GODS

AND

DAEMONS

COLLECTION 2

BOOKS 4 – 5

QUINN BLACKBIRD

Gods and Daemons Collection 2

Books 4 – 5 of Gods and Daemons

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission—this includes scanning and/or unauthorised distribution—except in case of brief quotations used in reviews and/or academic articles, in which case quotations are permitted.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, whether alive or dead, is purely coincidental. Names, characters, incidents, and places are all products of the author’s imagination.

Imprint: Independently published.

BLURB FOR COLLECTION

Daemons have come to the Capital.

Aniels lurk through the city.

And there's no escape for a sickly girl like me.

For a mortal to be noticed by an aniel is like being noticed by a God. It is sweet for a heartbeat, but at its core, it is dark poison, deception and rot.

Keela knows better than to humour an aniel, because she knows how all mortal-aniel stories end--

They always end with the mortal's death.

But that's the least of her worries...

When the Daemons come to the Capital for the first time in a century, one corners her--and he claims her as his mate.

Keela has two options:

Become the willing mate of Koal, a vicious creature of the Underworld.

Or strike a deal with Silver, the aniel, to steal her away and help her find the Wild Woods, the only place she might find escape.

CONTENTS

AMONG ALL
GODS AND DAEMONS

DARK FAE SAMPLE, BOOK 1

GODS AND DAEMONS

BOOK 4

AMONG SHADOWS

QUINN BLACKBIRD

BLURB

Koal: A Daemon, a wicked creature from the Underworld.

Silver: An ancient and cold aniel, a powerful child of the God, Prince Poison.

Keela: A sickly mortal who lives on borrowed time.

Keela faces the ever-mounting dangers of the Wild Woods with an untrustworthy aniel by her side.

As she journeys to find the Originals—her only hope of severing the bond between her and Koal, who hunts her to the ends of the world—cruel truths start to come to light.

Silver has snared her into his trap. And as she questions his true motives for helping her, she realises she might be too far gone in a daze of lust to escape what he has in store for her.

Keela is fuelled by her gut instinct to never trust a Daemon, but when it becomes too late to save herself, she learns first-hand that trusting an aniel is just as dangerous.

But her belated realisation will cost her more than she can afford—more than her life. It will cost her the price of playing with an aniel:

Her heart.

A dark fantasy mini-series set in Quinn Blackbird’s GODS AND MONSTERS world. You do not have to read Gods and Monsters before reading Gods and Daemons.

See inside for content warnings.

Paperbacks available on the box-set page.

CONTENT INFORMATION

Gods and Daemons is a dark-themed fantasy romance mini-series. There will be dark romance, twisted relationships, explicit sexual scenes, explicit language, angst and betrayals.

GLOSSARY, TERMS, PLACES & OTHER THINGS
Don’t be discouraged. This is for reference only. All will be explained in the series!

GLOSSARY

Divine Ones - Gods

Malis - a malevolent God

Beniyn - a benevolent God

Aniel - a hand-crafted offspring of a God

Vilas - a mortal

Scocie - land of the Gods

Capital - Scocie’s city

Commos - isles of the common vilas

Skripta - religious texts

Daemons - evil entities that rule the Underworld

FIRST GODS

Prince Poison - malis, lover of Princess Monster

Lover Lust - malis

Gaia - beniyn

Blaze - malis

Keeper of Lost Souls - beniyn

Mistress Mad - malis

Swordsman of Scales - malis

Loki - malis

Trident - beniyn

SECOND GODS

Aphrodite - beniyn, deceased.

Zealot - malis

Syfon- beniyn, deceased.

Father Fettle - beniyn

THIRD GODS

Princess Monster - beniyn, love of Prince Poison

Phantom - malis, deceased.

SCOCIE:

Wild Woods

The Capital

Mist Creek

Palace of the Gods

Gods’ Gardens

Twisted Wood

Place of the Daemons

The Capital

East Side:

Shadow Quarter

Lost Square

Scholar Square

Merchant Market

Textile District

West Side:

Emporium Quarter

The Port

Worship Street

The Gardens

Spa Square

First District

GODS AND DAEMONS
AMONG SHADOWS
BOOK FOUR

GODS AND DAEMONS

The Gods came in two waves.

The Firsts—the most powerful and ancient of the Divine Ones—were made with the world. They are as old as the dirt, the grass, and the stars.

The Firsts are our creators. They fashioned mortals—the vilas, as they call us—from the life surging through this earth. And we were created as nothing more than toys, entertainment in a bland newborn world.

Next, they created aniels. The aniels are unlike the vilas—they are the children of the Gods. They are magical and powerful and wicked and immortal. It is said that to create an aniel, a God must peel away a sliver of their ancient power, fashion a hand-crafted marble statue of a child, and bond the the magic to it. Then, the marble turns into flesh and blood and hair and true eyes and power, all under the full moon on the starriest night.

The child grows, fast. Within a year, it is a fully matured aniel, a dangerous child of the God who created it, and bound to its God for all eternity.

In creating the aniels, the Gods rectified the errors they made with mortals—they cannot breed.

But the vilas bred, multiplied fast, and spread too quickly.

It took centuries for the First Gods to tire of us mortals. When they did, they split the land into isles and pushed them out to sea, separating us from them. As the land was broken into pieces, new seas were created and, out from the cracks, crawled the Second Gods. Less powerful than the Firsts, mostly less malevolent, but Gods all the same.

The Gods kept some mortals close to them on the largest isle, Scocie. It is on this most magical, haunted isle that the Gods live. Their stardust palace sits on a bone-white hill that looks over the whole of the world.

We, the vilas, worship them from the city built on the shore, the Capital. Every day of our lives, we are reminded of the Gods with that midnight-blue, glittering palace looming over us.

The trees whisper around me.

I trace sweet scents down the trail to the inky clearing. The fragrance of blueberry muffins fresh out of the stone oven snares around us like traps set out for wild rabbits. But what lures me in is the hot, doughy fragrance of walnut bread in the air.

It takes all my self-control not to shove past Silver on the trail and rush down to the black stalls perched in the centre of the tarry-floored clearing, where I know the allure of fresh food comes from.

Among the scents, I pick out roasted dark beans burning on a fire, and my mouth floods as images of coffee mugs spring to mind, the kind of mugs made to be cupped in your hands as you sit by a window on a misty morning.

But as my pace picks up to quickly follow the trail of the smells, Silver keeps his slow-moving walk in front of me and blocks my way. Instead, I make to manoeuvre around him and move off-trail.

I manage two steps before he snatches my wrist in his icy grip and yanks me back onto the packed-dirt trail.

Silver shoots a glacier look at me. “Don’t step off the path,” he warns darkly. “Not until we are in the clearing.”

A moody scowl twists my face. I shrug his hand off of me.

“It’s right there,” I say and throw a lazy gesture to the clearing through the trees.

“The Woods still mean you harm. Finding the Three Sisters doesn’t change that. To you, the path is the only safe place to be. And even then...” he trails off.

And even then, I finish mentally, you are a danger to me.

With all that Koal has warned me about in my dreams, it would be foolish to see Silver as anything other than a threat. He is using me in these Woods, that much I know, and he’s keeping vital truths from me—like that I need Koal’s venom to survive (if that’s even true). So much I don’t know, and yet...

In a way, I knew what I was getting into when I asked for Silver’s help and followed him to the Wild Woods. Still, I don’t think I truly recognised the danger of an aniel while I was so caught up in the immediate threat of a Daemon.

Now, after my dreams with Koal, I’m starting to see the dangers that Silver poses in a whole new light. And not just the dangers when it comes to matters of the heart.

To me, this journey is one of survival. I have no other choice but to walk with Silver through the wicked Woods, and find the only way to sever myself from Koal’s mateship. But Silver has his own motives here, and somehow, I tie into them. Once I’ve served my purpose to him, I don’t think that us having lain together will stop him from abandoning me in these Woods.

Mind, this could just be my bruised pride talking. After he so easily threw away my first time, as though it meant nothing, my already-withered trust in him turned to ash.

If Silver can’t even bring himself to tolerate me for more than a few minutes after we have lain together, how can I expect him to return me safely to the Capital once this is all over?

Buried beneath all this fresh suspicion of Silver, survives some buds of hurt and heartache. The tighter I hold onto these doubts, the less I feel the pain he’s caused me. And the less I feel, the better, because if I was to dig up the sickening turn deep in my belly and that hollow ache in my chest, I don’t think I could stand walking beside him down the trail to the clearing. I just might cave to the urge to shove him off-path and let the Woods have him.

Mind, being an aniel, he would have a much stronger chance of surviving the Woods off-path than I would, and that’s something that makes me hate him a little more.

It makes me wonder what it would all be like if I was born an aniel, a child to a God, not a selfish, greedy mayor of the poor side. If I was an aniel, would I still be forced to face this treacherous journey to sever myself from Koal? Would my sickness still exist and consequently come with aniel-blood remedies in my veins, and so draw in Silver to aid me in my fight for life? Or would my pleasant, eternal life be surrounded by the stardust walls of the Palace of the Gods?

Thoughts of lives that could have been stick to my balled-up muscles as the narrow trail disappears into the black, tar-like dirt of the clearing. Now, I’m faced not with fantasies and wild thoughts, but with a path I forged for myself when I fled the Capital.

Silver pauses at the border of the clearing.

His black boots sink deep into the ink-sludge dirt, up to the ankles, and he fishes out a long, dark cigarette from the pocket of his breeches.

I narrow my eyes on him.

Is this really the best time to be striking a match over the trunk of a nearby tree and lighting himself a smoke?

Whether or not I agree doesn’t seem to matter to Silver. His weary gaze flickers to me for a heartbeat before he brings the cigarette to his lips and makes a point of inhaling the smoke for a long moment.

I shake my head and look down the cosy clearing to the drab stalls.

The stall parked in the middle of the bundle is largest, draped in torn black rags that flap loudly in the breeze crossing the glade.

Perched on either side of the stall, the two smaller ones look more like tents now that I can see them up close, and they are clothed in thick woollen covers pinned firmly to the sinking soil.

A shadow has emerged from the middle stall to greet us—the same silhouette I spotted earlier, moving through the trees. A small body, like that of a child’s, with arms that reach all the way down to the soil, and an elongated head that makes me think of distorted paintings in the Divine Museum.

Silver draws the cigarette away from his pink mouth. His tongue darts over his lips as a lump of ash falls to the soggy soil. He flicks the cigarette away. It sizzles a few paces from where I stand, in a particularly dark puddle that I’m not keen on getting too close to.

He says nothing as he starts down the clearing.

I lift up the skirt of my dress to protect it from the sludge beneath me, and hurry after him. I say a mental thanks to my earlier-self for choosing boots over slippers before fleeing the Capital.

Silver’s strides are confident and effortless as he moves around the puddles—and my suspicion of them is confirmed—in a zig-zag to the inky stalls. He leads the way to the middle stall, where the shadow waits for us patiently.

And the closer we get, the better I see the silhouette.

The sight of her prickles my skin.

She is a Sister, that much I know just by looking at her. But where she was supposed to start growing features among the shadows that cling to her, I find that she only became darker. This is no person. This is a shadow. A mere silhouette with a long, black face without eyes or a mouth or a nose; arms without the shape of hands and fingers to finish them off; a stretched blur of darkness where a neck should be.

A shudder ripples over my belly.

I hug my arms around myself and hold tight. Nearing the shadow, I side-step closer to Silver, the urge to hide behind him seizing my muscles.

As we approach, the silhouette turns—well, it shivers in a whirl that I suspect is a turn—and slips through the torn drapes of the middle stall.

Silver follows it without a word.

I hesitate at the shabby mouth for a clenched heartbeat before I duck in after them.

The inside of the stall is nothing spectacular. Looks just like any ordinary kiosk in the Merchant Market. Shabby wood benches sprout up from the sagging soil, clear glass phials are topped up with some pearlescent liquid that shimmers dangerously, and a hard wood chair sits beside a table littered with wound-up scrolls.

Inside the stall, we find the other two Sisters.

And they are nothing alike.

One sits on the chair by the scrolls, combing a fine-toothed brush over the tips of her green-scaled fingers. The sight of her hits me with a nauseous wave that nearly takes me clean off my feet.

Long weeds for hair falls down her naked, bulbous back, the shade of moss on a boulder by a river bank. No clothes shield her body from us, but I doubt she needs clothes since there is nothing normal about her. She has no mounds on her chest that need to be covered, nothing between her thighs other than a lump of green flakes, and her feet are scabrous blobs that perch on the black soil like sculpted teardrops.

The more I study the odd scaly texture of her skin, the better I understand the resemblance to the rough face of tree trunks; like forest-green bark that encases her.

And she isn’t the most ghastly of the trio.

I stick close to Silver’s back as I look at the other Sister.

She is tucked in the dim corner. Unlike the shadowy and scaly surface of the others, hers reminds me fleetingly of sea-creatures. Her skin is grey-tinted and gleams with an eternal sliminess that I spot dripping from the webbed middles of her fingers, like morning drool sticking a pillow to a mouth.

She lazily picks through small bleached-white stones that pile high on the dirt. I notice that, on the stones, names are etched, and I wonder if there is a stone with my name on it, perhaps a name for every person alive in the world, aniel and vilas alike.

Just when I have the thought, the sea-creature Sister snaps her grey gaze up at me and my muscles roll up into one, tight ball of bundled nerves.

She blinks—but it’s a gesture that earns a breathy gasp from my parted lips. Her translucent eyelids come in from the sides and make a horrid slick sound.

I’m so close to Silver’s back that his shirt shivers with the urgency of my breaths. My fingers tingle with the urge to hold onto the silken material of his shirt and never let go, for fear of being stolen away by these wicked-looking beasts.

Keeping her slimy gaze on me, the sea-creature Sister slowly straightens up and takes a palm-sized white stone from the pile. She pinches it between her webbed, grey fingers and gives a gummy smile that turns my stomach.

I pinch my mouth shut on the bile that threatens to spill up me.

“Keela,” the sea-creature Sister croons my name and, fleetingly, her gaze flicks down to the stone she turns over in her hands. “A girl who lived by the sea.”

I don't like the way she rolls ‘lived’ over her scorched-red tongue, as though she means to reveal that my life was in the past, and I will never return to those shores. But before I can spiral into doubt of what she means, the green-bark Sister pushes up from the chair, and her bones crackle and pop the way a tree does in a too-violent gush of wind.

“Silver,” she croaks, her voice hoarse and rough, like the texture of her scaly skin. “Come back to us so soon?”

That spears a rush of icy fear through my chest.

Come back.

So he’s been here before. He has sought out the Sisters some other time in his eternal, yawning existence. But then, since he lived in the Wild Woods when he was first created long before the Capital was built, it would make sense that he’s searched for the Sisters before.

I have to remind myself that Silver’s life doesn't revolve around me. He’s made that perfectly clear. His life existed long before I wandered into it, and will continue to exist well after I’m gone.

For the first time, the shadow-Sister speaks, her voice an echo that carries on the winds across worlds and eternities; “You each face forking paths, thus we will take you as separate wanderers.”

I cave to the urge to hold onto Silver; my fingers dig deep into the buttery material of his shirt.

He cuts a bored look over his shoulder at me.

“They will not harm you,” he promises me, and glances at my fist balled up in white silk. “We have come to them—and so we must abide by their rules if we expect them to have any hospitality towards us.”

Hospitality. Is that what this is called? Three ghastly creatures crammed into a windy stall with us, meaning to separate us from each other?

I cut a look at the sea-swamp Sister.

Unease ripples through my watery gut at the gummy smile she reserves only for me. Watching me, she still rolls the stone around her spidery, webbed fingers. As I glance at it, I glimpse my name etched into the sand-white surface.

Silver’s voice seeps into my mind; ‘Seems they have been expecting us.’

Maybe that stone—my stone—betrayed to the Sisters that we were coming on a journey to seek them out. It looks rather ordinary, but I suspect very few things are truly ordinary in this clearing.

And I seem to have little choice but to allow the Sisters to seperate me from Silver, the only shield I have in this wretched place. I’ve come so far. I fought off and escaped a Daemon, fled the Capital on a pirate ship with a deadly aniel, and survived the tests of the Wild Woods. I can’t let all of that be for nothing. The last option I have is to turn my back on the Sisters and walk away, back to the very future that I ran from.

Silver makes the choice before I can.

He turns to face me, stealing away the back of his shirt from my grip. My hands fall limp to my sides and I look up at him.

“Are you certain they won’t hurt me?” Hesitation softens my tone.

Silver’s lashes lower over his eyes, and he couldn’t look any more weary of me if he tried. “I said what I said, Kee. Place your trust in the very beings you sought out.”

An easier task to speak than to do.

Just one look at the slimy sea-creature Sister and ropes of anxiety drop from my chest down to my churning gut. It’s not so much the grey slime of her skin, or the creepy way that her eyes blink. It’s her gummy smile—how it seems to sit on her face unnaturally, as though it was cut from another’s and planted on hers. It’s the distant cruelty in her smile that almost makes me think she welcomes me, but at the same time, reminds me that she would carve out my heart and feast on my insides if the mood struck her.

But none of that changes the one, glaring truth—

I have no other choice. Not really.

And so I ball up my hands in my skirt and mutter, with a breathy sigh, “All right, then.”

The sea-creature Sister is the first to move. She clenches her spidery fingers around the stone and advances on me. The way she moves tenses my bare shoulders with a suppressed shudder; it’s like she’s slinking over the coal-black dirt, as though her legs are made from no bones, but lumps of whale blubber instead.

Then the tree-bark Sister lumbers forward, her muddy eyes fixed on Silver. He doesn’t tense as the Sisters advance on us. And when my hand snakes up to hold onto his sleeve, he tosses a tedious look my way.

He peels off my fingers from his arm and steps away.

I’m lost, without a shield, as the sea-Sister creeps up to me. She stands a head smaller than I do, and she hunches over with the curve of a whale’s back.

An ache spears through me as her free hand clamps around my wrist. The texture of slime is quick to wet my skin. My face spasms with disgust.

I spare one last look at Silver before the Sister leads me out of the stall and to the smallest tent tucked beside it.

Silver is taken to the other tent. And he doesn't so much as glance in my direction before he dips under the thick black flap and disappears.

This is where the smells come from.

It’s all caught in the air; a tangled, enticing mess of fresh walnut bread, blueberry muffins, and roasted coffee beans. It all comes from this small tent, barely large enough to fit another person inside of it.

The mouth-watering scent is enough to lure me onto the wood chair by the hearth. The Sister hunches over the stone oven and pokes at the flames to ignite them higher. The punch of heat is instant and, though fear still clings to my stiff bones, relief starts to ribbon down my muscles.

I lean closer to the hearth to bask in as much of the heat as I can reach.

Sea-Sister is silent as she replaces the iron poker for a peel and sticks it deep into the oven. With her hunched back to me, she steals away most of the warmth. She draws back the wood shovel and, now, there sits a loaf of freshly baked walnut bread on the flat end.

Still, she says nothing as she sets about menial tasks I expect from a household’s servants, and not from an ancient and eternal being of the world.

I watch her closely.

For a long, silent moment, she fixes the bread on a wood table, cuts it into thick slices, sets out a jar of brown sticky stuff whose texture reminds me fleetingly of jam—if it were made from mud.

After pausing to set the bleached-white stone on the chair opposite me, she pushes the table to my knees, then fixes us small carved-wood lumps that I suppose are meant to be cups from the wilderness. In fact, as I look around the tent, I see that everything—everything—comes from the Woods.

The covering of the tent, upon closer inspection, appears to be black weeds threaded together tightly; the ground is soft moss, plusher than my favourite red rug at home; the hot-water pot is actually carved stone that comes from the oven. Even the Sister seems to come from the sea, or some swampy pond from deep in the trees.

I’m all that stands out in this tent, and I feel entirely of place. For me, that’s not an unfamiliar feeling, but in this moment, it pulses through me with unease, and I find myself shifting anxiously on the chair.

My fingers clench into the torn material of my skirt.

The Sea-Sister finally seems to acknowledge me for the first time since we left the middle stall—her slimy eyes slide to me as she slowly sinks down into the chair opposite me.

As if to relax me some, she waves a damp, webbed hand to the table she set. Her gummy smile returns. “It is safe,” she promises.

And I trust what she tells me, not because it comes from an Original, but because Silver did not warn me against eating anything that comes from the Sisters or the Woods. He promised no danger with the Sisters. And so, I have no reason to mistrust her.

Besides, my stomach is starting to gurgle as the savoury scents lift higher and stronger in the air.

I cut my guarded gaze to the spread on the table. No muffins, but I decidedly remember smelling them from the trail. My mouth pinches as I realise that they must be in the other tent where Silver is with the scaly Sister. As an aniel, he hardly needs the blueberry muffins. And yet, he gets his share of food. Sister hospitality, I suppose.

Still, it gives me pause.

Silver so easily allowed us to be separated. He offered no resistance, no fight, betrayed no desire for us to stick together in this part of the journey, where every other time he has insisted on our closeness.

That gives me reason to wonder—what business does he have with the Sisters that he might not want me to know about? Does he have his own questions and his own goals to put to the scaly Sister?

Or—

“You each face forking paths...” the Sister foretold.

Perhaps she meant that our paths would part ways before we return to the Capital. That is what I dismissed it as when she first told us, that we would simply go our separate ways when the time came, and our mission was over.

There could be a far more sinister warning in those words that I overlooked.

And still, it does me little good to find yet another thing to trouble myself over. Coming this far, I must learn to hold trust in my journey—as well as some trust in Silver. Just a drop. Since, after all, he did get me this far.

Without Silver, I wouldn't be sitting across from one of the Sisters—creatures that I never imagined would have existed before Silver told me about them—and she would not be pouring hot coffee from the stone cup into the wood one.

Partly to be polite—and partly to soothe the deep rumble in my belly—I take a thick slice of walnut bread and, avoiding the muddy jam, bring it to my lips. Hesitation pauses me mid-bite. It lingers there, between my ready teeth, for a moment before I take a slow, cautious bite of the warm doughy bread and let the chunk fall back onto my tongue.

My lashes flutter as a small moan catches in my throat.

Buttery. That’s the first flavour to glide over my tongue. Sweet, sweet butter, smooth and soft and whisked, with a sprinkle of coarse sugar. The walnuts are sweeter than any I’ve ever tasted before, and the Capital has them imported from the farm ends of Scocie where they thrive better.

Sister watches me quietly as I devour the thick slice of bread. She makes no move or effort to break the silence as I brush off crumbs from my skirt, then reach for the coffee. I notice the she doesn't eat anything, though she set out two wood cups and plates.

When I bring the rim to my mouth, she finally speaks in that small, slimy voice of hers, as though it is drenched in the thick waters of a swamp—

“I will allow you three questions,” she tells me.

I pause, the coffee cup hovering at my mouth, cupped in my hands. ‘Allow’ rings in my mind like the bells of a morning alarm violently awaking anyone it can reach. Sea-Sister makes no effort to hide that she has chosen that number for me—and I suddenly wonder, with a flutter of panic in my chest, if she would have granted me more if I’d been more polite like my father had taught me, and offered her some bread, or eaten the mud-jam.

I lower the cup to my lap where I hold it loosely. “I apologise if I have offended you,” I start, lowering my head with the shame that darkens my face. “My manners seem to have been left behind in the Gods’ City.”

Slightly, she tilts her head to the side. That slick blink comes into the sides of her eyes and it takes all my focus not to shudder right in front of her.

Her slimy voice snares all around me like swamp snakes. “Would you prefer two questions?”

“No,” I almost shout. I shift forward in the chair and a hot spill of coffee falls onto my hands. I wince, and fix myself upright. “Three is wonderful—thank you.”

