale. I love your darkness, I love your mind, I love your humor and your most coveted dreams. And I love how you love me—wholly, deeply, passionately. “You’re not normal; you’ll never be normal. I’m so sorry to tell you that. You are so blindingly extraordinary that it physically hurts me sometimes, and I’ll never stop pushing you to believe this.”
“It’s captured starlight,” he explains, squeezing my hand. “I figured the Queen of the Night should carry a piece of her kingdom with her.”
“And mountains may rise and fall, and the sun may wither away, and the sea claim the land and swallow the sky. But you will always be mine. And the stars may fall from the heavens, and night may cloak the earth, but until darkness dies, I will always be yours.”
I love you, I want to say. More than worlds can hold or words can convey. You are everything that has ever mattered to me. Have faith and strength. You’ll be all right.
“Galleghar O’Malleghar, King of Asshats, Killer of Boners, Wannabe Emperor Who Needs to Eat a Bag of Dicks and Die.”