“Offences are foreign to me, child.”

Her assurance is enough for some of the hot spots on my cheeks to start to cool. I suck in a sharp breath to steady myself and nod, though I don’t understand her fully at all.

“You have many questions.” Her detracted, eternal gaze runs me over carefully. “But your journey is no race.”

In other words, take my time.

I thin my lips and run the pads of my thumbs over the rough surface of the coffee cup. Only three questions—more than she could have given me, less than I wanted her to offer me.

In truth, I expected all the answers without ever needing to ask the questions. I wanted to be led to the First Witch, told that Koal will never get his hands on me, promised that my mother is well, assured that my night with—and feelings for—Silver are not all in vain. I want what I’ve always yearned for; to be cared for, coddled almost, and held.

But I don’t get to be like that anymore. If this journey hasn’t changed me already, I don't doubt that it will by its end.

And to get the answers from the Sister, I need to first prioritise my life. Because isn't that what my questions are? My life.

1. Mother could be dead.

2. Could the withdrawal of Koal’s venom throw me into a coma?

3. Koal might not even be my mate—he might be lured by the aniel blood within me.

4. Silver could leave me behind when he feels the time is right. He might betray me.

5. Arthur—most definitely not my father, I now realise—was likely the one to poison my mother and I.

6. Will my sickness kill me before I even complete my journey?

7. And what if (should I dare to hope) there is a cure for what I’m plagued with?

8. Not to mention, do I need to use one of these questions to find the First Witch? Silver didn’t specify this. And he might ask that question himself in the other tent, and I’ll have wasted a valuable moment with a Sister that I’ll never have again.

Those are plenty of troubles, too many questions.

I need three.

As I run them over in my mind again and again, the Sister is as patient as a statue in the Gods’ Gardens. She sits perfectly motionless on the chair, her beady eyes fixated on me—watching me intently.

Finally, I set aside the cup and bring my hands together at my lap. My fingers start to twist and thread together as unease bites at my nerves.

It’s just like ripping of gauze, I tell myself. The build-up is the worst part.

“I have aniel blood inside of me,” I confess. “That could be what Koal is drawn to. Maybe.” I hope.

Her face is impassive, like stone, and I realise she is not in the least bit surprised. Because of course, she knows all.

I clear my throat. “Am I the Daemon’s mate?”

The question falls from my mind to my mouth with a blink. Really, it is the most important question. Because if all of this is for nothing, and he truly yearns for the aniel blood inside of me, I can abandon this journey and return home. My life will go back to its moody, dull normality.

“Yes, child. You are mated to this Daemon.”

My insides shatter.

Hope explodes inside of me, turning from a ball to flakes of ash and debris. My fingernails cut deep into the knuckles of my hands.

I take a deep, steadying breath that shivers with my body. “All right,” I mutter to myself. I have more options. The First Witch. I still have her.

I still have a chance.

I look up at the Sister from beneath my lashes and realise suddenly that they are wet—tears cling to the underside of my eyelids and gather in glossy beads. I blink them away.

The Sister studies me with more detachment than even Silver can muster in his worst of moods. Yet her voice is soft slime as she adds, “The foreign blood that was once within you—” So it must be gone by now. “—is what brought you to this path, but it is not what has drawn the Daemon to you.”

My jaw sets so tightly that I hear a click run up to my left ear.

The aniel blood is what brought me here. Not my remedy—the blood.

A terrible ache twists deep in my chest as the realisation sinks in. I was right in my suspicions. Silver is the one drawn to the aniel blood—he is the one who has weaved his own motives around it.

But why?

Has it got something to do with the prison deep in these Woods? I know, deep in my gut, that the arena has something to do with his helping me.

I only wish I had more questions to tie it all together.

But I have just two questions left.

A part of me feels that this is a waste of a question. And perhaps it is. But I can’t continue on this journey, not without knowing the truth—

“Is my mother dead?”

Sea-Sister does that eerie blink. This time, I don’t shudder. The fall of her smile sinks my heart to my tummy.

“Yes. Your mother passed in her sleep some nights ago. Now, she rests in the Underworld, undisturbed.”

The tears that built at my eyes now fall freely. My cheeks dampen in seconds. With trembling hands, I wipe away at the streaks and try my hardest to stomp down on any wretched feelings that dare rise up inside of me.

I need to stay focused. At least now I know that she’s gone. There is no more doubt, no more worrying. She is gone, as expected in her state. And it comes with another horrible realisation. Koal was telling me the truth.

He was right about Silver using me. Right about the aniel blood inside of me. And right about my mother.

I should ask what else he was telling the truth about. His venom, for one. That is important. That is a matter of life and death for me.

And yet, I know what my final question must be. I can’t risk not asking it, because not asking it could mean jeopardising everything I’ve done so far.

I bow my head and blink away droplets of tears. My skirt dampens with them in blotches. “I want to know the way to the First Witch. Will you tell me the way?”

As I bring my weary gaze back up, I see that the gummy smile is back on her mismatched face, as if made from all different pieces of all different people and sewn together, then thrown into a thick, dark swamp.

But now, after hearing all that I have and knowing all that I do, I can’t bring myself to fear her or her smile. A dark part of me wishes she would eat me up, whole. At least that way, it will all be over.

“Yes, child,” the Sisters croons. “The Never-ending Path will clear the way onwards come morning, and take you where you need to go.”

A frown knits my brows.

Where you need to go.

That could mean just about anything.

Where I want to go is to the First Witch—but what if that’s not where I need to go? What if, according to the Sisters, where I need to go is back to Koal? That path could wind and weave me right to the shore and throw me onto a pirate ship.

I stomp out those worries. Have faith in the Sisters. That is what Silver would expect of me—not that I can trust him very much now.

Still, I swallow back a lump of wet tears and dab at my cheeks. “There is no morning in the Wild Woods,” I murmur. “It’s only ever twilight.”

Her smile softens, hiding the gums from sight. “This glade is different,” she tells me sweetly. “Here, the sun kisses the sky, the moon bids farewell, the earth births and destroys the life of flowers so pretty that your sister’s face would never compare.”

I pale at the mention of Olivia.

So much truths Koal told me. So much that I didn’t believe.

And he revealed everything that Olivia had said about me and my dresses and how getting rid of me would mean a silk-banquet for her. Is that to be believed too?

“I understand why you seek the Witch,” says the Sister as she gently pushes the coffee cup across the table, closer to me.

I take it and wearily sip the flavours that should bring me much joy.

“Of all of our kind, the Witch is the only one capable of destroying the mateship bond between you and your Daemon. But heed this warning, child.” Her gaze turns dark and severe, like midnight storm clouds overhead. “This journey is a mighty one. When one meets with her, they must do her a favour of her choosing. Only when this favour is complete to her satisfaction will she grant one wish. But only ever one.”

Her face is as grave as my hollow insides.

I nod slowly and set aside the cup.

For a few heartbeats, where I watch the small flames in the stone oven, we fall to silence. But I feel her gaze piercing into my cheek, reading me.

She must read something—maybe something in my future or something I have overlooked—because she says, “You may have one final question.”

My eyes widen and I swerve my gaze to her.

Before I can even begin to think what to ask, she holds up her webbed hand and pauses me.

“For a price.”

My heart drops. I tense on the chair.

“What sort of price?” I ask warily.

“You must complete a task for us,” she decides.

“What task?”

Her gummy smile returns. “I want your companion’s blood.”

I’m quick to think up a way to snare some of Silver’s blood. And I don’t worry myself about what it might cost us. I need this—I need one more question.

And what’s a little blood to an aniel?

I leave the swamp-Sister in the small tent and trudge through the sludge to the farther one. The opening flaps slightly in the gentle breeze that snakes though the glade, and I pause there for a moment.

Instinctively, my breath holds in my throat. For a second, all I can hear is the hard, uneven thump of my heartbeat. But then, inside the tent, I hear the Sister speak and her voice is hoarser than tree bark.

“It will split into two. This future has not changed for you. It is as it has always been.” Her voice shifts into something severe and dark, menacing almost; “One will be sacrificed for the other to live.”

Silver cuts in, and there is a surprising edge to his voice, almost like desperation. “I have done all that I can to alter this course. I have made decisions against my better judgement, all to lead me back here, all to lead me off the path laid out before me.”

“You have done what you were always going to do. As it was always meant to be. As it was written in the stars, etched into the trees of the world your power came from. You belong to it as much as it belongs to you.”

“I belong to my God,” he snarls.

“And he belongs to the Lone God, and he belongs to the First Witch, and she belongs to us, and we belong to the world, and the world belongs to the stars, and the stars write our destinies. We are all slaves to our fates.”

“I won’t be.” Silver’s voice is the hiss of a blade being drawn. “I will change my future, forge a new path—and I will commit any atrocity to achieve this new end.”

I can almost hear the smile in the Sister’s voice; “And perhaps those choices have already been written for you.”

Silver doesn’t answer. Silence envelopes the tent and, for a long moment, I wait for them to break it. But no voices come. Only unease.

After a few heartbeats, I push apart the flap and slip into the tent—and it’s an exact replica of the one I was in before, other than the stone washtub in the far corner filled to the brim with leafy blankets that I suspect are not for the Sisters.

They were expecting us after all.

I stand by the entrance, uncomfortable. Neither the Sister nor Silver look up as I clear my throat.

Silver lounges in a hard wood chair. With his stretched out legs and reclined posture and tilted-back head and the cigarette loose between his fingers, he makes the chair look like a throne, and he is the lazy, dishevelled prince who looks down his bored face on all who come to him.

The Sister is crouched over a hollowed-out boulder. In the crevice, there is a crystal-clear pool of water that glitters with otherworldly secrets, and slowly turning on the water are some perfectly shaped leaves with their stems arched upwards.

She seems to be studying the leaves, seeing something that I don’t, studying them the way the Sea-Sister studied my face earlier and how she caressed the stone with my name engraved on it. Maybe this is how they see into the futures and destinies of all the people in the world—and they each have their tricks.

As he brings the cigarette to his parted, pink mouth, Silver turns his head slightly and his glittering grey eyes land on me. His lashes hang low as though he is in a daze. But since I heard their conversation before I entered—and the desperation in his tone—I learn that his aloofness is simply an act for my benefit. And it causes me to wonder, how often does he feign this detachment to sever us?

I march over to Silver with more confidence than what withers inside of me. My chin lifts and I look down my nose at him as I approach.

Purposefully, I step over his sprawled out leg and stop to stand between them.

“I need your blood,” I tell him. “I’m feeling weak.”

His gaze rinses me over. Clouds of thick, ashen smoke fog around him, and I fleetingly think of malicious performers in the Merchant Markets who make girls disappear—and never reappear. The wicked sort.

“I had a dizzy spell,” I lie and, for extra effect, I run the back of my hand over my forehead, as if to wipe away a sheen of sweat that doesn't exist.

Silver flicks the cigarette away. It lands in a hollowed-out wood cup with a sizzle.

I throw a worried glance at the Sister, but she doesn't seem put-out by that act. Her gaze is hooked on me.

Turning back to him, I flourish my hand with a gesture to rush him. He takes little notice and slowly—agonisingly slowly—sits upright in the chair. Then his arm loops out too quickly for me to avoid and he snatches up my waist and hauls me onto him. I spill over his lap, steadied only by his hands settling on my waist.

My face flushes hot.

I fix a scowl on him that, of course, has no effect on the unreadable mask on his face. He sinks his sharp, white teeth into the meat of his palm.

As he offers me his wounded hand, with fresh beads of blood spilling down his long fingers, his eyes gleam on me.

“Did you eat?” he asks.

I bury my teeth into the wounds as best as they fit and gulp back the thick, hot liquid. Shudders are quick to wrack me.

I force a guttural hum in answer.

He nods slightly, as though to himself, and then cuts his gaze to the table of refreshments on the table. “You should have tea, also.”

Again, I hum. I detach my mouth from his hand, my mouth pressed shut. I swallowed a gulp or two, but I keep a sickening coin-tasting amount in my mouth.

Silver gently manoeuvres me off of his lap before he pushes up from the chair, then he guides me back down to take the chair to myself. As he makes to pour me a cup of tea, I fish out the small phial from my breasts—the phial that the Sea-Sister gave me.

I’m all too aware of the scaly Sister watching me with bright eyes as I uncork the phial and, bringing it to my mouth, let Silver’s blood spill into it. I managed to get a decent amount; the phial is almost full when I’m stuffing the cork back into it, then sticking it down between my breasts.

Just as he turns around—a wood cup of tea in his hand—I’m fidgeting with the neckline of my dress, picking at the torn silvery lace. His gaze drops to my breasts and, very blatantly, he stares for a heartbeat. Then he offers the cup to me.

“Drink it,” he says. “It will make you feel better.”

I must look dubious, because the Sister adds, “The best tonics are made from the earth.”

To protect myself from potential disgust, I don’t ask what is in it. And, as I tentatively sip the warm tea, I’m not disappointed. Sure, it has an earthy taste, much like dirt, but that’s buried deep under the spring of cinnamon and the faint crispness of white apples.

Once I finish off the tea, Silver scoops me up from the chair. A squeal catches in my throat before he slides onto the seat, then brings me back down onto his lap.

I sit stiffer than a statue on a bench.

Before we reached the Sisters’ glade, he made it his business to reject me and build a stone wall between us, barbed with insults and sneers and cold glances. Now, he pours me tea and wants me on his lap, as though all that happened between our lying together and finding the Sisters didn't happen.

The Sister rises from her little hollowed boulder of leaves and secrets. Her barked skin crackles with her movements.

“You must stay the night,” she tells us, but her gaze seems to want to slide to me and linger. There’s a spark in the way she looks at me that prickles me with a touch of unease. “But come first light, you must be gone.”

Silver nods once, the point of his chin resting on my bony shoulder. If it’s uncomfortable for him, he doesn’t show it, because he keeps his chin there.

I cut a look at the Sister. “Thank you for letting us stay.” I’m a stickler for thank-yous and pleases, and I wonder if that will ever leave me the longer I am away from my family.

The Sister makes no acknowledgement of my gratitude. She takes the boulder and leaves us in the tent, alone.

I make to push up from Silver’s lap for the other chair behind where the Sister was crouched over the boulder. But I barely lift an inch before his arm snakes around my waist and he pins me in place, pulling me back against his chest—moulding our bodies together.

I relent and twist around to throw my legs over the side of the chair. I lean my cheek on his shoulder and look up at him.

“Is this your apology?” I ask. “Because I much would rather the words along with the gestures than the gestures alone.”

He looks ahead at the wall of the tent. His hold has loosened on me some, softened into something relaxed and familiar. His other hand lowers to rest on the heavy skirt of my dress, just below my knees.

I notice out the corner of my eye that his thumb bends to the side and caresses the odd birthmark there, as though his thoughts are on it and absentmindedly he can’t help but touch it. But I know that the faded black stain on his hand is no birthmark, since aniels are immune to those. Gods don’t feel the need to ruin a perfectly sculpted aniel with such things before breathing life into them and giving them some of their own power.

So I wonder where he got such a mark and what it means to his faraway thoughts.

Silver’s mouth presses together. Then, still looking ahead, he tells me, “It is not in my nature to apologise. And no, this is no apology gesture. You can always trust with me that everything I do is for a reason. There is always a purpose.”

“And so what was the purpose of what happened in the tent?” I stiffen on his lap and, slowly, peel my head away from his shoulder. I fix my glare on him. “And the purpose of what you said after? And the purpose now of making certain I have tea, then pulling me onto your lap and holding me?”

He flicks his gaze to me. The sight of his glassy eyes pangs my chest with something wretched. He looks more lost than I have ever felt. With that defeated look in his eyes, the creases on his untucked shirt, the mud stains on his clothes—he looks just like he belongs in the opium den I found him in.

“Sometimes, despite my better judgement, other forces overpower reason,” he replies, tone low and—dare I say—soft. “All I have done is fight what I want, fight my feelings. And still, I end up where I started. I end up with pain.”

A terrible rip shreds apart my insides.

To hear an ancient aniel speak so freely about pain and misery is otherworldly and I can’t quite wrap my head around it—around the glaring truth that he is, after all, a being with thoughts and emotions, however detached.

I’m certain I read too much into how he looks and what he does and how he says things, but Gods it sounds almost as though he does care something for me.

I study him. I manage to keep the battle raging on inside of me from breaking the mask settled on my impassive face.

“You might give me a headache,” I sigh. “With all this to-and-fro you make of me. I can’t make sense of you.”

“And so you shouldn’t,” he murmurs, a hollowness to the mask he wears, his raw face revealing all the misery he wants to hide from the world.

“Why shouldn’t I?” I challenge. “It is you who decides what to make people think and believe. You could—at least with me—try to be honest.”

Tell me you care about me, I know you do, just admit it and shed the shame I’m shrouded in.

He leans back against the chair’s spine. It creaks with the movement and, slowly, he runs his hand up my knee to rest on my thigh.

“It wouldn't be fair,” he finally says. “We will never be.”

I sit straight. “Says who? You?”

A small smile takes his lips, but it is desolate and bitter, like his eyes. “Your world is small, Kee. Therefore your life is too. To you, this is some grand adventure because you have known so little all your life. I,” he adds darkly, “am immortal. My life and world encompasses centuries, I have seen the first tree in the Capital sprout, long before the first vilas came to that part of the land. We are not mates,” he says and turns his suddenly severe gaze on me. “I am not your Daemon. But that does not mean I am not your monster.”

My face falls with my heart.

He pushes me off his lap, then slips away.

I sink back down on the chair as he marches over to the stone washtub. He rips out the blankets with more force than needed, and they spill all over the dirt floor.

After all that has happened between us, I shouldn’t mourn something that has never been and will never become. And after everything I learned from the Sister, I should loathe him, not want him, not crave his arms around me, ache for his body against mine.

He has lied to me—about too many things. He has tricked and deceived and used me. And that’s of what I know. How many other secrets does he keep hidden from me? How many other lies does he tell me to keep me with him for his secret motives?

And still...

I want him so much that it hurts me. Makes me feel like my heart has been ripped out of my chest, like my gut has been magicked to a river of tar.

And maybe that has me hating myself a little.

I press my mouth into a flat line as he moves to the aflame hearth. Pushed into the stone oven are hollowed boulder-buckets of water.

I watch as he removes them, one by one, then empties them into the washtub. Steam ribbons up soon after. The water foams, inviting me in. but Silver strips before I can make to unhook my shoulder straps, and he’s fast stepping into the hot bath with nothing covering him except marble skin pulled tight over rippling muscles and black ink snaking over him.

A moody scowl settles on my face.

He spreads his arms along the edges of the tub, and his bored gaze finds me. “Want to join me?”

My cheeks flood crimson. I almost say no, but then I catch the silvery streams rippling through his eyes, and a flutter takes in the inside of my chest.

The spot between my thighs tingles. I feel heat spreading there, and it rises up into my belly. Something about him in this moment—perhaps the definition of his muscles shimmering with the reflection of the bathwater, or the way the fire casts amber hues over his deep-black ink, or even the heated way he watches me, as though he could devour me right here and now—calls to me, and I find it hard to resist the thought of sharing a bath with him. There’s a romantic touch to that, I think. An intimacy that stretches beyond any ideas I once had about relationships.

These feelings are terribly new to me. I’m still manoeuvring my way through and around them. But they have their clutches deep into me, and it suddenly feels as though this might be my first time with him all over again.

We have come so far together. The pair of us make a fine team, I decide, and there is something cosmic in that, maybe. Or I’m just trying to reason my body’s betrayal with my own mind.

And I succeed.

I swallow back a lump in my throat.

He watches me, his eyes gleaming, as I slowly peel off the shoulders of my dress. I stand up to shimmy out of its restraints, and let it fall to the floor in a heap. Piece by piece, I slip off my undergarments. But even with his feverish molten eyes running me over, I’m not entirely comfortable with the nudity. Modesty and all that—not to mention, I’m certain he has seen better bodies in all his years.

I fold my arms over my bare breasts to hide them from his hungry gaze. My legs stick close together, blocking that too. I wander my way over to him.

Silver looks up at me as I come to a stop beside the washtub. His eyes stay glued to my face as I swing a leg around and slowly dip my foot into the water. The sensation of the heat is instant, and it uncoils relief throughout my body.

His lips quirk up at the corner, a shadow of a smile that tickles my belly.

I sink into the water between his spread legs. But before I can get settled, he pulls me against him, turns me around, then rests my back on his chest.

There is no love making to be had.

He holds me in the water for a long while before he takes a rag, dips it wet, then starts to run it over my skin. He washes me, and I get a whole new insight to intimacy.

He uses soap on my hair, brushes it through with his fingers, and ghosts his kips over my shoulder. The sensation tickles me and brings a smile to my mouth.

After we are both soaked through and thoroughly washed, Silver leaves the bath. I stay submerged in the cooling water, watching him as he lays out the blankets on the floor, beside the lit stone oven. A cosy spot that soaks up all the heat from the fire. One of the blankets is made from a beast’s fur, and he sprawls it out over the others, making for a comfortable layer to lie down on.

He sits, naked and proud, with his knee hiked up to his chest. And he watches me for a long while, the amber flames flickering over his porcelain face.

With heated cheeks, I join him on the fur. As I sink down to the spot between his spread legs, my blush crawls its way down to my chest.

His eyes flicker down. A blush of his own starts to rouge his sharp cheekbones, a deep shade to match his rosy lips.

Silver moves for me, slow and careful, predatory. His arm slips around my waist before he pulls me closer on the fur, until our bare chests are aligned.

My eyelashes flutter just as he grazes his lips over my lower one. I lean in, a sudden desperation to deepen the kiss. He smirks slightly and turns his cheek to me—my mouth plants on his skin and I blink once before a frown burrows between my brows.

I squeal as he scoops me up in his arms, then spins us around. He lowers me onto the ground, his body following mine. His knees settle between my spread legs, and we seem to fit together as perfectly as puzzle pieces. Though as puzzle pieces go, I know I’m danger of losing him at any moment. He never promised to be around for long.

And so I cherish the kiss he brings down on my tingling lips. I savour the moment that we share in all its beauty. Because that is what this is—beautiful.

A gasp catches in my throat. He captures my bottom lip between his teeth, and he bites. Hard. I wince, though deep in my belly, a flutter of excitement blossoms. And his mouth twists into a smile against mine.

I relax under him.

My hands turn lazy as they trail up his muscular arms, pinned on either side of my head. I trace his ink, my eyes fluttering shut as he releases my lip, then flicks out his tongue over the sore spots he left.

I run my hands over his shoulders, then down his tight torso. I feel his muscles ripple beneath my touch.

He dips down his head for my exposed breasts. Leaning on one arm, his free hand cups my breast, and he takes the other in his mouth. The sensation floods my core and I choke on a faint moan.

That small sound seems to spur him on.

His tongue flicks out over me, and my toes curl.

My eyes flutter open. I stare up at the arched ceiling of the tent, where the amber lights of the flames flicker and stretch, dispelling the shadows that dare gather. And my body tightens more and more as he works on my breasts, nipping them, kissing them, kneading them.

And then, my nipple is cold when his mouth leaves it. He doesn’t dwell on my breasts a moment longer. He’s layering himself over me again, his glistening lips brushing the length of my jaw.

His hands find my wrists. He pins them down on either side of my head. He roams his kisses down to the nook of my neck, making my toes clench.

The weight of him threatens to crush me as he inches down closer to me. A little bit, then just a bit more, until he’s moulded perfectly between my legs, and his excitement prods against my core.

He nudges against me.

A sigh ribbons from my lips and I arch my head back, exposing my neck to his mouth. Again, he nudges, and I feel myself part for him.

Then he’s pushing into me, and I can feel him gliding inside.

His name is the only thing on my lips, and I think I whisper it. In answer, a ripple runs through him, and I hear the faint growl of a moan take him.

He’s a perfect fit.

He slips out of me to the tip. He pauses—then slides back inside. His pace is fluid and wandering. He’s not in a hurry to end this, and I couldn’t be gladder. I let my eyes shut on the ceiling of the tent, and my body starts to relax against his. I relish in the light sensations dancing through me. It starts with tingles at the tips of my fingers; prickles on my toes; a swelling heat in my belly; and most of all, a tickled feeling where he rubs his pelvic bone against me. That spot is where the fire is, and it captures my breaths into hoarse, sighy sounds.

He moves again, making sure to angle for that sweet spot. A moan catches in my chest, and he responds with a guttural sound of his own.

I twist my wrists around in his hold, then bring them down until our hands meet, and our fingers entwine. A small smile slips onto my swollen lips as his pace starts to quicken.

He buries his face into the nook of my neck, his breaths coming out hot and sharp against my skin. His breathing grows heavier, hoarser, drowning out my moans.

I hesitate—unsure—for a beat, then I throw my legs around his waist. I hook my ankles together as he starts to piston in and out of me. I slide my hand out of his and reach for his head. I bury my fingers in the silken strands of his hair.

His pace is turning desperate.

My own fire is building inside of me, stacking up higher and higher. Then, he tilts his hips and drives in at a whole new angle—and a cry reaches up my throat.

He keeps up with the rhythm, his face contorting against the skin of my neck.

I cry out first. My back arches, my breasts pushing against his chest, and throw my head back. My eyes shut tight against the blinding sensations pulsing through me, like stars are exploding beneath my skin.

Silver grunts with a final thrust—and his grunt deepens into a long, drawn-out groan that tickles my insides. He draws out of me just as warmth spreads at my core. It’s a hot, sticky sensation, nothing too lovely and, as my pleasure ebbs away, my face wrinkles with a frown.

He slumps over me, a blanket draped over my body. His glistening forehead rests against mine, his mouth whispering hot breaths over my lips. His arms folded on either side of my head keep him from crushing me.

I run my hands over his back, feeling his muscles jump under my touch. I lean up and land a kiss on his lips. He returns it lazily.

I have the awful urge to speak lies to him, words that come from being fooled by moments like these. I shut my mouth on things I shouldn’t think or speak, and wrap my arms around him. He lies over me for a long while, catching his breath, finding his energy again.

And when he does, he rolls off of me, but keeps his arm heavy over my body, and holds me to him. The gesture brings a smile to my face and I bury myself against his body.

He holds me for a long while.

Courtesy of Silver, the blankets—tightly woven from the soft midnight-blue leaves of willow trees—are still laid out on the floor in front of the stone oven, even if all wrinkled and damp from our affair.

In all his naked beauty, he rests on his side, facing the heat of the dim fire, his eyes shut. But he doesn't sleep of course, since he is what he is. So I can hardly just creep out of the tent and hope he doesn't notice.

Behind him, I step into my tattered dress and wiggle my hips to glide it up my body. I loop my arms through the off-shoulder straps, making sure to pocket the phial of Silver’s blood in the skirt to keep it hidden from him.

His back still faces me as he grumbles, “Where are you sneaking off to?”

“Vilas business,” I answer automatically. It’s the excuse I fast came up with when he was holding me on the blankets after our bath. He can’t—and won’t—question my need to relieve myself.

He shifts on the throws, folding his arm to act as a pillow beneath the side of his head. The black marks that spear across his back glitter with the firelight that bounces off a dusty vase with an unusual fractured gloss to it, and I wonder if it’s made from a rare crystal found only in these Woods.

I study the tattoos on his back; the inky black wings that arch up from the dip of his spine to his shoulder blades; the foreign letters that curve and crack and shoot across his snow-white skin.

“Don’t leave the glade,” he warns, the gruffness still clinging to his voice. “The Woods are still not safe.”

For a creature who doesn't need sleep, he sure sounds exhausted. Maybe it’s all the aniel blood pumping through my veins, but I don’t feel the least bit tired.

“I know,” I mutter, almost moodily.

Does he like the sound of his own warnings coming from his mouth? He’s constantly reminding me of just how dangerous the Woods are to me, as if I would forget.

I say nothing more before I slip out of the tent—and the icy air outside hits me like a punch to the gut. I double over on instinct and wrap my arms around myself as if to shield my body from the frosty night air. A fog leaves my mouth with a shaky exhale and a shiver is quick to seize my shoulders.

I scurry to the farther small tent as fast as my stiff legs will carry me. I rush inside, not pausing to announce myself or knock on the wood post.

To my surprise, the three Sisters are crammed inside. I expected just the sea-creature Sister, waiting for my return. She is the only one who looks up as I come in. And her gummy smile is a familiar welcome.

She gestures to the chair beside the unlit hearth. “One final question, my child,” she says as I approach. She offers her webbed, green-tinted hand. “If you can afford the price.”

I sink into the chair. It creaks beneath my weight.

Still, the other Sisters do not look my way. The shadow-one sticks to the corner of the tent, the air around her skittering, but standing totally still (mind, I can’t actually tell if she’s looking at me or not, since she has no eyes).

The tree-one is tucked against the woollen wall, crouched over her favourite hollowed-boulder, watching the leaves sway and spin.

I shift on the chair, my feet shuffling against the thick mossy floor. “I have the payment,” I tell the Sea-Sister.

Her olive-green skin looks darker now that there is no fire in the stone oven to illuminate her, and I decide she definitely came from a swamp somewhere deep in the Woods.

My hand slips into the skirt pocket. A kiss of coldness touches my palm before I wrap my fingers around the phial.

“But before I give it,” I start and shoot an uneasy look at the Tree-Sister who stiffens upright and throws her mud-brown gaze at me. “Why do you need his blood?”

“Need,” echoes the swampy one, and she lowers her hand to her lap which is bound in what appears to be weeds. “We need for nothing. We want for little.”

“And yet you asked for his blood,” I challenge. A ripple of tension seizes my muscles. I do not like the way that the tree-bark one is staring at me, with more intensity than the sun burns the black roads. “I want to make sure you aren’t going to hurt him with it.”

The Sea-Sister sits up straight and blinks her eyes in from the sides. “Harm him?” she says, a stunned stillness to her tone. “We do not harm, sickly vilas. We observe the destinies, write them, watch from afar, and serve the earth and the stars. Beyond that, we aim for nothing else.”

“Then why do you want his blood?”

A small smile takes her chapped, wet lips. “With an aniel as old and powerful as your companion, there is influence that comes with his blood.”

My mouth flattens as a frown burrows onto my face. “Influence? What kind of influence?”

“Over destinies,” she tells me, an excited edge to her voice, and she leans forward in her chair. “His blood will allow us to shift someone’s direction,” she adds. “It also allows so many other possibilities. Blood with that amount of power can birth new life—new stars.”

She falls back on the chair with a one-shouldered shrug that seems totally alien on her, as though she is trying to mimic vilas behaviour to make me better at ease. Perhaps I’m too gullible, too easily played, but it works and my worries start to fade.

“And always,” she tells me, “it is best to have such a power source for a rainy day.”

I nod, almost to myself, and fish out the phial from my pocket. Before I offer it to her, I ask, “So you won’t—you can’t—use this to harm him?”

“Not even if we wanted to,” she assures me and offers her hand. “Silver’s destiny must become. As yours must, too.”

My hand balls into a fist around the phial. Within my chest, my lazy heart skips a beat, then throbs too strongly. “What is my destiny?”

“Ah.” Her swampy eyes slide to her Tree-Sister, who looks between us, then folds back over the water-filled boulder. Then she glances back to the swamp one and nods once.

“Your destiny has changed since the moment you entered these Woods,” the swampy Sister. Her head tilts to the side and weeds-for-hair falls over her bare shoulder. “A rare feat for a vilas,” she adds with a touch of admiration on her smiling face. “What your future was to become is no more, and another awaits you. That is the one that must become, so we—” she gestures to the two Sisters behind her. “—need not interfere.”

“But if my destiny didn’t change—”

“Then we would have altered it for you,” she says gravely. “Very few need our guidance, but we help when we must.”

“So why didn’t you help me?” I challenge and bring the phial closer to myself. I’m a fool and a silly woman, because for some reason, a light gloss of tears has started to wet my eyes. “Why did you make me his mate?”

She leans forward in the chair and stretches out her hand. Her webbed fingers spread around her black-spotted palm, and I know that this is my last chance to give over the phial. “It could be no other way, my child,” she says with more softness than what is in her firm gesture.

Hesitantly, I reach out my fist for her hand. Just above it—if I let my fingers unclench, the phial will drop onto her palm—I pause and look at her. “Will I still get the question I bargained for?”

Her mouth flattens into a thin line. “You have already asked so many.”

“But we hadn’t made the trade then, and you promised—”

She sighs a wet, soapy sound that bubbles in the back of her throat.

My face contorts with unveiled disgust.

Still, she nods once. “I know the question you will ask. And the answer is yes.”

“Yes?” I blink and slowly unclench my fingers from around the phial. “But are you certain you know the question I will ask?”

The tiny bottle falls onto her palm and she snatches her hand back. In a heartbeat, she chucks it over her shoulder and the shadow Sister catches it. It disappears into darkness.

“Ask it.” This voice comes from the Sister by the boulder. She has her hands buried deep in the water and the leaves swish around her rough wrists.

I let out a shaky breath and fold my hands on my lap. “Is Koal telling me the truth? Will I truly need his venom to survive? Without it, I will slip away into a coma until he finds me?”

The Sister doesn't look up from the boulder. “Yes.”

And my heart plummets to my watery gut. My shoulders slouch as I fall back against the spine of the chair; posture Arthur would cane me for.

When I last talked to the Daemon in my dreams, he said I had two weeks left before I needed his venom—two weeks in the world outside of the Wild Woods. Here, time moves so very differently, and I can’t quite catch up with it.

Who knows how much time I have left now?

“That means that all of this is useless,” I mutter to myself. “I’ll never make it to the First Witch in time—especially if I have to perform a favour for her before she even helps me.” I look up at the impassive face of the swampy Sister. “What am I to do?”

Her eyes blink in from the edges and she reaches out her slimy hand for mine, resting on my lap. She holds my fingers in her wet touch. “Be assured, you will meet the Witch, but in another life.”

My face falls.

My insides collapse, and I reel forward on the chair, a surge of breathless nausea hitting me, hard. My mouth falls open as I fold over on myself and stare, wide-eyed, down at the mossy floor.

In another life...

So all of this is useless.

I won’t find the First Witch, not in this journey, not with Silver. And definitely not before the need for Koal’s venom sweeps me into nothingness.

The Sisters offer me no comfort or other words to battle the utter loss that envelopes me.

In silence, broken only by my choppy breaths, I push up from the chair and stumble out of the tent. I find my way back to Silver.

He lies on his back, arm hooked under his head, and he tilts his face to watch me stagger toward him. He blinks, long and slow, and runs his gaze down me.

“Vilas business,” he echoes with an edge to his voice. “I have never heard a meeting with the Sister described in a such a way.”

I have not enough care to explain myself. I climb onto the blankets and sink down to curl up beside him.

“Just hold me,” I whisper.

He obliges without fight. He pulls the blanket over me. Once his chest turns to press against my back and his heavy inked arm drapes over my frail body, my face twists with silent sobs.

In seconds, I can see nothing but the clouds of tears. And I know I need to fall asleep somehow, in this tangled mess draped over me. I need to see Koal, to plead with him to give me more time. Because I am absolutely certain now that it will be his venom that will be the end of me.

And then what will become of that? Will Koal somehow find a way to retrieve me from the Woods if he learns where I am? Will Silver return me to the Daemon himself once I am lost to the coma?

This ‘other life’ could very well be the one served in the Underworld, ruled over by the Daemon who has some false claim over me—a claim forged by these wretched Sisters.

‘It could be no other way.’

This is the destiny they meant for me. No matter what I did, what I do, I’m doomed to end up back where I started.

My last hope is Koal—and how the irony of that twists my gut and summons fresh tears to my clenched eyes. Only he might save me. I just need the right tools to barter with.

And I think I know what to use.

Koal doesn’t know the truth—that we are truly mates, and the aniel blood that once survived in my body is not what drew him to me. He still suspects otherwise. And to correct him would mean to thwart any flicker of hope I might have left.

I’ve always believed that the best—and worst—way to fall asleep is through weeping. Something about it lulls me into slumber faster than any day’s exhaustion can do.

And so, it isn’t long before I’m drifting off in Silver’s loose hold.

In my dream, Koal is waiting for me.

Again, we are in the burnt-white place of clouds and nothingness. He stands an arm’s reach away from me, shed from his cloak and vest. A simple black shirt and black breeches cover his body—darkness to match those eyes that are each like bottomless wells. Yawning chasms, waiting to suck me in and trap me forever.

There is no welcoming to happen. I throw a dull look around at the murky clouds and snaking vapours that tangle around our legs.

“Couldn’t come up with a different setting this time?” I ask with more snark in my voice than I can afford.

His smile is small and tight. Dangerous.

A shudder uncoils down my spine. I ball my hands into fists at my sides.

“The landscape of our meetings is not of my invention,” he tells me. “It is where I am. When we met in the Underworld, that is where I was. When we met in your boudoir, that is where I was. And here—” He runs his gaze around the vapours. “—I have remained for some time.”

I kick away a snake of cloud that dares wrap around my leg. It splits in two and wavers once before it dissipates completely.

“And where is here, exactly?” I ask as I nudge away more smog tails. “The depths of your bland, uninteresting mind?”

His face doesn't crack with anger like I expected it to. He simply watches me from beneath long, dark lashes, entirely unperturbed.

“I am on the border of a place where I cannot exist,” he tells me. “A place that, to me, has never existed and will always stretch beyond my eternal life.”

I frown as my mouth flattens into a slanted line. “Whatever that means.”

Perhaps I’m fuelled by the false bravery of being in a dream with him—and so he cannot harm me—but a part of me is simply worn down by all this round-about chat from these higher creatures. Aniels, Sisters, Daemons; all talking in riddles when it suits them, and I’m never able to follow it well enough.

“How long do I have now?” I cut to the chase, tired of riddles.

Slowly, his head tilts to the side—a fault in the totally stiff posture of his body, his arms straight at his side, the heels of his boots nearly touching, the rigid set of his legs and spine. He reminds me of a God in this way. Mind, I’ve only ever seen Gods in paintings, but they all stand with such an immortal stiffness, never slouching, never letting breath shift their shoulders or expand their chests. Totally un-vilas.

He considers me for a silent moment. “Eight days.”

Startled, I blink at him and let a breath loosen from my parted mouth. “But it was only in my last sleep that I had two weeks!”

“I do not control time—especially not where you are.”

He takes slow steps toward me and sinks his hands into his breeches pockets. The mist clouding at our feet disperses for him.

“And wherever you are, my troublesome mate,” he adds and reaches for a loose lock of my hair. He tangles it around his finger, his gaze hooked on the burnt-yellow hue, “time must be moving very, very slow indeed.”

A ball of fright swells in my throat. I’m off the Never-ending Path, I’m in the Sisters’ glade—and time there must be speeding by faster than a horse-pulled carriage on a downhill road.

I try to gather my thoughts, quick. “So you don’t control time, but you do control our mateship.”

The strand of my hair is coiled tight around his finger, so firm that it’s pressing into his honeyed-brown skin. He runs the pad of his thumb over its texture, his haunted eyes on me. “Do I?”

I look up at him from beneath my lashes, a weary look sweeping over me. “I need you to do me a favour.”

A small smile snakes onto his pink mouth.

I go on, “You need to delay this ... venom transaction.”

The smile tilts up his cheek and creates a dimple on him that I’ve never seen before. A shallow shadow to sweeten his deceptive face. “Oh,” he starts and gives a slow nod, still winding my hair around his finger. “I see.”

I mimic him with a nod of my own, sharper and more urgent. “Yes, it needs to be delayed. If I have more time, I can prove that I am not your mate. And,” I add enthusiastically, my wide eyes fixed on his horridly beautiful face, “I can even help you find the aniel you are looking for. I can help you find your true mate. All I need is some more time.”

He hums, that almost sweet smile still glued to his mouth. “That would indeed be very helpful.”

Spurred on, I feel a jump of hope leap up inside of me.

“Mm,” he starts and unwinds my hair from around his finger. His hand grazes over the curve of my chin, then brushes up to my cheek. He cups my face, tilting my head back to align us, and his eyes bore deep into mine.

The heat of his breath feels so real against my lips.

“For a kiss, I might allow this,” he drawls, and he runs his thumb over my cheek, tugging at the thin skin beneath my eye.

My jaw clenches.

The urge to recoil from him seizes me. Him slapping me flashes in my mind, and all those rumours of Daemons haunt me in an instant.

And yet, I have little choice—not that it matters now, because he lowers his mouth to mine and ... pushes. His lips press so firmly against mine that my teeth start to ache and a frown creases my face.

Against the pain of my bite, he growls, “Are you such a fool, vilas? I need you returned to me before I learn the truth of my mateship. I need to taste your blood once more to be certain that you are not the one I seek. And,” he adds, his fingers digging deep into my flesh, sure to leave bruises perhaps even beyond the dream. I wince, but it’s muffled by the pressure of his mouth on mine. “Even if it was within my power to free you from the need of my venom, I would not. You have caused me more trouble than any mate in our histories. Did you think that your actions would pass without punishment?”

I squeal as he suddenly throws me away. My neck threatens to snap backwards as I stumble to steady myself.

Wild-eyed, I glare up at him, my chest heaving with released breaths. But I’m forced to keep moving away as he advances on me, a deadly darkness boiling in his eyes.

“Your punishment has already begun,” he warns me and, with a flick of his hand, a thick cloud suddenly appears to the side—a cloud that looks remarkably like Olivia’s face. “Did you truly think I would let her live after what she did?”

My breath catches in my throat. I slap my hands to my mouth as the cloud starts to sever, cracking across her face, and from the gaps a thick, crimson liquid starts to ooze out.

A sickly wave washes over me. “You didn’t,” I mutter, muffled by my clammy palms.

“I am a Daemon,” he growls. “No vilas stands against me and survives. Your sister is dead. Your mother belongs to my Underworld. And I have terrible plans for your aniel.” His lashes lower over onyx eyes. “Who else must die before you return to me?”

I stumble backwards with every determined step he takes closer to me. “But if I can sever this bond between us, then should you want to harm me? You don’t want this—” My trembling hands flourish in the small space between us. “—any more than I do.”

He stops. His eyebrow arches. And his eyes suddenly gleam with a dreadful pleasure.

A dark smile slips onto his mouth. “And so you are here,” he says.

A bucket of cold spills down my insides. I freeze. “Wh-where?”

That dreadful smile chills my bones. He gestures to the space around us, to the clouds and vapours and mist. He echoes his earlier words with a mocking edge; “On the border of a place where I cannot exist. A place that, to me, has never existed and will always stretch beyond my eternal life.” His smile spreads into a wide grin. “The Wild Woods.”

“No.” The word spills out of me in a breathless rush. “No, that’s not where I am—”

He turns his smile to the severed, bleeding cloud that was Olivia’s face. “For a time, I suspected it was magick from your aniel that kept you hidden from me. But then your aniel’s God assured me that he has no such ability. And so I came here.” He turns to face me, the smile faded to a whisper of a triumphant smirk, and he buries his hands in his pockets. “I came to the Wild Woods.”

“You—you’re here?” I stumble back, my arms limp at my sides, and my chest heaving against the bodice of my dress. “You have been here for ... a whole week?”

“I cannot step foot in these Woods,” he tells me, yet the dark look on his shadowed face hardly lets me feel any hope at what he says. “But I can haunt the shores,” he adds. “I can send others in to find you. And when you emerge—which you will—I will be there, waiting.”

A scream rips out of me as he lunges for me.

I’m tackled back onto the thickness of the clouds. In a blink, his head reels back and his face contorts, spinning me right back to Silver’s basement when Koal first attacked me. And just like then, his face breaks away into a yawning abyss of total darkness and sharp teeth.

He comes down for me.

And I jerk awake on the blankets, screaming so hard that my face pulses with too much blood, and my throat rattles.

Silver shoots up to sit at my side. His arms throw around me and pin me to his bare chest. But it all means nothing, because—

Koal is coming for me.

That night, I don’t find sleep again—and even if I was tempted to be lulled away, I would have fought it tooth-and-nail. But my panic keeps me awake all through the rest of the night, with Silver holding me on the throws.

Eventually, dawn is drawing close, and still, Silver has not asked about my dream. And after all the things he has kept from me, lied to me about, I can’t bring myself to tell him about Koal, that he has sent in others to track us down, or that he will be waiting for me when I finally leave the Woods.

I decide that we have a well enough distance between us and the shore, so we keep a good head-start. Maybe enough to outrun whoever Koal has sent, if the Woods don’t kill them before they find us. And as for him waiting on the shore—that’s something I can tell Silver after the First Witch. I can’t risk Silver deciding to go back on his word and not help me.

I need him to finish this journey.

If I can even manage to finish it.

There is always what the Sisters told me. I’ll meet the First Witch, but in another life. So I’m practically a dead-woman walking at this point. Either way, Koal is destined to catch up with me, or I’m destined to fall to the need for venom and collapse on the Wood floor, never to get up again. Either way, I’m destined to fail.

And still, I can’t give up. I just can’t. It is impossible. How can I move one leg in front of the other, down the path back the way we came? Return to the shore and find Koal and embrace a future of pain and torture for the rest of my existence?

I can’t accept that fate.

I won’t.

At the very least, I’ll go down fighting.

For the first time since entering the Wild Woods, I see dawn. Faint brushes of pink and orange creep into the hollow blue of the sky above.

My neck is arched back as I gaze up at the wispy clouds seeping over the spilled mix of colours. Sun-rays pierce out from the leafy hats of the trees and sting my squinting eyes.

Beside me, Silver uses the tip of his dagger to pick out crumbs of dirt from his neat fingernails. His head is cocked to the side, his impassive face focused on his menial task, utterly disinterested in the first dawn we have seen in such time.

The Sisters do not come out into the glade to bid us farewell. And they do not have to tell us when the Never-ending Path is ready for us, as mere moments later, Silver tucks the dagger back into the rear of his waistline, and hoists the bag straps over his shoulder.

“It is time,” he tells me, his leg kicked out in front of him in a too-relaxed stance. We are about to find the Never-ending Path, be thrown back into the wickedness of the Wild Woods, and he looks as though he is standing amongst the markets in the Capital, tired of his surroundings.

Rubbing the ache at the back of my craned neck, I trace his gaze to the mouth of the clearing, where we came in from. The once-muddy-crimson trail there, which winds through the trees and leads to the path, has lightened to a red so bright that it looks to be lacquered with fresh blood.

The trail is beckoning us to it, eager to take us back to the path.

Silver secures the straps over his shoulder and positions the bags to fall just behind his hip. I watch as he takes a moment to light a black cigarette with a match he strikes over the clean side of a mossy boulder.

Evidence of our night together is all over him, like cologne.

He looks ever the dishevelled prince. Dressed in fine breeches and boots and a shirt, yet looking as though he is a noble who has just come from a fight in a gambling den. His shirt is unbuttoned down to the deep line that marks the middle of his chest, one of the legs of his breeches is untucked from his riding boot. Pink lips have turned red and are swollen from a night of kissing.

My mouth tingles at the memory.

As he dips his head, face shrouded in cigarette smoke, his hair shifts forward in a tousled mop. Strands form natural waves and fall over his milky-white forehead. There’s a particularly curled strand that sticks to his temple, as though glued with a drizzle of rain, that I ache to reach out for and tuck away. And though I resist the urge to touch him, I wonder why shouldn’t I? If I’m living on borrowed time, soon to meet my destined end, then should I not give in to the temptation of Silver? What harm would there be in allowing myself to relish in the little bubble we share?

But then Silver starts for the trail, and my unravelling thoughts are severed like puppet strings.

Rushing to catch up with the cloud of smoke that snakes around him, I keep pace beside him. There would be silence between us if it weren’t for the soft thumps of the bags on his hips or the crinkling sound of his cigarette burning.

When we reach the red trail, glowing brighter than the rising sun, I pause to look back at the tents. The Sisters are hidden from sight. We have no more business with each other, and so we are already forgotten.

Silver breaks into my thoughts. His cold hand wraps around my wrist loosely, luring my gaze to him. He does not have to say anything—I know he expects me to leave this glade behind, though it felt so safe and full of answers; almost as though if I stayed there, Koal could never find me.

I slide my wrist out of his grip, and his hand falls away. I follow him onto the trail and—the moment we step boots on the packed red dirt—the light flickers once, twice, then vanishes entirely. The trail is once again an ordinary muddy-brown crimson, like dried blood stains.

Our muddy boots squelch on the trail through the close embrace of the white-trunked trees. My dress is torn to tatters, my slumped posture betrays the weariness that this journey has deposited on me, and—as I glance down at the skinny arms hanging at my sides—I’m all too aware of the weight I have lost since coming to the Wild Woods.

Perhaps this is what kills me. I wasn’t meaty enough to begin with. Before taking this journey, dresses hung off me where they should have hugged me; I had seamstresses take in my garments at the waist and bosom, and still it was never enough to give the illusion of curves.

Now, I wonder that—if I ever return home—my dresses will even hold to my body. They might just fall to the floor in a heap, slip off my arms, and pile at my feet.

But the toll of this journey is more than weight and health. I feel it already—it has changed me. Before now, I would have never fumbled with anyone out of wedlock, especially not an aniel. I would fuss over mud on my boots, sleeping on blankets laid out over the floor, rips in my dress. And perhaps, before now, I would find it within myself to care more about the deaths in my family; my mother, and possibly my sister.

Mind, I expected Mother’s death for many years. So I cannot expect it to pack a punch strong enough to knock me into a fit of despair. Perhaps I mourned her long ago.

But Olivia...

Now that I know Koal has told the truth about so much, it decides that he is being honest about this too. Yet, I cannot summon enough care to grieve her. Her single act of helping me escape Koal—even though it was most certainly self-motivated to steal the splurge of fine things that Silver bought me—does not dispel all the cruelties she has thrown at me my whole life. One act of aid does not tip the scales. And so, I feel nothing but a stunned numbness at the news of her death.

“What happened last night?” The crispness of Silver’s tone cuts the air between us.

He throws me a side-glance and flicks the smoked-down cigarette off the trail. It lands in a small, murky puddle.

I loosen a sigh.

So much happened last night—with the Sisters, with Koal ... and with us. Last night was a moment of almosts. It was a night of almost-love between Silver and I; a night of almost-capture from Koal; and a night of almost-ends with the Sisters.

It seems my life is built on almosts.

Of course, despite the shift between Silver and me, I keep my wits about me. He’s lied to me so often about so much. He omitted the truth about the venom, he’s only with me to serve his own mysterious purpose, he didn’t tell me what the Sisters said to him—though, I’m not certain he owes me this truth—and he has drip-fed me mistruths to keep me on this journey with him. All down to the aniel blood that was within me in his basement. It all comes down to that. And since he offers me no explanations, no answers, how am I expected to offer answers to him?

I refuse to dance to his tune.

I am not the girl I was back in the Capital, backed into a corner by the sheer terror that an aniel strikes through me, forced into appointments and dresses and balls that he wishes me to attend.

With so little life left in me, I am my own woman now. And so my truths are mine alone. I decide what to share.

I tell him the revelation from last night which fills me with the most disinterest, the one thing he cannot use against me when the time comes for our ‘paths to fork’, as the Sisters foretold.

“Olivia is dead.” I glance up at him, at the porcelain profile of his face, the lack of surprise or empathy that a creature like him wears. “Koal told me in my dream. But—” I add as an afterthought to explain away my moment with the Sisters he rightly suspects happened. “—the Sisters confirmed it. I first heard of her death from them.”

He keeps his unreadable gaze ahead. “So that is where you went off to last night? Luring out truths from the Sisters.”

In answer, I hum curtly.

He looks at me out the corner of his eye. “And what was the price for this revelation?”

A sudden wave of vertigo hits me. I stumble a step or two before Silver snatches me by the waist and steadies me. I wave away his hands with a flourish of my own and right myself.

“Tripped over my dress,” I fib and swallow back a singe of bile that dares creep up my throat. “And as for prices, there was none.”

His eyebrow arches. He sinks his hands into his pockets as I continue down the trail. I can feel the burn of his gaze on my cheek.

I lift a shoulder in a half-shrug, no energy to muster for the full gesture. “Suppose they took pity on me.”

His lashes lower as he runs me over with his gaze. “Why should they pity you?”

“That,” I enunciate, “is what worries me.”

The suspicion is still etched into his face; it is in the tilted, flattened line of his mouth, the droop of his eyelids as he studies me, and the stiffness of his posture.

Maybe he misreads me. The detachment I wear is not only for Olivia. Despite having a gulp or two of his blood last night, the fresh troubles that the Sisters and Koal brought me have chipped away at my resources. I feel as though I have gone a full day and night without a drop of remedy.

We have not long left the glade, come from rest, and already my legs feel as though they are made from whale-blubber, my spine refuses to hold straight, and it takes all my energy to just keep walking at Silver’s wandering pace.

“So your sister’s death comes as a surprise to you?” he presses.

My face tilts with a semi-frown. “I hadn’t given it much thought, in all honesty. Perhaps that is shameful of me, but I thought only of myself.”

“If she helped you escape him,” he says, “I would expect that her death was a gruesome one.”

I just nod.

He looks at me for a heartbeat, at my blank face. “Are you not sad?”

I shake my head and the gesture is quick to turn my mind to mush. I clench my fists against the creeping of dizziness taking over me. “It’s hard to mourn someone who has been so vicious to me my whole life. I know how that sounds—I sound like a dreadful person.”

His smile is sincere, and it suggests that the wall he built between us is dissolving, stone by stone. “Perhaps. But I always found good mortals to be so terribly dull.”

My mouth tilts with a forced smile.

He presses it no further. And I offer no more answers.

We find the Never-ending Path in silence.

I’m hardly on it for a heartbeat before a hit of dizziness knocks me clean off my feet, and I crumple to the crimson stone.

In that split, quick moment before I drift away, I am flooded with a sudden sense of understanding—this is how I will die. Of all the threats that face me in this world, it is my sickness that will take me in the end.

And I am not at a loss at the cosmic joke here at my expense.

I come to with the flesh of Silver’s palm pressed against my bloody lips. His essence seeps into my mouth, flooding my tongue and gums with the thick, bitter taste of liquified coins.

My head is propped up on his lap and, as I lazily swallow the light stream of blood hitting the back of my throat, I blink up at him. His face is fringed by the gaze of my dropped lashes.

As he looks down on me, his eyes are fervent beneath the kohl-darkness of his lashes. At the sight of the polished sheen of his bright eyes, my heart aches in my chest and the understanding strikes through me like a spear.

He cares for me. And he knows, as well as I do, that the care of an aniel is something to take with caution. Even if, deep down, I want him to adore me. It’s a bitter-sweet moment, a hot cup of coffee filled with sugar, the taste of his blood in my mouth sweetened by the passionate look in his eyes.

My bloody mouth twists into a faint smile.

A breath ribbons out of him and, as he takes his hand away from me, his shoulders slump with a hit of relief. His legs relax beneath my head.

He doesn't push me off of him. Instead, his wounded hand finds its way to my cheek and grazes my skin with the same tenderness I found in him last night.

“I scared you,” I mumble, and a bubble of blood swells at the corner of my mouth. He drags his thumb over the wet skin there and wipes all the red away.

His lashes lower as he watches his thumb stroke over my lips. He avoids looking at me as he answers, “I could not rouse you.”

Without the energy to move, I can only blink up at him with my hooded eyes still wrapped up in a daze. “How long was I out?”

His mouth presses into a line. “Perhaps a half-hour.”

A hum vibrates my throat, slick with blood. I force back another swallow, but it does little to rinse away the slimy feeling.

Keeping my head on his lap and his hand loose on my cheek, he drags the satchel closer to his side. I study his focused, grim face as he fishes through the bag with his free hand then pulls out the leather-skinned flask. He pops off the lid with a flick of his thumb.

I part my lips as he brings the flask to me. It’s instant relief as the stream-water pours into my mouth. I swallow as much as I can before he then swirls the flask around in a circle, making sure to wet all around my lips and mouth. It washes away much of the blood.

He sets the flask aside on the cobblestones.

Though the panic has drifted out of him, he still could not be any more beautiful than he is in this moment. He looks like some avenging creature of the Gods, a saviour of sorts, with the moonlight shedding a glowing halo around the blond spill of his head, and casting a magickal sheen to his pearlescent skin.

Perhaps it’s the daze following my fainting spell, or the sudden rush of his blood pumping through my veins and healing all the wrongs within me—whatever it is, the questions just falls from my lips; “Do you wonder what it would have been like if we did not come here?”

His brows knit together. “There is no need to wonder. You would have been taken by Koal.”

The small smile sticks to my damp mouth. I shake my head weakly and when I speak, my voice is slick with the slime of his blood; “I mean, what would have happened if I was never destined for a Daemon. If I was never claimed, and they never came to the Capital. If I simply wore the dress you had made for me, and I attended the Tribute of the Daemons without a hiccup—what would have happened then?”

A striking, tender gesture breaks his usual stony demeanour; he strokes a strand of wet hair away from my cheek and tucks it behind my ear. Where his fingertip travels, there leaves an icy trail.

I don’t need to explain myself. He knows precisely what I am asking.

“I would have shown you what life could be,” he says after a long moment. “And you would have soon come to realise that you need not have a marriage to be cared for—that you should want more out of life, since you have so little left of it.”

My smile fades. “Marriage is still something I want,” I tell him. “It means that, in my final days, I won’t be thrown out on the street, or left to rot in my bedchamber. I will go in peace.”

“Your death will not be pleasant either way,” he says. “But perhaps I might have made it more comfortable for you.”

A guttural, tired hum is my answer.

Silver peels a single strand of hair from the corner of my eye. He says, with a bitter edge to his tone, “Then, I was interested in you. More than I perhaps cared to admit even to myself. But now,” he adds, and the bitterness pinches his mouth into a frown, “that echo of feeling has grown into something more. Something dangerous.”

I’m suddenly reminded all over again what he is. Dangerous. The only way it can be with an aniel and a vilas.

And with that, he has severed our wishful conversation in two. The tenderness of his touch leaves me, and instead, he loops his forearms under my shoulders, and hoists me upright.

I stumble to catch my balance, the daze of unbalance clinging to me with desperation. For a while, I fall back to lean against his chest.

I wait for the dizziness to pass. When it does, his arms slip away from me; he sweeps up the bags from the cobblestone and, with a light hand on the small of my back, leads me up the path.

Even with his blood fresh in my body, I slow us down. And it terrifies me that his blood, straight from his body and not in a watered-down remedy, is not doing enough to give me the strength I need. This journey is killing me.

In the end, I can only hope that it’s worth it.

Silver pushes us along for as long as I can manage. It isn't until the toes of my boots are starting to drag along the path that he finally relents and stops to make camp for us.

First, he builds the fire. I watch him blow a single flame onto the stacked twigs and bush with much less amazement than the first time I saw him perform this small trick of magick. Is it possible to become too accustomed to the power of aniels and the unimaginable tasks they can do? If so, that is yet another danger to face me—forgetting the truth of what he is at his core.

There is no idle chat or further talk of what-could-have-beens. He pitches the tent and I devour a honeyed-ham sandwich. The soothing crackles of the fire are all that fills the amber-tinted air between us.

But then, Silver parks himself beside me by the fire, closer than he tends to get. That one gesture tells me that the wall between us is still crumbling down. And I don’t think either of us can stop it now.

I’ve moved onto a second sandwich. Fainting always turn me into a ravenous beast who could devour a whole pig to herself. And after dizzy spells, I crave sugar. Caramel sticks or white-plum jam or brown sugar-cubes. Silver answers my prayers—in the magickal satchel, I find just the treat I’m after; a chocolate pastry buried deep down in the pile of sandwiches.

As I tuck into the hard, thick pastry, I watch him out the corner of my eye. His leg is propped up and, resting on his knee, his hand hangs limp. Only, his thumb runs over the strange mark that kisses the skin at the side of his knuckle.

The gesture steals me back to the shore, when we made camp before coming into the Wild Woods.

“...and I have been cursed by the First Witch.”

Out the corner of my eye, I catch his gesture—he runs his thumb over the dark mark on his hand.

My mind churns with the reminder of his curse—and of the strange mark on an aniel who should wear no blemishes on his perfect, porcelain skin.

Through a mouthful of flakes and chocolate-spread, I ask, “Does that have anything to do with the curse from the First Witch you mentioned?”

His thumb stops moving instantly.

He flexes his hand once before he draws it away and, leaning back, presses it against the cobblestone to support himself.

“It does,” he admits grudgingly.

I throw the empty paper wrapping onto the flames. I watch it burn.

“Will you tell me what the curse is?” I ask, careful to keep my voice light, since I remember all-too-well his reaction when I pried into the secrets of the prison and who he might know there. His past is a dangerous glade to pass.

But he surprises me. The softness of his voice is distanced with an echo, like a whisper coming down a jagged, dangerous cavern; “One will be sacrificed for the other to live.”

The Sister said the same thing to him in the tent. The way it sounded, he has been trying to fight this fate—this curse—for much of his life. But this fate is immovable.

I study his stony profile, the detached sheen of his eye. “Is that what she cursed you with? A sacrifice? Of who?”

His mouth presses into a line. A faint crease burrows into his forehead, and he says nothing—he offers no answers.

I turn back to the flames. “How did you manage to offend an Original so terribly that you wound up being cursed?”

“It was a long time ago,” he says softly. “Who can hardly remember?”

His lie hangs in the thickening air between us. But pushing the matter will only wind up one way—me, on the end of his viciousness. And so I watch the flames and leave him to his silent thoughts.

After some time, the air of the Woods shifts to a frostiness that brings me closer to the fire. My eyelids start to droop and, ever slowly, my proper posture fails me and I’m slumped over.

It’s then that Silver scoops me up from the path and helps me to the tent. I should fight it—I don’t wish to see Koal again so soon—but I fall to sleep within moments.

Koal is inescapable.

Koal waits for me aboard a pirate ship. And it’s a ship I recognise even through the cloudy haze of this dream.

Long legs stretched out, he sits on the very same step I occupied for most of my time on this very vessel. He wasn’t lying when he said he had tracked me; and he found the means I took to get here.

Between his long fingers, he rolls a burning ember that should sear his skin. But his light-brown skin is perfectly unmarked by the heat.

He doesn't look up as I wander to the edge of the ship. I lean my hip against the wall and fold my arms over my chest.

“My sources are on your trail,” he tells me, watching the ember roll and jump and flick over his fingers. “It appears that your trusted companion is not so trustworthy after all.”

A frown tugs my brows together. “Meaning?”

Koal flicks the ember up and, with a swipe of his hand, steals it out of the air. “He is leaving clues behind.”

My heart dips in my chest. I force my face to remain impassive. “You expect me to believe that?”

“It would only be so easy to cover one’s track in those Woods,” he tells me and pushes up from the stairs. “Particularly for an aniel such as Silver.”

He wanders towards me with deliberately slow steps.

He holds up the ember, pinched between two fingers. “So why, in all the spots you have camped, are these left behind?”

I cut my gaze to the ember. My eyes narrow on it. “That could be from anyone making camp in the Woods.”

“Oh, yes.” Koal flicks it overboard, into the grey mist that surrounds us. “As so many mortals are wandering those Woods.” A dark smile takes his mouth as he leans his head in closer to me. His voice drops to a mocking whisper, “Aniels do not need fire. Vilas do. And aniels do not leave trails—unless they want to be found.”

Ice starts to run through my veins. I feel the blood leaving my face as I fight to keep the fear from flickering over me.

I swallow, hard. “I believe nothing you say.”

Koal’s smile darkens and he arches an eyebrow above a pitless black eye. “Because I have fed you so many lies?” There is knowledge in the way he mocks me, like he knows much more about me and what I’m up to than I do; like he’s ten steps ahead of me now, just waiting for me to catch up. “What mistruths have I given you, vilas? What lies have I told?” His smile twists into a wicked grin as he adds, “None. But can the same be said for him?”

He turns to look at the clouds at the edge of the ship, where the sea should be. The haze flitters and skitters for a heartbeat before it settles into flatness, like a large pane of glass that faces us. And on the misty glass, the ghost of Silver stands with a yellow-haired woman—no, an aniel.

Her pale skin shines just as brightly as Silver’s does, her heart-shaped face as dazzling as the Gods’, and her blue eyes gleaming sharper than raw stones cut from a cave.

Koal leans in closer, his hot breath tickling the line of my jaw. He brushes the whisper of a kiss over my prickling skin. “Has he not told you about his beloved Luna?”

I cannot tear my eyes away from the ghosted images on the glass-cloud. They shift unnaturally for a moment, like one portrait replaced by another, until they stand face-to-face, gazing at each other as though they each hold the others’ heart in their hands.

Silver’s arms slip around her—Luna’s—waist and he draws her closer. Playfully, she bites his bottom lip, hard enough that two drops of blood like rubies fall down his chin. A crooked smile steals his face and the sight of it is enough to stop my heart dead in my chest.

Who in the Underworld is she?

I suddenly feel ill.

My hands slip onto the barrier of the ship and hold tight. My feet are firmly planted on the deck, as if to fight off the sickening waves that roll over me. All the while, Koal ghosts his cruel, triumphant smile over my cheek.

“Daemons and Gods are pitted against each other in vilas stories,” Koal whispers darkly and moves around to stand at my back. His hands roll onto the edge of the ship beside mine, caging me in. “It does not suit your tales of horror that we, the Daemons, are long acquainted with the Gods. I am no stranger to the walls of their palace.” His voice drops with his lowered head and he grazes his mouth over the shell of my ear. “I have seen many things in the Palace of the Gods.”

Just as he says it, the image on the glass shivers—and it warps into something of a baths, not unlike the one in the Capital, only much, much grander. This entire baths looks to be carved from the rarest of marbles that glows just like the skin of aniels, and the water shines bluer than the depths of the sea.

In the smallest bath—the cosiest one, most definitely reserved for lovers—Silver reclines in the water. His bare arms, devoid of the tattoos he now wears, are spread out over the wall of the bath. He looks perfectly at ease; or he would, if it wasn’t for his burning gaze.

He watches Luna peel off the straps of a dress. The thin, silky material falls to a heap at her feet, and—flames ignite on my face. She is stark naked. I ought to look away, turn my head to the side and protect her modesty.

But to the Underworld with her and her modesty!

A seductive smile, one I can only ever dream up, takes her full mouth. She steps into the bath, slinking closer to Silver like a damned predator. And he is an all too willing prey.

I almost forget about Koal until he murmurs into my ear; “Do you know what happened to his darling Luna?”

I blink and, in that moment, the glass-cloud thickens. The images fall away and are suddenly replaced with a bulbous chunk of mist.

Koal’s hands slide onto mine and hold them down onto the barrier. “She vanished,” he whispers darkly. “Some say into those very Woods he took you into.”

My hair rustles as he lowers his mouth down to the corner of my jaw. He plants a dangerous kiss there that I’m certain is filled with poison and threats. And still, I feel nothing other than the absolute pain of what he means for me to see.

Silver loves another.

Koal’s smile fades against my skin. “Now tell me,” he murmurs, “do you still trust your aniel?”

I’m given no moment to think of an answer, to come up with some explanation for what he has shown me. It takes one strangled heartbeat for it all to fade away, and I’m left standing alone in an empty dream of mist.

Koal abandons me here. He need not stick around. He’s accomplished what he came into my dream for. He has planted and bloomed doubt.

My mind battles between two moments—when Silver cradled my head on the path after I fainted, the panic in his eyes when I awoke, the talks of what we might have been had fate been kinder to me; And the way he revered Luna in his arms, in the baths, and in his secrets. He doesn’t look at me like that.

Koal meant to blossom the buds of suspicion within me. And he succeeded.

As I trail Silver up the Never-ending Path, between the tight embrace of the white-trunked trees and below the thicket of the leaves, I keep my narrowed eyes on his back.

Somehow, Koal must have sensed that I already harboured doubts for Silver and what he means by taking me to these Woods with a mere bargain that I will deliver on a promise when the time comes. He has sensed this and used some of Silver’s secrets against him.

If it wasn’t for two, fine details, I might just dismiss the whole Luna-affair as part of Silver’s past and be done with it, with a touch of jealousy of course. That is only natural, I believe. But it’s what Koal said about her that gnaws at me and turns my gut to water; that, when Luna vanished, she disappeared into these Woods. It makes me wonder too many thoughts, too many doubts and far-reaches. It springs theories to mind that perhaps Luna has something to do with why Silver brought me here in the first place.

I don’t forget how Silver reacted when I pried into his personal life and the prison-arena. The moment I asked if he knew anyone who was sent there, a wall sprouted between us and—still wearing my scent from having lain together—he practically threw me off of him in a disgusted rage.

So does that mean Luna might be the one who forced him to shut me out? Is she—the vanished aniel who he clearly loved—at this prison somewhere in the Wild Woods?

But if that is true, why wouldn't he come here without me? Why did he need me to visit these Woods to find her?

And most of all, I can’t overlook that when we left our small camp and Silver kicked the fire’s remains off-path, I noticed he left behind a small handful of embers. He’s either terribly sloppy—or Koal is right, he is leaving behind a trail.

All those scraps of trust I had for Silver are now vanished, just like his beloved Luna. Gone to the Wild Woods. Perhaps forever lost.

He must know something is amiss between us.

Since leaving the camp, I haven’t spoken more than three words to him. I’ve been curt, quiet, and I’ve kept space between us as we take the path. But he doesn't seem to care much about my distance. He walks on ahead, the bag straps tugging at the once-stiff collar of his shirt, the dagger hilt gleaming above the waistline of his breeches, and his pace brisk enough that I have to push myself to keep up with him.

I know I should confront him—I want to—but I don't quite know how that will end up. He could always abandon me here if he decides he’s done with me now that I’m starting to ask hard questions. Maybe if he realises I know more than he wants me to, he might think he has no more use for me and leave me behind—with the clues left on the path which will lead Koal’s people straight to me.

I mean, I don’t know who Koal has coming after me in the Woods, but I would bet my last store of remedy that it’s no mortal. It must be someone who can come into the Woods—not a Daemon—and survive them, too, which rules out vilas. I don’t delude myself; I wouldn’t have survived this far in the Woods if it wasn’t for Silver. So Koal must have sent strong ones after me; aniels, perhaps.

And now I can hardly deny that Silver is leading them to us with the embers he’s leaving behind on the path.

There is always the slim chance that maybe—just maybe—he doesn't mean to leave the embers as clues, that he has no intention of creating a trail of our whereabouts. But how can such an immense, powerful and ancient being like him make such a silly oversight?

I can’t explain it to myself, and trust me, I am trying, because just about anything else in this world is better than Silver betraying me. Even at the mere thought of it, my heart aches with a terrible hollowness that carves out all my insides. I’m gutted at the threat of him betraying me—especially all in some effort to find Luna, when I am so very, clearly falling for him.

That is the realisation that knocks the breath right out of me.

I’m falling for an aniel.

I’m falling for Silver.

But I absolutely distrust him, and I absolutely despise him, too.

Is that even possible, I wonder? Can one love another and hate and question and doubt them all at the same time?

I’ve never claimed to understand love beyond a convenient marriage. So maybe I’m not the best person to be deciphering my thoughts and emotions on a wicked, gruelling journey. And Gods know, I can’t make sense of anything that I’m feeling.

So I stick with the distrust, because that is what I know best. It steels me. And holding onto those doubts I have for him somehow, in some twisted way, makes it easier to follow him up the path. Because if I am simply following a suspicious companion on a mutually beneficial journey, then my heart won’t be in danger of breaking—Silver won’t be able to destroy me.

And perhaps that’s what I truly fear most of all: Utter destruction by means of something I didn’t even believe in some weeks ago.

My mother loved a monster. Even if Arthur wasn’t the one to poison us, he is still a beast of a man. And look where that got Mother. In an early grave, dying alone in some sad, dark, musty room hidden away in the home.

Love is a dangerous thing, especially to someone like me. How can I survive the inevitable heartbreak that comes with it? It can’t be done.

Maybe it’s not too late, and I can fool myself into feeling nothing for him but fear, like it should be. I must force myself to see him as an aniel, as a son of a most vicious God, and simply someone that I can use to further myself.

There can be no other way. Because ultimately, my life means more to me than the fancy ideals and horrible pains of love.

I’m certain we have been walking for longer than a day when my worries are crushed out by the growing sound of water falling, and I can hardly hear myself think. I cringe against the noise as the path winds us around the thinning trees that flatten into thick, green bushes sprouting from muddy beds of dirt.

I learn, as we turn the last bend, that we have come to a waterfall.

Silver walks the path around the spread of bushes, then follows it uphill, where the dirt that fringes us is so thick and sludgy that I wonder if I was to rest a foot on it, it might suck me down into it like quicksand.

At first, I think we have made a wrong turn somewhere and wound up back at the waterfall at the start of the Woods. But then, this waterfall is unlike the first one. Here, the water is so pale that it’s like a falling stream of pulverised crystals, and the foam rises up on the deep pool at the bottom with a faint pink hue that reminds me of Olivia’s favoured beauty tonic (she always claimed it gave one a natural blush, but I know how many palettes of rogue she went through at home).

She’s not at home anymore...

That thought intrudes into my mind and seizes my shoulders with balls of tension. Wrapped up in my own worries, I let myself forget her death so easily, so quickly. And it brings a pang of guilt to my chest.

Still, I do not mourn her. I only know that I should. But knowing something and feeling it are two entirely different things, and it makes me wonder if there is something deeply the matter with me.

Shouldn’t I care more about my mother and sister’s deaths? For all these weeks, I have feared and grieved only for myself, what failure might mean for me. Even in all my troubles about Silver and Koal, it has always come back to what it means for me. Will I be caught, will I be abandoned, will I be left heartbroken and alone, will I be killed by these Woods?

If a Capital healer had her claws in my now, I can only imagine the field day she might have with my mind and all its twisted ways. I’m not like other people. I’m aware of that, the glaring differences of how I should feel and how I truly do feel. Guess I was always just better at ignoring it before I came here. Now, there’s no escaping the ugly truth of what I am.

I let those thoughts be drowned out by the crushing noise of the waterfall. As I follow Silver to the top of the hill, where a river turns into the waterfall, I find solace in the violent sounds around me, throbbing against my eardrums, pressing against my head. Then, the farther on we walk down the bank of the river, the fainter those noises become.

Thankfully, Silver doesn't give me much time to fall back into my thoughts. He offers me a reprieve from the journey and my blatant self-obsession when he loops his thumb through the straps over his shoulder, then unhooks them with a curt, lazy gesture. The bags thump to the path, where we will make camp.

A part of me is pleased he chose this spot. It’s near enough the waterfall that I can hear its distant rage over the rush of the river passing us by, and close enough to the river’s edge that I might get to wash my body free of the sweat and dirt that clings to my skin.

“There is no fire to be had,” Silver tells me as he crouches by the bags.

My face falls. I’m suddenly too aware of the chill in the breeze. “Why not?”

He unbuckles the straps on the satchel and throws a glance around us. “Do you see any fire-wood within arm’s reach?”

A pout pushes out my mouth. I bite down on the insides of my cheek and look around the edges of the path. But of course, he is right. No twigs or branches or sticks or even dried leaves to burn. All that is within our reach, without leaving the path, is soaked through with the mist from the river.

“Fine,” I say, but my terse tone sounds anything but. “I’ll just wash myself.”

Before I can turn my back to him and start to slip out of my dress, Silver’s cold voice answers, “With no fire to dry yourself by after? No, I think not. I already warned you, the Wild Woods does not protect vilas from colds.”

I’m on the edge of falling into a huff when I have a sudden thought that perks me up. When we leave and march onwards on the path, I’ll learn the truth about him. If he leaves something behind, with no fire for our camp, I won’t be able to deny that he’s intentionally marking our whereabouts for someone else. But if he doesn’t, then maybe he isn’t on the verge of betraying me after all and all those left-behind embers were mere oversights.

I might not get a fire or a wash out of this camp, but I will at least get some answers.

Sitting on the crimson cobblestones, Silver pulls out a parchment-wrapped sandwich from his satchel and offers it to me. As I eye it, a grumble rumbles deep in my belly. Silver’s mouth quirks up at the corner for a beat before it slips away to nothingness.

I snatch the parcel and, improperly, plonk myself down on the path beside him. I’m in such a mood that I don’t bother checking the sandwich for its insides before I tear off a chunk with my teeth. All manners are thrown to the winds as I chew a too-large mouthful that bulges my cheeks, and I keep a steady glower on Silver.

His face is light. Amusement softens his mouth and sparkles his eyes like the glitter that falls from fresh ballgowns.

I ache to slap the mild humour from his face, and smack it into never. Anger is rising up inside of me, clenching its fiery fingers around my thumping heart. And I can’t seem to swallow it back down.

With no fire to gaze into, I have no distraction from him—from what I’ve learned about him. From damn Luna.

At the thought of her silky pale hair and slender frame with no blemishes in sight, my face twists into a scowl. I aim it at Silver.

In answer, he arches a perfect brow over his glittering eye. His mouth twitches with the threat of a smile. “I find you more amusing than I anticipated,” he confesses, a lightness to his tone.

I stuff the rest of the sandwich into my mouth, scrunch up the parchment wrapper, then toss it off-path. His gleaming eyes follow the parchment for a beat before he flickers his gaze back to me.

“Vilas moods bore me, normally,” he goes on. “Too many emotions, too weak for my taste. But I must admit, I am intrigued.”

Through a mouthful of rye bread and relishes, I retort, “Is this your way of asking me what is the matter?”

He presses his hands against the path and leans back, spreading out his legs. “Do you wish to tell me what is bothering you?”

My gaze levels on him. “A lot of things. But let’s start with Luna, shall we?”

It’s as though I have struck him. All that light humour and amusement is hit from his face in an instant. He goes stark-white, his eyes turn to steel, and his mouth slowly flattens into a pressing line.

I let a small smile of my own twist my lips. “Didn’t expect that, did you?”

He isn’t furious, like he was back in the tent when I pried into the prison. He doesn’t fly into a fit of rage. This—this is much worse. It’s like ice slips over him. Made from marble no more, he is carved from hardened snow. And his eyes are icebergs, ready to sink ships.

His lashes lower on me and, when he speaks, his tone is a whisper of daggers and promises of death; “I take it Koal visited you last night.”

The sound of his voice sends cold shivers unravelling down my spine. I steel myself against the flutter of panic in my belly. “He visits me every night,” I snark at him. “And oh, the things he does tell me. The things he does show me.” I roll my jaw so hard that it clicks. “Luna was very beautiful,” I add darkly.

“Is,” he corrects icily. “Luna is very beautiful.”

I lift my eyebrows. “So she’s alive, still?”

He looks away, turning his cheek to me, and I catch sight of a faint flush crawling over his high cheekbone. It’s a flush of anger.

“It appears Koal is trying to turn you against me,” he says after a thick, tense pause.

I narrow my eyes on him. “I believe him.”

That confession swerves his gaze back to me, and the sight of his gleaming eyes cuts through me with a burst of panic.

“You hide too much from me for there to be any trust between us,” I tell him. “And Koal has told the truth about everything so far.”

His mouth flattens into a frowning line. I see defeat flicker over his eyes for a beat. “Has he?” he drawls, a tedious edge to his tone.

“Yes, he has.” I’m firm in my resolve. “And I believe he is telling the truth about Luna. He showed me moments of you two together. You loved her, didn’t you? And somehow, you lost her.”

He just watches me, silent and cold.

“If you don’t start telling me the truth,” I warn, “I will leave you behind. I will finish this journey on my own or, so help me Gods, I will die trying. But most of all, I will not finish this with you.”

A small smile darkens his face. “And where will you go that I cannot follow?”

I cut my gaze to the river rushing by us. After a moment, I ask, “How many questions did the Sisters allow you?”

He blinks, surprise cracking his uncaring mask. “One.”

“I was given three. And in one of those three answers, they warned me of something dreadful. That I will die.”

His face tightens, as though he fights back any show of emotion. He says nothing.

“So with that in mind,” I continue and look back to the river, “I have nothing to lose by simply wandering into those rapids and disappearing. I can let the Woods have me. What is the difference?” I add with a faint shrug. “The end result is the same. I will die before I get what I came here for. So why not simply die now, on my own terms?”

His eyes run over me like icicles cutting down my flesh. “You are bluffing,” he tells me. “I play many parlour games, I own gambling dens. You cannot out-play me, mortal.”

I hum. “If you don’t tell me about Luna and why you really brought me here, then I will walk off this path and into the river. Is that something you really want to risk?”

He watches me for a long, terse moment.

Finally, he pushes forward and hikes up a knee to rest his crossed arms on. His dark, stormy gaze rests on me.

“I have your word,” he warns me. “When we made that bargain to come here, you promised a favour in return. At my command, you will be under my spell to fulfil that promise. I can stop you from stepping off-path.”

He pauses to fish out a cigarette from his pocket.

I watch as he strikes a match over the cobblestone, then brings the orange flame to his face. As he lights the smoke, the flame ignites shadows over his cold eyes.

“But,” he adds and pinches the cigarette between two long fingers, “I will tell you what you want to know, so long as you assure me that you will stick with me until it comes time for the path to separate us.”

I nod, my heart sinking down to my writhing gut. I already know that I won’t like his answers, and it will do little more than cut me deeper than I can bear it. But I need this, as much as I need his blood to survive. I need him to hurt me and break my heart—because I need for this ugly thing between us to be severed, more than I need answers.

“I promise,” I whisper. “I will stay until the Never-ending Path parts us.”

He brings the cigarette to his rosy lips. Over the slithering vapours of grey smoke, he watches me.

He releases the cigarette with a cloudy breath and says, “Then I suppose I should start with the curse. One will be sacrificed for the other to live.” His stormy eyes settle on me. “One of them is you.”

My blood runs cold. A thrum picks up my heartbeat in my chest and, instinctively, my hands fist deep in the skirt of my dress.

But before I can let panic overthrow me, Silver explains—

“It is not as it sounds. The First Witch has a flair for dramatic language,” he tells me with a wry smile, bitter and hateful. “She speaks not of life. One must be sacrificed within me for the other to survive. I must choose one above the other, save one above the other, protect one above all else. And when that sacrifice is made, a piece of me will be lost along with it.”

A dubious wrinkle takes my face. “The First Witch explained all of that to you?”

He flicks ash onto the cobblestone between us. “Not in so many words. But the Sisters did, in their own way.”

The Sisters do give answers, but as he said, they do it in their own way.

I swallow back a gulp. “So there is a chance you misunderstood them?”

He gives a half-shrug. Leaning his elbow on his raised-knee, he brings the cigarette to his lips and inhales, long and slow. When he releases, vapours snare out of his pink mouth.

“There is always a chance of misunderstanding the Sisters. Perhaps you will die to fulfil this curse,” he says, his tone utterly uncaring. “But that is not how I came to understand my curse. Your fate is seperate to mine. Our paths will part ways before you meet your end. The Sisters told us as much.” He pauses to kiss his cigarette. “You each face forking paths, thus we will take you as seperate wanderers,” he recites, and my heart sinks at the sound of those familiar words. “So,” he goes on, “we must be parted before our fates come to be.”

I cut through the smoke lifting between us with a swipe of my hand, and it’s cathartic in a way, as though I’m slicing the nonsense he’s distracting me with.

“Why did you bring me here, Silver?” My tone is abrupt. “What do you really mean to gain from this journey?”

He releases a heavy sigh and a billow of smoke escapes his lips. “A few things,” he says. “But I should start at the moment I first saw you. I should confess that, in that moment, I was instantly drawn to you.”

He flicks ash onto the path. “You reminded me of her,” he tells me, his tone soft, almost as distant as his gaze that lifts to the river. “Luna is a child of Lover Lust. She was made some few hundred years passed. Not a cherished aniel of the God. When Lover Lust moulded Luna, she had then made so many aniels that she paid little attention to the craft. She made her heart weak and she imprinted such slender magick into her.”

He tosses the cigarette away and it lands on the river, lost forever.

“Luna was born weaker than most lesser aniels,” he goes on. “It took time for us to develop what we had between us. It was hardly an attraction at first sight. But over the decades, we drew closer—and I came to care for her. With her, for the first time in my existence, I felt the need to protect someone other than myself and my father. She was a withering, thorny rose in a garden of blossoming flowers.”

A ghost of a smile takes his lips. Then he blinks out of the daze and cuts his sharp gaze to me. “I felt that protective urge for the second time in my life—when I first noticed you.”

My voice is small, “At the temple?”

He shakes his head, his face hard like stone. “You were slumped over a bench in the Textile District. Your lips were rosy with blood, your breathing laboured. And beside you, your sister talked with a young sailor. Neither of them paid your suffering any mind.”

A horrible twist rinses inside my chest.

He says, “Your little necklace—the one of Prince Poison’s symbol—had fallen from your grip, and it laid on the ground. You were too weak to reach it. I watched you struggle for a long moment before I decided to stop another sailor passing by. I ordered him to assist you, and he did. I watched as he brought the remedy to your mouth, fed it to you, and stayed with you until you could sit up on your own.” He adds with a wry smile, “It was only then that your sister pretended to care about your wellbeing.”

The memories flash in my mind with sudden violence. I look down at my boots poking out from beneath my skirt. “I remember that day,” I whisper. “That was the day I fell in love with sailors.” The day that sparked a thousand daydreams of being whisked away on the waves.

But Silver had behind it all along.

This happened some years ago. I don’t remember which year to be exact, but I believe I was around the age of eighteen, perhaps nineteen.

I pick at a loose ribbon of lace on my skirt. “Was Luna still with you?”

His mouth presses into a frowning line. “She disappeared long before I came to the Capital,” he says, an edge to his tone, like the side of a blade. “We were together for centuries. During that time, my father won her from Lover Lust in a parlour game. He inherited the authority over Luna. But the Prince is ...” he trails off for a beat and tilts his head, debating on his words. “Before Princess Monster, he could only ever touch one God, Aphrodite. She later betrayed him and, as you know, died.”

I nod, my teeth biting down on the insides of my cheeks. The story of Aphrodite, like the other deceased Gods, is a vague one. But in Prince Poison’s temple, we do learn that they had love between them so long ago that the Capital was only just starting to be built, and decades later she died.

“As you can imagine,” he goes on, “my father would sometimes be envious of others’ relationships. The ability to touch and be with one another is something he yearned for. So when he sent Luna away from the palace, I was not very surprised.”

A frown tugs my brows together. “He vanished her because you loved her?”

“That is what I believed,” he says delicately. Even in the secretive hush of the Wild Woods, to me—a dead woman walking—he is careful how he speaks about his father.

“But what I knew,” he adds bitterly, “is that Luna was, one day, gone from the palace. And Prince Poison would give me no answers where she went.”

A flutter empties out my stomach, a wretched blend of pity and envy gutting me. I know all too well what it is like to live under the rule of a wicked father.

“Some years passed,” he says. “And I managed to acquire an assignment in the Capital to run his temple. It was a position well beneath my status, but I fought for it.”

I blink at him. “Why?”

“I believed Luna was assigned in the city.”

“But she wasn’t there,” I suspect.

He shakes his head and flickers his gleaming gaze to me. “That is where Koal came in,” he says, and the name sends a shiver roping down my body. “He came to the Capital. The Place of the Daemons was being built where the Shadow Quarter is now. Back then, some of the vilas saw the Daemons as Gods, and worshiped them just as others worshiped the Gods of the palace.”

I tense up; even my toes curl, as I’m reminded of a life lived by both Silver and Koal that long existed before me, and will live on long after I am gone. For the first time, I start to realise that they—the aniel and Daemon I have pitted against each other—might have been friends once. Or at least acquaintances.

And a sick, nauseas sensation washes over me at the thought of worshipping Daemons as Gods. Dark times.

He rubs his hand along his jawline. “Koal could not find her,” he says, and his voice is a defeated, whispered sound. “For a long time, I accepted that she was dead—that my father somehow destroyed her and used her essence to create another aniel, perhaps. Or simply had her discarded. My father would never speak of her with me. Any questions I had went unanswered. And eventually, I continued on with my duties in the Capital, and I refused his offers to return to the palace. Then,” he adds darkly, “I started to hear rumours among the higher aniel ranks about a prison in the Wild Woods. This was a closely guarded secret, not even all the Gods were in on it. But as secrets go, whispers happen. And I began to wonder if Luna was at this prison and that is why Koal could not locate her. I renewed my search for her, but it would not be an easy one. But it came to nothing and I abandoned it for a while. It seemed the prison was just a mere rumour.”

He looks at me from beneath his dark lashes that cast shadows over his eyes. “Then came the day I recognised the scent of your remedy.”

I blink, my heart stopping in my chest. “It was her blood?”

The corner of his mouth tilts into a mocking smirk. “As if I know the scent of her blood.” He shakes his head. “I merely recognised that it was blood with power. Aniel blood. At the time, I did wonder if it could be her blood—and wondered if perhaps that is why I was so drawn to you, why I felt the urge to shelter you.”

A dark look shadows his face. “I found it difficult to turn you away when you came to me for help. More difficult than it should have been, since you were little more than a vilas who caught my eye.”

“So it was the blood that attracted you to me,” I mumble, and my shoulders slump.

“I suspected so at first. But that blood has long since left your body, and I still find that I care for you. I feel those same urges, only much stronger.”

Heat crawls onto my cheeks.

I look down at my skirt, thick over my folded legs.

Silver captures my attention. He reaches up to the collar of his shirt and peels it back. He exposes his porcelain-like shoulder, marred with ink-black tattoos, as fresh as the day they were etched into his skin.

He drags his fingertip over a line of aniel words that runs the length of his shoulder. “One obsession,” he reads aloud, “one love.”

“Is that what it says?”

I never learned the aniel language. And even of those who study it at the universities in Scholar Square, no vilas can claim to be even close to fluent in it.

He draws his hand away. His shirt slips back into place. “It is what the Sisters told me when I first saw them after the Witch cursed me. When Luna was created and we came to be together, I understood her as my love.” His eyes flicker up to me. “And then you quickly became my obsession.”

He might be professing some feelings for me—strong emotions for an aniel, I know—but my heart sinks at the reminder of his love for Luna. To him, I am a mere vilas, sickly and nothing in his eyes. And Luna is everything I will never be. I will always come second to her.

“So that’s your curse,” I whisper. “Loving her, obsessing over me. And having to choose her in your heart.”

“We call it the fast,” he tells me. “When an aniel becomes obsessed with a vilas. It happens, however rarely. And it is a deadly thing to become. But my love is Luna,” he adds and, somehow, he can’t seem to look at me. He watches the water rush by with the same violence I feel in my thumping heart. “You were always meant to come into my life, be fated to Koal, and bring me on this journey. This is destiny. You brought me here to find Luna.”

Finally, he does look at me, and the sorrow in his eyes wrenches out my insides. “I need to find her. That is what I want out of this journey. And that is what I want from you.”

I swallow back a lump in my throat. My eyes sting with the early threat of tears, but I blink the sensation away and click my clenched jaw.

Still, I can’t keep the tears from thickening my voice; “You could have come on your own.”

“That you would have such a thing as an aniel’s blood,” he says, distracted by thoughts churning behind his eyes, “supported the rumours of the prison. It reignited the hope within me that she might still be alive. And,” he adds, running his fingers through his hair, “I needed you here with me.”

A frown wrinkles my face. The gesture loosens a tear from my left eye and it rolls down my cheek. Silver watches it fall.

“Why did you need me?” I press.

He looks away, and I know there is something he is not telling me, more that he is forcing hidden in a moment of truths and confessions. Whatever reason he had for bringing me here and not coming on his own, he is keeping close to his chest.

I can’t battle it any longer.

My face contorts with a silent sob, and I bury my face in my hands. Dirtied blonde hair falls onto my face like a veil of misery.

For a moment, we sit in the thick, pained silence embracing us, and I fight back the tears. I shouldn’t weep in front of him—I shouldn’t give him any satisfaction that I care for him more than I should. Because he has cared so little for me.

In all of this, all of our moments shared together in our tent, holding each other and the tenderness of his kiss on my mouth, the softness of his words muttered into my ear—in all of it, his aim was always to find Luna and leave me behind.

I have faced many hurts and betrayals, but none have cut me as deeply as his.

When I finally wrestle my sobs into quiet sounds and soften the shudders of my shoulders, I am distantly aware of Silver’s defeated voice; “We were never meant to finish this journey together, Kee.”

I mumble into my hands, “We never truly started it together.”

10.

Coming from relieving myself down the slope, I hike back up the path to Silver. As we have practiced since my tears hours ago, we do not look at each other.

He adjusts the straps slung over his crumpled shirt, and it’s our cue to move on. I fall into step behind him, a blanket of uncomfortable silence draped over us. To distract myself from the quiet, I have my hands stuffed deep into my skirt pockets, and I rub the silky material between my fingers, sure to leave wrinkles.

As we pass the spot where we made short camp, I run my gaze around the cobblestones, looking for any clues he might have left behind. Since there was no fire for us, there should be nothing on the path that might give away that we have been here and gone ahead. Nothing to leave a trail.

And yet, just as I’m about to give up my short search, I see it. A few steps ahead of where we parked for the night, something so in-place that at first, I overlooked it—a clump of fresh, damp dirt on the path, packed onto the width of a cobblestone.

Though it has been flattened, evidence of it once being a clump betrays it; long, crooked weeds poke out from the dirt, as though they have been torn out from the earth and crumpled. It looks like someone—Silver—grabbed a fistful of dirt from just off the path, then caked it onto the nearest crimson stone. And beside the dirt sits the crumpled parchment wrapper of my sandwich which I’d thrown off-path.

My breath hitches at the sight of it. Deep in my skirt pockets, my hands bunch up into fists, and my slow heart picks up the pace.

I swish past the clues and hurry to catch up with Silver.

His pace is steady and brisk, and he doesn’t slow down to allow me to meet him. I get close enough to study his hand that hangs limp by his side—and I narrow my gaze on his neat fingernails. The whites of his fingernails should still be clean, but beneath them is a dark, grimy shade, just like the dirt packed onto the path.

I swallow back a lump in my throat.

He did it.

It must have been when I was down the slope, relieving myself. But he did it. He clawed out a fistful of dirt from the damp earth and caked it onto the path to leave a mark that we were here.

And now I can’t think of one thing that Koal has said to me that is a lie—and I can’t think of anything that Silver has said to me that has been the truth.

The undeniable evidence that he has left behind has me feeling dizzy.

How much more can he betray me with?

How much more of it am I willing to overlook in my fatal quest to free me of the one I thought was the villain in my story?

No, I can’t let this warp my idea of Koal. He is a monster, a Daemon. A wicked beast. His tongue might not deliver lies, but his hand delivers strikes. Never once has he promised to care for me, not harm me, make my life pleasant or easy. He has only ever promised to deliver me pain. So, I can’t let Silver’s blatant betrayal twist my perception of Koal. They are both as wicked and cruel as each other.

But what can I do?

I’m trapped.

If I turn and leave the path, abandon Silver for his deceits, then he will simply use this promised favour I owe him to return me to him, to bind me to him until he’s ready to part ways. So that won’t do any good. It will be a useless attempt to escape him, and even then, leaving the path will take me away from the road to the First Witch—my only chance at surviving all of this.

Maybe—just maybe—if I reach her before my fatal fate comes to be, I can have her save my life.

My mind is reeling.

What if the Sisters told me the fate of what would become if I left Silver? What if my death, written in the stars and the waters of the world, comes from parting ways too soon?

Without him to protect me against the Wild Woods—and without the path to guide the way—I would be entirely exposed to the viciousness of this world. I would be without a shield, the only thing that has kept me alive so far.

The fate of my death could very well be from my foolish urges to run off the path and into the trees surrounding us. And if I follow the urge, that is what could end up killing me.

A shudder rattles me as I remember the ghastly creature I first encountered in the Wild Woods. He appeared so tempting, so loving. And I wanted to go to him. I was under his spell. It is only because of Silver that I am still alive.

So even though the blade of his betrayal is buried deep in my heart, and it takes all my might to not run off the path, or push him into a nearby bog, I understand that I need him—perhaps more than he needs me.

Without him, I’m dead.

With him, I’m hunted by Koal’s people, and I still might end up dead anyway.

Frustration starts to rise up inside of me. It clenches my heart with icy, bony fingers and squeezes much too tight. My breaths come out short, and it’s a battle not to run at Silver and attack him. That would do me no good.

For the moment, I need him. He is my shield—and I shall see him as nothing more than that. Not the aniel who I allowed myself to get too close to, to feel for, the one who protects me against the evils of the world. No, he is not that aniel anymore; he is a means to an end, a pawn on my chessboard, yet he thinks he is the king.

Let him believe that. If it keeps me alive for now, then he shall have that delusion, and perhaps there might come a time where I can betray him as shatteringly as he has done to me, and I might earn some satisfaction from his despair.

He did say Luna is a weak aniel—one with a bad heart (though, I never knew before then that aniels even had hearts!). Maybe she is my way to find revenge. With that dagger of his, perhaps I might be able to kill her.

No—no!

What am I thinking? Wanting to destroy the life of a person who has done me no harm? Silver is the treacherous one, the one who hurt me. Not Luna. Still, that doesn't mean I have to like her. I just can’t kill her.

That would be too much.

Still, I let my mind wander with the possibilities of revenge and betrayals as I shadow Silver along the Never-ending Path. For now, there is no true option for me to take, other than to follow him. But there will come a time that I can leave, and maybe then I will find the opportunity I am searching for.

I wonder, if we stick together, will that somehow defy the fate that the Sister laid out for me? If staying with Silver goes against my destiny to die, will that keep me alive and, in turn, lead me to the First Witch before I take my last breath?

Or am I just feeding into the palm of fate by defying my urge to flee?

Only the Sisters know, I suppose.

I’m knocked out of my rapid thoughts as I stumble into Silver’s back. I stagger back and rub my head, feeling very much like I just walked into a pillar on Worship Street.

He doesn't look back at me to see if I’m all right. Instead, he bows his head as he lights a cigarette, and the orange flame on the matchstick dispels all the twilight shadows clinging to his pale face.

In the casted light, he looks much like a marble statue that stands in the Gods’ Gardens. Those statues are rumoured to have once been aniels who had betrayed their Gods, and cursed to forever become a part of their Gardens.

Mother always taught me never to take rumours as they come, but more and more, I’m learning that there seems to be some truth at the core of them.

Silver shakes the match until the flame is extinguished, then chucks it off-path. Pinching the cigarette loose between his fingers, he exhales a cloud of smoke and turns to look at me. His tousled hair slides onto his forehead and grazes over the arches of his eyebrows.

My narrowed, venomous gaze seems to do him little harm.

He speaks behind the veil of smoke that seems to turn his eyes into storm clouds; “Do you believe your silence bothers me?” His voice is low and rugged, as though he has just awoken from sleep, which is a silly thought since aniels don't need sleep, and I was the only one to rest back at camp. “It only harms yourself, Kee. We are not enemies, so let us not act like we are.”

“Aren’t we?” I arch a brow over my burning hazel eye.

He exhales the last of a strain of smoke that spirals through the air and morphs into a peculiar shape. It takes me a few moments to recognise the shape as the mark of the Daemons; a heart, cut through the middle with the spear of the Underworld. I have seen the symbol too many times in my visits to the Shadow Quarter.

With a slap of my hand, I slice the smoky symbol in two.

“I saved you from him,” he tells me. “No matter my motives for bringing you here, for accepting your pleas for help, did you not want to be free of him?”

In my mind comes flashes of embers and dirt left behind on the path. They invade me with a burning anger that rises up to my thickening throat.

If I was stronger perhaps, I might punch him in his glass face.

He claims to save me from Koal, but we both know he’s leading him right to me. Yet, I don’t say this—I can’t have him know that I’m onto what he’s up to. It might be my only advantage, the veil of ignorance.

If Silver catches wind that I know, then he might use the magickal favour I owe him to cast me under his spell, and force me to follow him through the journey. And who knows what will happen with my fate if I’m left under his control and not my own?

It’s too big of a risk.

So, I just say, “You betrayed me.”

“How have I betrayed you?” His tone is low, still, and exasperated. “I stole you away from a being who is more than capable of destroying my own existence, I brought you here where he cannot find you, and I have kept you alive—”

“All for yourself and your benefit,” I cut in sharply. “Good deeds lose their goodness when they are motivated by selfishness. Then, they are simply deeds.” I take a determined step towards him. “You betrayed me in the tent,” I tell him darkly. “You betrayed me with your touch and your kiss and your caring words. You betrayed me in the washtub,” I add with a wry, twisted smile that doesn't reach my eyes. “In all of those moments, you let me think something true was growing between us—and in all of those moments, you knew what you were really here for. You were here for her.”

I storm past him. Without looking back, I snark over my shoulder, “So don’t talk to me about betrayal, Silver. You are the most venomous viper I know.”

Behind me, he easily keeps my pace. “I gave you a chance where no others could.” His tone cuts through the air at my back and prickles the nape of my neck. “This was how it was always supposed to be. Us, bound together, only to help each other in our own fates before we part ways. That is the meaning of the fast.”

I turn on him, a sudden fire ablaze in my eyes. He stops a foot away from me with a fiery gaze of his own.

I crack. I give into the urges.

And I strike him across the face, hard.

Silver’s reddened cheek is turned to me. His eyes are shut, almost peacefully, but there is nothing tranquil about the tension in his shoulders, or the clenched fists at his sides.

I don’t realise he wasn’t breathing until he takes in a deep, shuddering breath, as if to steel himself against retaliating. And, slowly, when he opens his glacier eyes and turns them on me, I realise just how much he wants to retaliate.

Bet a vilas never hit him before.

But Mother always said, there’s a first for everything. Mind, that was usually in response to my tantrums that the boys in the Capital never paid any mind to a sick girl. But still, I think it applies.

And I cannot bring myself to regret hitting him.

I’m flooded with so much satisfaction that even the sting on my palm can’t bother me. A small smile slips onto my lips and my shoulders loosen as the anger ribbons out of me.

“I’m a vilas,” I tell him, the edge gone from my plain-spoken voice, as though I am simply detailing a small matter to a house servant, not speaking to an all-powerful and ancient aniel I just slapped. “Maybe unlike the ones you are acquainted with in the lesser parts of the Capital, but I am still a vilas. I have customs and beliefs and ways of my life that might confuse or vex you. So when I opened my arms—” and my legs “—to you, invited you to share something special with me, it truly meant a great deal to me.”

He parts his tightly set mouth to speak.

“I’m not finished.” I hold up my hand. “Being what you are, I can’t expect you will understand, but knowing that in all of those precious, special moments we shared that you were searching for the one you care for above me ... that hurts.” I throw up my hands, exasperated. “How else can I put it? You hurt me. You lied to me, you made me think you might love me at least one day. And that is a betrayal, Silver. That in itself is the worst betrayal I have ever known.”

I take a step back. “And for that betrayal, I can truly never forgive you. So I do hope she is worth it in the end.”

I turn and march up the path.

For a moment, I don’t hear Silver’s footsteps come after me. I ache to look back and see if he watches me go, or is pausing to leave more clues, or has even walked away. But I resist the urge and, after some rapid heartbeats, I hear the soft sound of his boots on the cobblestone.

He shadows me in silence.

We don't speak a word to each other for the rest of the way—until the path suddenly cuts off, and there are no more crimson cobblestones to follow.

The Never-ending Path ends with the weedy beginnings of a swamp. Only, it’s unlike any swamp I have ever seen in the pages of books. The dirt here glitters a dark blue shade, as though twilight itself has shed over the wet dirt and made a home.

The swamp is small. I can see from one end to the other, its whole circumference. And planted in the far end of it, closest to the hug of black bushes, there stands a sloped building, like a tiered cake without stilts, starting to sink onto its side. The home looks deflated.

But that isn't what interests me.

It’s the man who stands at the mouth of the house, where there should be a door, but there is only an empty frame.

And he’s looking right at us.

Silver shatters the silence with one, whispered sentence that stops my heart dead in my chest—

“The Lone God.”

10.

The Lone God watches us closely as we plod through the swamp to meet him. And though I have to bunch up my dress to wade through the sludge, I can't keep my eyes off of him.

I've only ever seen Gods in paintings before, some portraits strung up at the museum, or statues planted throughout the Capital, but none have ever looked quite like this. The closer we get, the more uneasy I start to feel. He almost looks like any other God, but there are so many things that are off about him. Not quite right.

For starters, the Lone God is utterly naked. He wears no shame in the starkness of his nudity, makes no effort to conceal his private areas from us. But then, there's nothing really to hide. Between his legs, there should be some sort of ... instrument. The Gods have them, I know from all the affairs they seem to have with each other, as well as the statues and paintings. And aniels have them—Silver definitely does.

But not the Lone God. No, he has nothing other than a hairless lump that reminds me of the dolls that Olivia used to play with when we were children, and she would peek into their breeches. There is nothing there at the apex of his dark-brown thighs, yet my cheeks flush all the same.

And his skin...

His complexion is no ordinary brown; not the shade of the dresses I left behind at home, or the hue of the dirt by the river. It's like the smooth, melted chocolate that I once watched a woman pour into a moulding pan in the sweet shop.

Even from across the swamp, the amber of his glassy eyes shines like raw gemstones. His piercing gaze is hooked onto me as I wade alongside Silver, the wet sludge sometimes reaching as high as my stocking-clad knees.

As we get closer, I notice a particularly dark puddle of mud beside the house, a small distance away from where the Lone God stands. There, the swampy mud glimmers crimson, like the dark gleam of the Never-ending Path, and there is a foaming filmy surface to it that warns me to steer clear. And I do. I circle around to the other side of Silver as we approach the slanted wood house.

The Lone God finally lifts his gaze from me, and he looks up. I trace his stare and see that above, without the branches of the trees to hide it, the sky is clear of clouds; it is dotted white with freckles of stars that burn brighter here than they do in the Capital, and the moon is near-whole.

A shudder rinses through me at the sight of the almost full moon.

Time is running out for me, and fast. I’ll need Koal’s venom to survive if I don’t make it to the Witch first.

Eyes on the stars, the Lone God speaks, and his voice is a whisper carried through the trees, a breeze that drifts over the seas, an echo in a deep, wet cave; “You are late.”

That shudder seizes me all over again, and I wrap my arms around my chest. Each time I meet an Original, I’m suddenly all too aware that I don’t belong in these Woods, that this is a part of Scocie where vilas should not go.

The Lone God turns his chocolatey back on us and strides into the home through the clear doorway. I only see darkness beyond it. It’s enough to stop me in my tracks and let the swamp start to suck me in.

Silver turns on me and snatches up my wrists. With a hard yank, he heaves me out of the snaring mud and I stumble forward, crashing into his chest. The grime and mud on his shirt smears over my breasts and chin.

With his hands slipping down to my waist, I steady myself. He doesn’t release me as he guides me out of the swampy lands and to the shadowy mouth of the home.

Silver slips inside first.

I linger at the entrance for a heartbeat before I throw an uneasy look around the swamp. The mud still glitters a navy blue, like fallen sky dust.

I hear the Lone God’s raspy voice from within the house; “Come into my prison.”

I swallow, hard, then take a step closer to the doorway.

My mud-grimed boots make a slopping sound against the wood floorboards that creak beneath my weight. Hands on the doorframe, I ease my way inside and wait for my eyesight to adjust to the sudden darkness.

I blink, once, twice, and slowly, white glittering glows start to illuminate the space. The sparse soft light comes from mason jars full of the sky-dust from out in the swamp, and it casts paleness over the room. Running the length of the far wall, there’s a spiral wood staircase that leads up to a loft-level, where I imagine the Lone God might rest—if he needs such a thing.

Downstairs, there is not much to see. No furniture, other than a single hay-stuffed mattress that is parting at the seams, a rough blanket draped over it that looks to be sewn from wild weeds, and in the corner, a spilled pile of scrolls like none other I’ve ever seen before. These scrolls are too thick and pale to be parchment, and I wonder if the Lone God has carved these materials from the inside of the trees himself.

I don’t see what’s in the scrolls, since they are all wound up, stiff and unmoving in the corner by the mattress, but a flutter ignites deep in my belly as I wonder if they hold the ultimate secrets of this world and the ones that might perhaps live beyond it.

Silver is the first to make himself at home. With a suspicious amount of confidence, he strides to the mattress and, back against the wall, slides down to sit.

The Lone God pays him little mind. His latched-on gaze seems to burn brightly for only me.

This place is unlike the Sisters’s tents. There is no hot food in the stove or warm teas to be offered. I don’t even think this Original has anything to eat out here in the swamps. Not that he must eat, but I’m sure he can still taste. It just seems as though he has very few pleasures.

The Lone God looks to the mattress. “Why do you seek me?”

Silver’s gaze flickers to me. He inclines his head my way, gesturing that I am the one to seek him, and it crumples my face into a frown. He’s just as much on this journey as I am.

“Mortal,” the raspy voice sneaks into my thoughts.

I blink and look at the Lone God. He stands as immovable as a statue caught in the Gods’ Gardens. All that betrays him as a living being is the bright amber of his eyes, flickering in the glittering light.

“I need to find the First Witch,” I say, with the voice of a house-mouse, much too small and much too squeaky for my liking. I clear my throat. “Can you lead the way there?”

“It is within my power,” is all he says, and his short, sparse lashes droop low over his eyes, darkening them. He watches me too closely, and it seizes my back muscles into lead balls. “But only if you can afford the price.”

My mouth presses into a frowning line. More prices and costs, things I can hardly afford to give, and yet things I can even less afford not to give.

“You are a sickly thing,” the Lone God decides. He doesn’t look me over, he simply continues to stare into my eyes. “You might be the one I wait for.”

It seems odd that an Original would sit around in a wood house in the middle of a swamp, just waiting for a vilas to stumble off the Never-ending Path.

My brows furrow. “What are you waiting for?”

The longer he looks at me, the sooner I realise that he needs not blink. It makes him all the eerier.

I glance at Silver on the mattress, the way he picks at the dirt from beneath his fingernails—the dirt of treachery—and pays us no mind at all. Though, I’m certain he is hanging on every word said. And I wonder, fleetingly, why he doesn't step in. He needs the path to take us onwards as much as I do.

The Lone God avoids my question and instead asks, “Do you know what I am?” There is no malice in his tone, no haughty authority or cruelty. He asks out of simple curiosity.

I shake my head. “I know only what he has told me,” I say and gesture to Silver, who doesn't look up from his nail-grooming. “You are an Original. The true First God. And you came from a waterfall in these Woods.”

“I am the true First,” he agrees, and again, his tone is utterly detached, as though he is a father reading a newspaper, while his child parades a new wood doll around the house, crying for the father to notice, and all he can manage is a monotonous response.

But maybe I’m digging too deep into my own life.

“But do you understand who I am?” he presses.

Again, I shake my head.

All the Gods that we know of in the rest of Scocie are Gods of something or other. Poison, love, fire, water, deception, healing, disease—it goes on, and they all have abilities that reach beyond these things, but they are each known for their truest, ultimate power.

I know nothing of the sort about this God. Only what I have told him.

His eyes are still hooked on me as he says, “I am the God of both life and death, and nothing in between.”

Frowning, I blink and tilt my head. “Like a Daemon?”

His impassive mask remains. “Those are my children. Just as the Gods you know are my children, too.”

It’s a concept I can’t quite wrap my head around, so all I can manage is a faint nod and a wandering gaze to Silver. He looks up at me from his nail work, and a small smile dances on his lips.

“Meet my beloved grandfather,” he says, and the mocking edge to his voice is unmistakable. He’s making fun of me, in the worst of times.

I turn to the God. “If you are the God of life and death, why do you not rule in the Underworld?” Or in the palace? (But I don’t want to give him any ideas. I’m certain a God of his power and age is not one we should want lording over the Capital).

The Lone God simply says, “That is just another world. I can move beyond all it—or I was once able to do that. Now, I exist in this prison alone.”

I turn my gaze out the doorframe, where the swamp bubbles and glitters ahead. “You’re trapped here?”

“Yes. I have the Witch to be grateful to for that,” he tells me, and for once, I hear an undercurrent of emotion in his voice—though I can’t for the life of me place it. It could be anything from anger or hate to longing. “She cursed me here on the land where nothing will grow or can ever become. I need to be free once more.”

“You can’t just ... leave?” I ask, bemused. After all, he’s an ancient Original, one of the first slivers of life to exist in this world.

Is the First Witch truly so powerful that she can control and curse and confine the others of her kind?

If he has an answer, he doesn't speak it. And why should he? I am but a mere, fleeting mortal in this world, and he is an ancient, eternal being who can move through all the worlds. He would not confess his secrets to me. I’m utterly inconsequential.

“You are here for passage,” he says and, for once, he has taken his studious gaze away from me. He looks out through the doorway. “I will grant you this—for a returned favour. Once I receive this payment, I will influence the path to take you where you want to go.”

‘Where you want to go.’ Not quite ‘to the First Witch’, but since she is where I want to go, I don’t argue the details.

“What is this payment you need?” I ask.

I cut a glare at Silver in all of his unhelpful assistance. He’s staying completely out of this one. And as I look at him, he lifts his hand and turns it just right, so that the light from a nearby mason jar glitters off the bruise-stain on his hand.

The Lone God traces my gaze to Silver. He looks at the mark on his hand. “You cannot help me,” he decides. “You wear her mark much as I do.” He looks at me, the fire back in his amber eyes. “It must be you.”

A flutter seizes my heart. “Is this why you needed me?” I ask Silver. He simply stares at me and drops his hand to his lap. “You can’t fulfil the quest because you are cursed?”

Silver doesn't answer. And before I can press any further, the Lone God takes a step closer to me, the bareness of his foot padding softly on the wood floor.

“You are the one,” he tells me. “You are both alive and dead, lost between the two worlds—and you wear no curses, thus you are not bound by the Witch. It must be you.”

I eye him, my muddy boot sliding back as I slip a bit away from him. “The one to do what exactly?”

“I need your essence,” he whispers, his dark hand reaching out for me, like a shadow out of the night. His fingertips graze the long length of my dirty hair, but never quite touch. “I need a piece of your heart.”

11.

My boots slap against the swampy earth. With each stomping step, mud spatters over my dress. The rainfall hardly helps; it soaks me through to the bone.

I don't care. I march on, pacing back and forth on the muddy patch just outside of the wood house.

The rapid race of my heart spurs me on. I don’t stop pacing, pacing, and pacing. Even when my legs are turning to hot toffee and my thigh muscles are tighter-bound than a sailor’s rope, I keep patrolling the face of the house.

Ice-cold fear has its grip on me. Its touch prickles my skin against the cold winds whipping me. Rainwater streams down my face, over my tightly set mouth, swollen from excessive chewing, and my shoulders are braced against the unforgiving weather.

Then I’m no longer alone out here.

I hear him before I see him.

The old wood boards creak with his bootfalls. I listen to the groans of wood as he comes down the steps and his boots sink into the mud with a whispered sluck.

I don't break my pacing. I turn my back on him and stride down the length of the house.

My voice rises above the patter of the rain; “I won’t do it.”

Silver is quiet for a pressing moment, no movement. He stands at the bottom of the steps, his reflective eyes on me.

I swivel back around and march past him. “That is how I die.” My tone is unyielding, despite the light chatter seeping into my teeth from the icy stab of the cold. “You can’t go cutting out pieces of a mortal’s heart and expect them to survive it.”

He watches me.

The silence is heavy, I can almost hear his mind churning through it.

“You think this is how you die,” he eventually says, “but your death could be caused by not allowing this.”

I shake my head. Soppy strands of loose hair whip my icy cheeks, hard. I spin around and march the other way, my jaw clenched tight.

He goes on, “You do not know how your fate is written. Whether it is by what you do or what you avoid.”

He advances on me in the mud, stopping right in my path.

I glower up at him. His silvery eyes gleam so brightly than I can almost make out my reflection in them. But all I see staring back at me is a pair of narrowed, weary eyes, circled by dark spots, and a face more hollow than any I’ve ever worn before.

I can’t stand the sight of myself, so I look away at the spot where the crimson path once ended. It’s gone now.

“Is meeting the First Witch no longer important to you?” he asks.

My jaw sets so tightly on vicious words that I hear something click just beneath my ear.

“It’s so easy for you to ask me that,” I mutter, my words all wrapped up in ghosted growls and lost hopes. “You’re not the one who faces death to find her. You’re not the one being hunted across the lands and seas by a damned beast.” I swerve my levelled gaze to him. “You don’t know the first thing about what it means to be mortal—and so you understand nothing about what it means to cherish your life.”

His mouth lifts into a wry smile. “My immortality does not make me ignorant of the value of my life, Kee. I plan on living for a very long time, far beyond the existence of your kind. But this is not about me,” he adds and his lashes lower with the weight of the raindrops landing on them. His hair is starting to stick to his temples, and a wet gloss glitters on his rosy mouth.

“What if I do it?” I challenge and throw my hands up to meet the rain. “What if I go through with this and I die? Then it will all have been for nothing! All of this—fleeing Koal, these Woods that seem bent on killing me, the first time in my life I’ve felt anything other than misery. All of it will be meaningless.”

He lifts his pale, wet hand to my cheek. Something inside my chest flutters as his finger drags over my skin and peels away a strand of hair. He fixes it back behind my ear, his stormy gaze smouldering like thunder clouds.

“It depends,” he says. “If you die beyond the Wild Woods, Koal can bring you back to life—if he has your body. And he will find it out there. But if you die in these Woods, Koal will keep your soul trapped for all eternity in suffering. That,” he adds and lets his hand fall from my cheek, “could be the worser of fates.”

“In both of those, I die.” There’s a bite in my tone. “You’re hardly selling this risk to me.”

He tilts his head, an impassive mask glassing over his face. “If you undergo this favour to the Lone God, and you survive it, the path will take you to the First Witch—and there, you might be given the chance at freedom. You could save yourself from death, Kee. But only if you risk your life to do it.”

“Risk my life to save my life,” I mutter bitterly.

“Something like that.” He turns his blank gaze to the swamp. Under the rainfall, it glitters more brightly than the Palace of the Gods. “It is stardust,” he says, and gestures to the navy-blue sparkles. “This is where the stardust in the Capital was sourced. It only falls here. Do you know why?”

I half-shrug. “I never do.”

As though I hadn’t spoken, he explains, “It is above here that the stars weep for the Lone God, at his confinement. It creates an unbalance in the world.” He turns to look at me, droplets of water running the length of his fine nose. “You can fix that. You have more power than you think.”

I loosen a shuddering breath. “He wants to cut out a part of my heart, Silver. I will die from that. No vilas can survive such a thing.”

He chucks a long, slender finger under my chin and tilts my head up to align with his. He brings his mouth closer to mine, as if to kiss me, but instead he stops a breath away from my lips, and he says, “These are the Wild Woods. Nothing works here the way it does beyond the treelines. The threat of death is very real, Kee, but you do have a chance.”

I blink as he pushes his mouth against mine. It’s a pressured kiss he gives me, one that aches my teeth and smooshes my wet lips.

Against my mouth, he finishes, “What is worth almost dying for, if not this?”

With a final kiss, his lips leave mine and he draws back. I watch him make his way back into the house, where beyond the door there is only darkness and shadows.

And though I hate him more than anything in this God-forsaken world right now for all that he’s done against me, I can’t deny that he speaks truths now. If I don’t do this, I don’t meet the Witch, Koal’s hunters catch up to me, and I’m done for. And that’s if I don’t die first from all the other threats around me.

But if I can somehow manage to let the Lone God take a piece of my heart, and I survive it, then I will meet the only being in this world who can sever me from Koal, and give me another chance at life.

It’s all very confusing. But in all those tangled thoughts, I cannot forget what the Sisters told me. I will meet the First Witch in another life. Meaning, I’ll die before I meet her. And so, shouldn’t I fear this heart-sacrificing favour perhaps more than I fear Koal? Because it might just be the thing that kills me.

And though Silver talks some sense, I can’t ignore that he has his own reasons for wanting me to go through with this. He’s willing to risk my life so that he can walk the path and find his way to Luna. He uses reason and touch and kissing to manipulate me, all to find her. Someone I’ll never be. Someone who will always mean more to him than I do.

It hurts more than it should. By now, I should be used to his betrayals. But still, I stand in the rain with the tears on my cheeks mixed with rainwater, and I fight off the sobs that threaten to sweep over me.

I’ve already lost so much.

Am I willing to lose everything else, and fall back into Koal’s arms?

I just don’t know.

12.

Eventually, the bite in the chilly air becomes too much for my sopping wet body, and I make my way back into the house.

I kick off my boots at the entrance before I pad into the darkness, where stardust in glass jars illuminate the shadowy corners. And the sight of something stops me in my tracks—

Silver is sprawled out over the mattress, facing me, and his eyes are peacefully closed. He looks very much asleep. Too much, considering he’s an aniel who doesn't need slumber, and in all the time we have been in these woods, I have never once before now seen him indulge in the deep rest.

“Silver?” I whisper, the croaky sound of my voice sneaking through the open space.

He doesn't stir.

And his isn't the voice who answers me.

“He is lost in the slumber world,” the Lone God speaks from behind me.

I jerk around, my muscles jumping beneath my skin, and stare into the dark corner by the door. The deepness of his brown skin has him melting in the shadows like the ghostly Sister.

He steps out, his amber eyes his only giveaway, and he stares at Silver on the mattress across the room. “He will not wake until he needs to.”

“He doesn’t sleep,” I whisper, uncertainty biting at my shivering tone. “He never does.”

The Lone God turns his brilliant, burning eyes on me. He blinks, something that looks utterly strange on him, and his head faintly tilts to the side. There is something in the way he watches me, secrets glittering behind the amber hues of his irises, and it seizes my spine with a shiver of fright.

“He is exploiting you for his own means,” he says, and the reminder of Silver’s betrayals strikes me like a spear to the heart.

My face crumples and I look away. “I know.”

He watches me closely. “However, you have your own uses for him, too. I suppose it is mutually beneficial.”

Though I nod a weak gesture, my heart is not in it. Having a God—an Original—tell me how obvious it is that Silver is using me cuts deeper than it should.

“And yet,” he goes on, a distance in his voice, “I see only him profiting from your sacrifice.”

My mouth presses into a frown. “You speak as though I will go through with it.”

“You will.” There is absolute certainty in his detached voice. “Allow me to offer more than the return of the Never-ending Path,” he says, and I look at him, my brows creased. “I sense that you will need me again, soon. I promise you another favour, beyond the path.”

I eye him, my mouth sinking inwards. “You mean I will survive this?”

“I am not the Sisters of Fate,” he says. “It is not my secret to tell.”

I look at Silver, motionless on the mattress, how deeply and peacefully he sleeps. The sight of it rises up a bitterness in my veins, and I have the inexplicable urge to slap him awake. Something about his slumber snakes around me like a threat in itself.

And the Lone God essentially told me that only Silver will benefit from my giving him a piece of my heart, and the path that will appear from it. Is that not a warning of what’s to come?

Maybe it means that Silver will be the one to find the First Witch, not me. That, if I do this, he will be taken to what he wants, and I will never make it there. We might be separated before we can reach the Witch.

Unless...

I could leave him behind. Now.

This is my chance—the one I’ve bee waiting for, isn't it? He sleeps so deeply that he wouldn't know if I just abandoned him here. If I sacrifice a piece of my heart to the Lone God right now, I might have enough time afterwards to flee the swamp and take the path before Silver wakes up.

This decision could be the very one to change my fate.

I look at the Lone God. He watches me already.

“All right.” I nod firmly, as if to encourage myself. “Let’s do it.”

He doesn't smile, his eyes don’t shine, his utterly impassive mask doesn’t crack in the least. He only offers his hand to me.

As I rest my hand on his, a sudden pulse of pure power throbs against my palm, and I make to jerk back from him. It’s instinct. But he is prepared for it, and his fingers wrap around mine like vices.

He leads me out through the doorway.

I throw one last look back at Silver. He still doesn't wake. Then he’s swallowed up by darkness as the Lone God takes me out to the swamp.

He steers left at the bottom of the steps, his hand tight on mine, and I’m forced alongside him. He stops when we reach the suspicious bog I noticed when we first arrived here—the one with bloody tar that bubbles and pops and churns. It’s small enough to fit one body, but dangerous looking enough that I have to drag my stocking-clad feet over the mud to get closer to it.

But avoiding it will do little good.

“You must be inside,” the Lone God tells me and gestures to the crimson-tar bog. He doesn't release my hand. “I will hold onto you,” he promises. “You will not sink.”

A shuddering breath lifts through me. Biting down on my lip, I eye the bog with fresh fear in my hazel eyes. “What is it?”

“My locked gate. And you are my key.” That is all he says.

And it’s certainly not enough to soothe the panic rising up inside of me.

In his hand, mine clenches into a fist, and my knuckles are soon kissed by white spots. My fingernails start to dig into his flawless skin, but the God appears not to feel it. He just watches me.

With my free hand, I hike up my dress, higher than anyone ever should. Then I lift a foot from the mud. My once-cream stockings are now stained mud-brown all the way up to the knees.

My raised foot inches closer to the bog. The nearer I get, the more sinister the crimson bubbles look. I point my toes and, holding a breath deep in my chest, I dip into the bog.

My face crinkles. Nothing evil or wicked happens, other than the sludgy, wet—and somewhat warm—sensation of churning mud.

A sudden scream catches in my throat—

The Lone God shoves me forward.

I plunge into the bog.

The only thing stopping me from sinking down is the Lone God’s vice-grip on my hand, so tight that my fingers are crinkled together. My eyes are wide and wild as I throw up my other hand and grab onto his arm. But he doesn't let me go, like I feared for a moment. He keeps me above the bubbling mud from my collarbone; the rest of me is utterly submerged.

“Forgive me,” he says and kneels at the side of the bog. “But after so long of this prison, I am impatient to be free.”

I release a shuddering breath. Tears sting my eyes and stream down my muddy face. I hold onto his arm so tightly that my nails threaten to break against the hardness of his skin.

“Just don’t let me go,” I whisper and rest my forehead on his hand, wrapped around mine. “Don’t let me go.”

“If I did, the gate would not unlock,” he tells me.

Beneath the warm, wet mud, my legs sway against the thickness. Even with my toes pointed, I cannot feel even a whisper of a bottom. Panic still has my heart in its grip, and with my head buried against his hand, my face crinkles with a sudden wave of fresh tears.

A sob jolts through me.

“Hush, little thing,” the Lone God mutters, and I get the sickening realisation that he’s trying to comfort me. “It will be over soon.”

In answer, I choke on a squeaky sob and nod my head against his hand. I catch sight of his other hand reaching into the crimson bog, and I clench my eyes shut instantly. My body goes stiff; all the muscles beneath my skin are suddenly strained as I muster all my withering energy to hold onto his arm.

A weeping breath catches in my throat—I can feel the touch of his fingertips beneath the mud. He grazes the underside of my bosom for a moment before he trails his fingertips up the middle of my breastbone.

I swallow back a wet sob.

He presses hard against the middle of my breasts, feeling along the ends of my ribs, up and down, up and down.

“There,” he whispers when he presses his fingers into a deeper spot, where the rib bones are wider apart.

I brace myself. My body is taut in the pool of crimson mud, and my face is contorted against his other hand. But this does little to help me.

The agony is instant; an explosion ripping through my body with a violent rage—

He plunges his hand between my ribs and spears upwards.

My head throws back with the manic scream tearing through me. My body seizures instantly.

The scream that rattles me splits the air, and in all the pain, my scream somehow morphs into a plea; “Siiiillllverrrrrrr!”

Sharp nails cut down the side of my heart, and I feel ev-er-y-thing.

My scream is never-ending. It cracks and raises and shifts, but it never stops. And I know now that this is how I’ll die.

I can’t survive this pain—this absolute agony, this torture.

I’m crying out for Silver, for the God to stop, I’m begging and pleading for it all to end. But still, I feel the slice of his nail cut down my heart and saw away a piece of me.

I’m trying to pull away. I claw and scrape at his hand to release me and let the bog have me forever. Death is better than this. Koal is better than this.

I want it to end.

Please let it end.

As I reel back from the God, my head thrashes from side to side. In a teary haze, I catch sight of the one I call out for.

Silver stands at the mouth of the home, his cheek turned to me. Even from here, and in all this suffering, I see that his eyes are clenched shut, as though he can’t bear to watch.

I make to call out for him again—

But then the Lone God yanks his hand out of my chest, and a shuddering cry ribbons out of me, deep and gravelly.

I go limp. I slump against his arm.

My lashes flutter as my eyes roll back, and I feel a warm release between my legs for a fleeting moment.

The pain starts to ebb away into something dull and throbbing in my chest. My veins no longer burn with the fire of agony; but they ache, still.

I can summon no energy, no health or strength, to even pry my head up from the Lone God’s arm. He could release me right now and I would limply sink into the depths of this bog.

Distantly, I’m aware of bootfalls slugging against the mud. Silver, coming to me. Too little too late. I needed him here before, I cried for him, and he couldn’t bring himself to come to me.

But now, he’s here.

I feel two familiarly cold hands shove beneath my shoulders. He grips tight and pulls me out from the bog.

My lashes hang low, crowding my sight with dim shadows.

Faintly, I can feel Silver’s body against mine; he flips me around and catches me against his chest. Then, he lowers me to the ground and props me up against him. Still, I slump, my eyelids growing heavier by my strained heartbeat.

A sudden coin-like taste fills my mouth. Silver is pressing his wounded hand to my lips and forcing his blood into me.

I’m too weak to hold onto him. My arms are flopped by my side. But I manage enough energy to drink what he offers. This time, no nausea has the power to overthrow me. I just drink.

“There it is,” his soft voice snakes out around me.

I blink weakly and trace his gaze ahead. Opposite where the Never-ending Path finished, there shines a new, brighter path. Now, the cobblestones are rubies, and they glitter at us, as though begging us to come to it and promising to wipe away all our woes.

A weak smile slips onto my lips. I stay slumped against him.

The pressure of his hand against my mouth increases. I lazily swallow another stream of his blood.

Then darkness becomes my home.

I slip away.

13.

One blink. The swamp shifts in and out of focus.

Second blink. The Lone God stands by the crimson bog. A fleshy strip of my bleeding heart is pinched between his fingertips. He delicately tears it into two pieces.

Three blinks. I look down at my chest. Fresh blood smears the ripped bodice of my dress, revealing an angry red patch between my breasts. There is no open wound from the God punching his hand into me.

Fourth blink, and everything starts to pull together. I’m aware of a solid wall against my back; it shifts with steady breaths and, as I lean my head back, I see Silver’s angelic face looking down on me.

I’m still slumped against him.

And then, I feel the pressure of his hand against my mouth. I cut my gaze down at it, and see that he feeds me his blood from a torn strip of flesh that reaches across his palm, as though he made the wound in a rush.

The haze that lingers over me is so thick and disorientating that I don’t even feel a hint of nausea that comes with drinking blood. I feel it slide down my throat and flood my mouth and spill out the corners of my lips, but it’s such a distant sensation that no urge to vomit hits me.

Through a mouthful of blood, my hoarse voice croaks, “Am I dying?”

Silver’s eyes shift from my crimson lips to my eyes. “Shhh. Drink, Kee,” is all he says.

I do just that.

I summon the energy to lift my hands to his wounded one. I hold on with light fingers and force my throat to swallow back as much of the blood as I can manage.

As I drink, I flicker my gaze to the Lone God. He watches me, a spark of curiosity in his amber eyes. He hold the two shredded strips of my heart in each bloody hand.

As our gazes lock, he allows a small smile to take his lips, something that looks utterly alien on his divine face. “As promised, the Never-ending Path will take you where you wish to go,” he tells me and gestures across the swamp, where the ruby-encrusted trail spears into the treeline. “But heed this,” he adds, and cuts a glance at Silver, “only one will find what they are searching for.”

The daze is so thick that I don’t so much as feel a flutter of panic at what he tells me. I can barely process his words, let alone be lost in their meaning.

I watch, numb and limp against Silver, as the Lone God brings a strip of my heart to his mouth. His eyes latch onto mine as he eats it.

There it is. The nausea. It’s a small wave, but my body tenses all the same, and I cringe.

He turns his back on us. And with the other piece, he throws it onto the surface of the crimson bog. One heartbeat, two heartbeats, and the bubbling stops. When the last bubble pops, he looks over his shoulder at me.

“I thank you, mortal. You have freed me, and that is a favour I shall never forget.”

Fleetingly, I’m reminded of the second service he promised me—he said that I will soon need him, and for doing this sacrifice and taking this risk, he will deliver another favour to me.

But he speaks no more of it. He steps into the bog, and it’s unlike when he shoved me into it. He descends as though beneath the tarry surface, there are stairs winding down. He walks them at a wandering pace, a soft look of satisfaction slackening his face.

Then he is gone. Vanished into the bog.

And it’s just Silver and me.

For a while, we are soaking in silence. I stay slumped against him, lazily drinking from the wound on his palm, and he keeps his other arm loose around my waist, holding me to him.

With my head leaned back against his hard collarbone, I watch the sky above. Twilight is gone, and now it is blanket midnight. A near-full moon, stars that gleam brighter than the stardust shed all over the swamps, and I fleetingly wonder if they are winking down at me.

It brings a ridiculous thought to mind. “That is us,” I murmur against his palm. “Star-crossed lovers.”

He peels his hand away from my mouth. As he tightens his hold on my waist, his head lowers and he ghosts a kiss over my sweaty temple.

“No matter what happens,” he says against my skin, his breath hot and misty, “I will always care for you. Always.”

My gaze lowers to his arms wrapped around my slight frame. “You can change, you know.” My voice is a whisper of things I shouldn’t say, secrets that beg to stay hidden. “If you really wanted to, you could make a different choice. It doesn't have to be her.”

In answer, he offers only silence.

I look up at him.

His head is bowed over mine, his hair falling over his face, brushing against his bright eyes. His icy mask is completely fractured; and there’s something broken behind it.

With that one look, I know he won’t choose me. To him, it must be Luna. It will always be her.

So I bring my arms around his, and hug them to me. If this is one of the final moments I have with him, then let it be sweet and one to remember.

After all, isn't this what I always wanted? Perhaps not with an aniel, but didn't I wish for a man to hold me in my last run of life?

This is as best as I can hope for. And it’s all that he can give. And even through all the pain and ugliness, I do love him. I don’t know how much I love him, or how far it would drive me to pursue him. But it’s love, and it’s enough.

For now.

14.

Daybreak is crawling into the sky above.

Silver has given me so much of his blood that I feel utterly ill, like those times that I overindulge in frosted cakes and caramel sticks, and I wind up sick into a chamber pot or down an alley in the Capital.

Beneath the nausea, my strength is starting to build. By dawn, I have enough energy to stand on my own. Though, Silver lingers near me, a worried sheen to his shuttered eyes.

He has moved our bags to the porch of the house. I stand on the steps, finishing off my third sandwich of the morning.

The earlier rainfall and bog has ruined the last dignity of my dress. It’s utterly destroyed.

I stuff the sandwich crust into my full mouth, then plod over to Silver.

He leans against the doorframe, his watchful eyes glued to me. It’s as though he’s just waiting for me to drop dead on the spot, and I get the feeling he fears that idea more than he wants to.

His eyebrow arches as I gesture to the back of my dress and turn around.

“Help me out of this,” I say.

He doesn’t hesitate. His experienced fingers peel apart the tied rips of fabric from my spine then—in a heart-leaping moment—he yanks it apart and tears it right down the middle, to the curve of my bottom.

The dress falls to the porch in a heap. I wear only my black undergarments; a lacy bodice, ruined mud-caked stockings, and silk shorts.

Despite that he’s seen every inch of my body, a flush creeps onto my cheeks as I’m exposed to him.

I crouch beside my bag—and say a silent thanks to past-me who packed some extra dresses—and rummage through it. I care little for what I choose, so I just pull out the first fabric that my fingers graze over. It happens to be a pale pink day-dress, the same shade as the facade of my home in the Capital.

The skirt is narrow and limp, no underlayers to puff it up, and the bodice is simple with only three ties at the back. After I step into it and pull the long, lacy sleeves over my arms, Silver fastens the back with nimble fingers—though, I highly suspect his experience comes with removing dresses, not tying them up.

I can feel his eyes burning into me as I hike up the slim skirt of the dress. I roll down my stockings, then kick them away as though they are the essence of Koal. And in a way, they are. This venture to flee him has ruined more than just garments. I’ll forever carry the hauntings of this journey with me. And it only came to be that way because of Koal.

I know he is closer than I would like him to be. Who can say how far his hunters have come into the Woods, and if they have survived it thus far?

I throw all worries of the Daemon from my mind. There is something final about all of this in the air. And I won’t waste whatever moments I have left thinking about Koal.

As I pull on my grimy boots, Silver remains silent and just watches me.

Finally, I can’t take the quiet anymore. It’s too thick, too suffocating, and I hate to admit that it’s breaking me. I’ve been on the verge of tears for too long. I have to distract myself.

I turn to look at him. He is pulling the satchel strap over his arm, but his gaze is angled to his free hand, where the black bruise stains his skin.

I eye it for a beat. “Is that why you want to find the First Witch, too?”

He doesn’t answer. He just picks up my discarded bag and fixes the strap over his chest, then looks to the ruby path ahead.

“Do you want her to break your curse?” I press. I’m no longer afraid of him pushing back against my prying. What can he do now? Abandon me in the swamp, when I can easily follow the Never-ending Path to the end? Betray me to Koal, which he has already done by leaving behind clues of our trail?

“I doubt she would,” he murmurs.

He starts down the creaking stairs. I shadow him closely. Before I step boot on the mud, I lift the skirt of my dress to my bare knees.

I trail him across the swamp, taking care to step where he has, and the earth is firm enough that I won’t sink. But as we reach the end of the swamp, I realise that we’re not angling towards the ruby path. He is leading us to the other end, where the old path ends—and that’s when I notice it. The last time I looked, that old part of the Never-ending Path was gone; vanished. And now, it’s back.

I shoot it a bewildered look, then turn to him.

He stops a foot away from the old path and, slowly, peels off my bag from his chest. He drops it to the dirt.

“So this is it?” I whisper, a blankness slackening my face. “Where we part ways.”

Silver bows his head. He won’t look at me.

“I don’t wish to seek out the Witch,” he tells me. “She will never remove the curse, not after what I helped the Lone God do.”

A frown pinches my brows. I look back at the wood house, as though I’ll see the Original and all his secrets there on the porch. Of course, he’s long gone now.

“What did you do?” I ask, my voice a hushed, hesitant sound.

He goes on as though I hadn’t spoken; “I can remove the curse myself—by fulfilling it. It means to lose one in the end. So I must choose.”

Studying his profile, I nod—he is speaking what I already know, things he has already told me.

He turns to me. As he lifts up his gaze from beneath his lashes, I see desperation in the molten gleam of his eyes.

“Kee,” he starts and reaches out for me.

He takes my hands in his and pulls me closer. Then, his hands travel up my arms before slipping around to the nape of my neck. He tilts my head back and brings his mouth to mine. The kiss is firm—and so completely wrong. It’s bitter and tastes of blood and tears.

He draws back enough to look into my eyes. “Does this mean you are choosing me?” I ask, though there is withered hope in my chest.

He shakes his head softly. “I call on your promise.”

I blink. That’s all the time it took for a wave of detachment to wash over me. And suddenly, I feel as though I have been separated from my body somehow, and I’m now a puppet on strings.

I’m in a strange daze. I see Silver, I hear the slicking sounds of the swamp and the distant noise of bootfalls on stone, and I feel the prickles of fear climbing through me—and yet, I can do nothing but stand there and stare up at Silver, at the sorrow in his eyes that won’t meet mine, and the turned-down corners of his mouth.

I want to run. I know I should run. My instincts are rearing at the sense of danger; but I can’t so much as lift a boot from the dirt.

“What are you doing, Silver?” My whispered voice is weaker than my resolve, and fresh tears spill down my cheeks. “What have you done?”

“I call on your promise,” he echoes and a miserable frown pinches between his brows. He looks to the old path where the rising sound of bootfalls comes from.

“You will go with them,” he says and, hesitantly, I trace his gaze to the old path, where two shadows are slinking from. They are advancing on the swamp and the closer they get, the better I see the faint glow of their skin. Aniels.

Silver’s voice drops to a whisper; “You will allow them to return you to Koal. That is what I demand of you.”

My heart plummets to my bottom.

I would stagger from the punch of his words if I could move. But all I can do is let the tears stream down my face and turn my slack look up at him.

Something has shifted in Silver. The icy mask is slipping back onto his face, save for his frowning mouth, and he turns his glacier eyes on me.

My mouth twists as a fresh wave of horror rolls over me.

I slump forward. He catches me against him and, for a moment, he just holds me.

My voice is muffled against his chest; “Why?”

He dips his head. I feel the pressure of his mouth against my hair. For a moment, he is quiet. But then he says, “I entered the dream world to find Koal. I had to bargain for his forgiveness. To receive a pardon, I knew I would need to return you to him. You must understand, Kee; I need to find Luna. I need to know what happened to her. And when I do, I must be sure that Koal will not harm me or Luna in an act of vengeance.”

His hands grip onto my shoulders. He pushes me off of him gently and steadies me in front of him.

The aniels have almost reached us now. Their footsteps sound closer and closer by the heartbeat.

“And I needed you,” Silver adds. He levels his cold gaze on me. “Without you, the Lone God could never be free—and his freedom is all that would open the last stretch of the Never-ending Path to me. The only way I will find Luna is on that path.”

“It was never about helping me,” I whisper, defeated. I can hardly make out his face through the cloud of tears. “You used me. You tricked me. You never cared about me at all, it was all just a ploy to keep me by your side.”

He reaches out a cold hand for my cheek. I turn away, but his fingertips graze along the length of my jawline.

“I am more sorry for this than I expected,” he murmurs.

The two aniels have reached us. They come to a quiet stop at the end of the path. I feel their detached stares on me.

“Heathen,” I whisper and look at Silver. Though he claims to be sorry, his face is an unreadable stone mask, and it rises up a surge of fury inside of me.

I lunge at him.

Still, my boots are stuck on the swamp floor, so I can only propel my upper body forward. But it’s enough to reach him. Silver shuts his eyes on instinct as my hands latch onto him. I rake my nails down his face with so much pressure that I’m able to crack the thickness of his solid skin, and beads of blood swell all over his cheeks.

But it’s a bitter victory. Because in just a few heartbeats, he’s already starting to heal. He opens his eyes and fixes his icy gaze on me.

“Goodbye, Kee,” he says, then turns away. He walks to the other end of the swamp. At the mouth of the ruby path, he pauses, as if he means to look back at me—and I want him to. I want him to see me, standing defeated and torn with two strange aniels, change his mind, and come rescue me.

But he doesn't look back.

He walks onto the path. And he leaves.

I bow my head. A violent sob jerks my shoulders, hard. I almost stumble forward, but one of the aniels moves in front of me. She catches me before I can fall.

Distantly, I’m aware of the other aniel lifting me up into his arms. The other takes my bag and slings it over her shoulder.

And I can summon no fight within me. His damned promise has rendered me limp and unmovable, leaving me defenceless against these aniels.

All I can do is weep and feel the hollow pain spreading in my chest.

He betrayed me. Just like Koal warned me that he would. Just like I feared, but never prepared for.

And now, I’m the fool in those stories of aniels and vilas.

I’m the girl that others are warned about.

I’m the girl who lost everything.

end of book 4

GODS AND DAEMONS

BOOK 5

AMONG ALL

QUINN BLACKBIRD

BLURB

Koal: A Daemon, a wicked creature from the Underworld.

Silver: An ancient and cold aniel, a powerful child of the God, Prince Poison.

Keela: A sickly mortal who lives on borrowed time.

Silver has traded Keela off to the Daemon who seeks to destroy her. Silver’s betrayal comes from two reasons; to secure his future with his beloved Luna, and to strike a deal to keep his safety from Koal’s wrath.

Only, Keela doesn’t plan on going down without a fight. She hasn’t come as far as the Lone God in the Wild Woods all to be handed off to Koal.

She makes it her mission to find the First Witch. But some missions are not written in the stars of fate.

And as Silver reaches the one he thinks he holds deep in his heart, the guilt of betraying Keela threatens to destroy him much more than he ever anticipated. Does a mere mortal hold a bigger part of him in her grip than he ever thought possible?

A dark fantasy mini-series set in Quinn Blackbird’s GODS AND MONSTERS world. You do not have to read Gods and Monsters before reading Gods and Daemons.

See inside for content warnings.

Paperbacks available on the box-set page.

CONTENT INFORMATION

Gods and Daemons is a dark-themed fantasy romance mini-series. There will be dark romance, twisted relationships, explicit sexual scenes, explicit language, angst and betrayals.

GLOSSARY, TERMS, PLACES & OTHER THINGS
Don’t be discouraged. This is for reference only. All will be explained in the series!

GLOSSARY

Divine Ones - Gods

Malis - a malevolent God

Beniyn - a benevolent God

Aniel - a hand-crafted offspring of a God

Vilas - a mortal

Scocie - land of the Gods

Capital - Scocie’s city

Commos - isles of the common vilas

Skripta - religious texts

Daemons - evil entities that rule the Underworld

FIRST GODS

Prince Poison - malis, lover of Princess Monster

Lover Lust - malis

Gaia - beniyn

Blaze - malis

Keeper of Lost Souls - beniyn

Mistress Mad - malis

Swordsman of Scales - malis

Loki - malis

Trident - beniyn

SECOND GODS

Aphrodite - beniyn, deceased.

Zealot - malis

Syfon- beniyn, deceased.

Father Fettle - beniyn

THIRD GODS

Princess Monster - beniyn, love of Prince Poison

Phantom - malis, deceased.

SCOCIE:

Wild Woods

The Capital

Mist Creek

Palace of the Gods

Gods’ Gardens

Twisted Wood

Place of the Daemons

The Capital

East Side:

Shadow Quarter

Lost Square

Scholar Square

Merchant Market

Textile District

West Side:

Emporium Quarter

The Port

Worship Street

The Gardens

Spa Square

First District

GODS AND DAEMONS
AMONG ALL
BOOK FIVE

GODS AND DAEMONS

The Gods came in two waves.

The Firsts—the most powerful and ancient of the Divine Ones—were made with the world. They are as old as the dirt, the grass, and the stars.

The child grows, fast. Within a year, it is a fully matured aniel, a dangerous child of the God who created it, and bound to its God for all eternity.

In creating the aniels, the Gods rectified the errors they made with mortals—they cannot breed.

But the vilas bred, multiplied fast, and spread too quickly.

We, the vilas, worship them from the city built on the shore, the Capital. Every day of our lives, we are reminded of the Gods with that midnight-blue, glittering palace looming over us.

PART ONE

KEELA

The aniels taking me back to Koal didn’t stop once on the path. At one point, the aniel carrying me paused to drape me over his shoulder, but that was as much of a break as they afforded me.

Even when they bound my wrists together with rope and wrapped a strip of fabric around my mouth to silence me, they did it without stopping. And before I know it, we’re on the shore, and I’ve been given no opportunity to escape my capturers.

Finally, I’m flipped off of the aniel’s shoulder. The sore patch on my torso swells with relief; all the blood trapped there flees, like I cannot.

I rub my belly for a mere shuttering heartbeat before he loops his strong arm around me. I’m dragged backwards down the beach to the small wooden boat resting in the shallows.

I grunt as he shoves me over the side of the boat. There’s a thud as I land on my bottom, between two narrow benches. Without so much as sparing me a glance, the aniels sit on the benches, flanking me. And it’s mere seconds before they use the oars to push us out to sea.

Stuffed between their legs, I wriggle myself around until I can push up onto my knees. I look around the waters.

My heart sinks as I spot the shadows lurking on the horizon—a pirate ship. No sails, all black and eroded wood. My breath shudders against the strip pulled against my mouth, and I slump in the boat. It’s the very same pirate ship that brought Silver and I to the shore of the Wild Woods; the same one that Koal occupied in my dreams.

It seems he has lied about nothing, while Silver has lied about everything. It’s not that I trusted the wrong one—Koal is still undeniably the worse of the two—but that perhaps I put too much faith in the aniel to deliver me away from the Daemon. And even through the icicles of fear biting my veins, I feel the hollow pit of pain open deep in my chest at the reminder of Silver’s betrayal.

I’ve only gotten through the last few days—carried through the Woods in the iron grip of an aniel—by shoving all thoughts of Silver out of mind. It won’t do me any good to dwell on what he’s done to me. Right now, I face bigger problems than the constant, dull ache in my chest.

But the fear of what I face is climbing higher inside of me. As the ship slips out of the dusty shadows and into clear view, my breathing has taken a hoarse, erratic turn, and I have my hands fisted in the skirt of my dress. My shoulders heave with the force of my laboured breathing. It takes all my withering strength not to let the panic overthrow me into a sickly spell.

Lashes hanging low over my glassy eyes, I can’t tear my gaze away from the ship. It bobs on the water ahead, and our little boat sways along with it.

A guttural sigh leaves me as I turn my cheek to the horizon. I look back at the shore. The swelling distance between us and the Woods has turned the trees into an ordinary mud-brown and moss-green haze. We are too far away from the beach now for me to entertain any idea of jumping overboard and swimming back to the safety of the Woods.

I would drown if the aniels don’t fish me out of the water first.

A sudden punch of nausea hits me square in the belly. I double over, my eyes flickering back in my head. A gravelly moan vibrates my throat, and it’s all I can do to not fling myself overboard just for the better fate of drowning.

If I did drown, if I chose that fate over meeting Koal, then perhaps the water would be deep enough that Koal wouldn't be able to find my body. I doubt that, but even if my body became lost to the sea, he would be able to trap my soul in the Underworld.

There is no path facing me that allows me to escape him. Either way, I’m resigned to an eternity of torture.

And the reality of that hits me too hard. The sobs I’ve been fighting back finally uncage themselves. I’m slumped over in the boat, my bound hands lifted to my face, and I weep against my palms. Tears slick my fingers.

My back is jutting so violently that I’m not even sure if it’s the sway of the boat rocking me or the unleashed sobs.

Then the boat knocks into something hard.

I peel my hands away from my stricken face. Opposite me looms a wet, wooden wall. I trace it upwards, higher and higher, until I see shadows filtering above the edge of the pirate ship.

My heart sinks to my watery gut.

I loosen a shaky breath.

The aniels push up from either side of me just as a rope comes spiralling down from the deck of the ship. It lands on the boat with a thud; a thud that I feel echo through my chilled bones.

Tears create a murky film on my eyes. I watch the brown-haired aniel, whose inky black eyes glimmer through the haze. She loops the rope around rusty metal hooks on the side of the ship expertly. Distantly, I wonder if she is one of the aniels sent out to the seas, travelling the isles to recruit vilas as worshippers for her God’s temple.

The ridiculous thought is forced out of mind as a meaty hand grabs my arm. I suck in a sharp, shuddering breath and look over my shoulder at the other aniel. He doesn’t meet my gaze—purely out of disinterest, I imagine—as he hoists me up to stand.

Before I’ve even found balance on my buttery legs, a rope-ladder comes coiling down the ship’s wall. I’m dragged across the boat to the ladder.

I cringe back from it, from what it means to deliver me to, but the hand on my arm tightens painfully, and I bite back a wince. My bones threaten to shatter any moment under the force of his grip. I feel the early kisses of promised bruises.

With his other hand, he reaches for the ladder—and his fingers loosen on my arm.

Something inside of me shatters.

A sob chokes in my throat. I cave to the sudden urge seizing my tightened muscles; I jump back from the wall of the ship. My legs catch on the side of the boat and I have just a moment before I go tumbling overboard.

I don’t fight the water once it washes over me. My arms are limp at my sides, my legs tangled in the long skirt of my dress. Almost peacefully, I shut my eyes on the grey haze of water around me.

A force of water pushes down on me.

I look up at the surface; I don’t see the silhouette of the ship anymore. Instead, I’m looking right at the red-headed aniel, and the hard mask settled over his determined face.

He reaches me in two swift breaststrokes.

Tears wash away into the sea-water as he snatches up my waist, pulls me against him, then swims us back up to the surface.

We break the surface, and I go limp in his hold. Defeated, and utterly resigned to the fate awaiting me. Any hope I dared be fool enough to hold onto is swept away with the waves rolling over us.

I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.

Those words echo in my mind over and over again. And it isn't until I’m thrown back into the boat that I realise I’m murmuring them to myself, like a madwoman. Maybe I have been driven just a bit mad. Who wouldn’t be?

My body turns to dough; limp and heavy.

He slings me over his shoulder again, and the familiar ache in my belly reignites. Lazily, I watch the small boat shift beneath me, then start to shrink altogether as he carries me up the ladder.

Then it’s all over. Just like that.

I’m heaved from the aniel’s shoulder and into waiting arms. They catch me before I can fall over onto the ship’s deck. I blink through the glaze of tears at the faces hovering above me. Pirates, I think. And they are all as grim-faced as I feel inside.

They lower me to the deck, then scatter away as quickly as they came.

The fresh water clings my dress to my soaked body. Like a caught and killed fish, I lie on my back, hearing the thuds of bootfalls at my side; the aniels jumping on-ship.

I stare up at the sky. My mind drifts away from me piece by piece. Still, I’m all too aware when a tall, broad-shouldered shadow steps into my line of sight.

Koal stands over me. His eyes gleam like ink-pots, his black hair falling over his sun-kissed face.

I shut my eyes and turn my cheek to him.

But closing my eyes on him does nothing to hide me from him.

I hear the triumphant malice staining his tone; “Just in time, mate. The moon is full tomorrow.”

My face wrinkles with a fresh wave of tears.

There’s a rustle at my ear; Koal, crouching to one knee beside me. He lowers his voice, so close to me that his warm breath—so very real compared to the constant distance of the dreams—disturbs the droplets of water on my cheek; “And how I will take great pleasure in providing you with my venom.”

I wish I’d drowned in the sea or died in the Woods.

Anything is better than what this beast means to do with me.

I can only hope now that I won’t survive his tortures. That might be my only reprieve. The only escape I have left.

SILVER

Silver stands at the fork of the Never-ending Path. To either side of him, the ruby-encrusted path spears off. One leads into the snowy-white field that spans for as far as the eye can see. The other winds its way through thorny black bushes and scorched trees that hook over the path.

He knows which way leads to the First Witch. Beyond the snow-dusted field lies the valley where the Haunted Creek cracks through ridges. It looks the lesser of two gruelling ways to take, as though it means to lure him in with the promise of removing the curse.

But Silver has no intention of meeting with the First Witch again. She would do nothing to release the curse from him. Not after what he did to her. Besides, the curse is fulfilled now.

And so that leaves the other path—the black, crooked, dead one.

He tugs out his hand from the pocket of his breeches and turns it over in the faint moonlight dusted over him. The mark of the curse stains the corner of his hand black, like a blotch of faded tattoo ink.

It shouldn’t be there.

The mark should have vanished when he turned his back on Keela in the swamp, and let her be taken away by the other aniels, back to Koal.

That was sacrifice.

It took everything—every scrap of strength and will, every memory of Luna that he could summon—to not go back for her. It disturbs him just how close he came to abandoning his quest for Luna and running to save Keela from the horrible fate awaiting her.

But how can he justify sacrificing Luna over Keela?

Keela is a vilas. She is mortal. So, she cannot possibly be his true love. One love, one obsession. She is the latter.

Her tangled fate as the mate of a Daemon also proves that she was the one who had to be sacrificed. It could be no other way.

She served her purpose to him.

She came with him as a willing lamb to its slaughter, ignorant of the fate awaiting her, and acted as an oblivious shield between Silver and the wickedness of the Wild Woods. It was because of Keela and her tangible desperation to find the First Witch that the Woods overlooked him. Its tests were designed for Keela, not him. And with her, he was able to see the Lone God go free, and consequently watch the path reform and take him to what he searches for—Luna.

That is what he reminds himself of as he stands at the fork of the path. Silver forces faint, wispy memories of Luna to his mind, and buckles down on his effort to find her.

He can’t let a sickly vilas distract him, derail him from what he needs to do. He must steel himself against the echoes of Keela’s sobs in the air, how she cried out for him, the sheer look of heartbreak on her face.

Silver shoves those memories out of his mind.

He turns his head down, looking at the winking rubies beneath his boots. Hair falls into his glassy eyes. He fishes out a cigarette from his shirt pocket then blows a gentle breath of flame onto its end.

As he brings the cigarette to his lips, the glassy sheen of his eyes has vanished. An icy, impenetrable mask has slipped over his face once more, and his insides bolt up like solid metal.

He angles to the right, facing the black path that will lead him to the prison—to Luna.

And he takes it.

KEELA

I’m hoisted up by a strong, meaty hand and at first, I recognise the grip belonging to the aniel who stole me away from the Woods. But as I’m lifted to my feet and pause to wait for my balance, I shoot a glance at the one holding me. It’s a pirate—an ordinary vilas—and one I faintly remember.

His skin is mocha-latte, his eyes are deep brown pools like the puddles of mud back at the swamp. His blouse is unbuttoned down to the naval, his breeches look as though they have been misbuttoned in a hurry. And there’s a distinct friendliness to the creases that wrinkle the edges of his eyes.

He’s the pirate who was canoodling with another on my way to the Wild Woods, the one who captured my bored attention for so long.

Once I’m steady on my feet, I manage to straighten my heavy spine enough to satisfy the pirate. He steps forward and takes me with him.

Ahead of us, the cloaky shadow of Koal leads the way across the long deck. He’s veering right, headed for the narrow doorway that takes us down to the belly of the ship.

I’m too numb to feel much anymore. Maybe it’s the ice-cold water from the sea clinging my dress to my damp body, or the sopping wet hair slapped all over my cheeks and back like moss to a rock, or the chilly bite in the wind spearing me—or even the absolute shattering realisation that everything I’ve gone through, all that I’ve done, was for nothing. Whatever it is, all that manages to break through the thick haze of nothingness is my skin prickling and the beginnings of chattering teeth.

We’re almost at the door when I see my future in the haunted face of a woman. She’s a frail thing, so thin and withered that I wonder if a strong enough breeze could sweep her away into the sea. And by the glassiness of her eyes and the pinch of her down-turned mouth, I suspect she wishes that would happen to her.

Beside her, a cloaky figure looms, hood drawn over his face, so I can’t make out his features. But I know well enough that he’s a Daemon, and he has his slender hand on the shoulder of the trembling girl. He holds onto her like a possession, and I take a fresh look at the bite-mark scars littering her neck and shoulders; little glowing white marks, formed in crescent shapes.

That is my future.

I will become her; broken, defeated, and haunted bait to a monster.

A shudder runs through me.

Koal disappears into the darkness of the doorway before we follow after him. The pirate keeps his grip tight on me, but why should he? On a deck full of pirates and two Daemons, where can I flee to that I wouldn't be followed?

The wooden steps creak beneath our weight as we descend into darkness. At the bottom, there’s a long, narrow corridor dimly lit by faint gas lanterns.

We shadow Koal down the corridor to the very end where—my heart stops—there’s a prisoner’s cage awaiting us, its rusty metal bars looking as rotten as I feel inside.

Koal slips through the open gate.

The pirate pauses at the entrance, his grip on me adjusting, then manoeuvres me inside first. He’s not as I expected. He doesn’t handle me with anger or urgency. I suspect he’s unhappy with all this, but follows orders because what sort of fool—like me—goes against a Daemon?

I did. And now look at me. I’m being ushered into the brig, trapped in a cage with a Daemon, and a definite promise of revenge facing me.

I see that promise in what dangles from the middle of the ceiling; metal chains that end in leather straps and buckles. Restraints.

A shuddering breath escapes me.

I wrap my arms around my body and cut my gaze down to the damp floor. It’s only now I realise I’m standing in a puddle. The cool water seeps into the edges of my boots and freezes my feet. But I hardly feel it.

I hardly feel much of anything.

There’s a fiery intensity on my cheek. Koal’s stare is burning right into me. But I daren’t look at him, I daren’t give him any triggers to attack me in this moment. The longer I can stall it the better—even if I’ll face it anyway.

The pirate has unbuckled the restraints. He gestures me over, not meeting my lifted gaze, and I know that neither of us wants to be here. We both want to be free—him, on the seas with his friends and lover, me, in the Wild Woods to find the Witch.

But that’s not going to happen.

And now everything the Sister told me has been confirmed. I will not meet the First Witch in this life. So one day I will meet her, but that could be centuries from now, by Koal’s side, and perhaps then I will be just a soul. Dead.

Death is meant to be the end. Not the beginning of another life.

There is no end for me.

And that’s a funny thing. For so much of my life, I feared the inevitable early death I faced. I was terrified by the absolute end that it meant. But now—now, I know that not even death is an escape from my fate.

I move over to the shackles. The soles of my boots drag over the puddled floor. My head drops and my stare turns down as I lift my limp hands.

The pirate fastens the leather straps around my wrists. And when the last buckle is sealed, I hear it thunk in my heart.

He adjusts them for a few moments. My wrists are tugged higher and higher above me, until they rest just above the crown of my head.

A tear slides down my cheek.

The pirate leaves, not closing the gate behind him, and it’s just me—left alone with Koal.

His cloak flutters and just as it does, my heart leaps up into my throat and chokes me. I swallow back a lump and, slowly, force my cautious gaze to meet him.

Koal unfastens his cloak. His slender fingers make slow work of the task, and it only serves to build panic higher up me.

“You have caused me much trouble,” he drawls, tone bored and weary.

He slips off the cloak and it lands in a black billow on the floor. His head is slightly bowed; he looks up at me, his long lashes darkening his pitch-black eyes, and I feel my gut turn to a rushing river.

“No one escapes the Daemons,” he says and steps closer to me. “Not even in the one place we cannot enter. There is nowhere you can go to outrun me.”

I can’t help it because I am terribly weak and terribly afraid. My face crumples and a sob jolts my body. The shackles rattle above me.

Within a strangled heartbeat, my face is wet with tears and seawater.

He stops in front of me, towering over me, and I suddenly feel like the mouse who the cat has cornered.

“Please.” It’s a blend of a word and a whimper. “You have me now, so why torment me?”

His tanned hand reaches for my face.

I flinch, but he doesn’t hesitate. He curls his hand into a fist, then drags his knuckles down the length of my jawline.

“You have done much to defy me,” he says, and his tone shifts into something like storms and the darkness of the Underworld. “You must learn your role as my mate—and all that I expect of you.”

I sniffle back a cry. “It wouldn't have changed anything,” I mumble.

His touch pauses at my chin. He adds pressure, enough to lift my face up and angle me to look up at him through my watery eyes.

He arches an eyebrow.

“Even if I’d stayed in the Capital,” I whisper, tears clutching to my withering voice, “you would have hurt me still. My whole existence with you would be one of pain no matter what I did.”

A small, dark smile quirks his lips. “I have never been dishonest with you, mate. A life with me will always be a life of pain.”

His hand leaves me and my head drops.

“I am a Daemon,” he says, and starts to roll up his sleeves at an agonising pace. “I know no mercy. I know nothing of love. But I know all about death and suffering.”

I’m given a moment to reel back as he lunges for me. In that split second, his mouth mangles into sharp teeth bordering a pitless black hole, and he’s on me.

The scream catches in my throat. I throw my head back and howl like a wounded, cornered animal. And that’s just what I am.

Koal rips into me. A lot.

My heartbeat is thinning.

His teeth are tearing at all of my exposed flesh. Blood streams from holes dotted all over my neck and shoulders.

Beat. Beat.

No matter how much I writhe and rattle and scream, he doesn’t stop. Not for a long while.

Beat. Beat.

Before he’s finally finished, I’ve already gone still. My body is limp against him and, when he draws back, I slump so low that my wrists cry against the pull of the restraints.

Beat.

I manage to force my eyes up. I look at him from beneath my lashes.

Koal’s once-beautiful face is now completely vicious. It’s smeared in blood, spread all over his jaw and chin, even up to his eyes. Blood—my blood—runs down his neck, stains his shirt and drips to the floor.

....Beat.

Those sharp needle-like teeth start to sink back into his gums. His lips press together, almost as though he’s sucking his teeth, and when he opens them again into a cruel grin, he has a pearly-white smile that shudders my insides.

...Beat.

Using the pad of his thumb, he strokes away a streak of blood from his lower lip. His grin is still intact and he watches me with black eyes alive like pools of tar.

“Tomorrow is when the moon will be at its fullest,” he says. “I have all that I need to perform the ritual.” He lowers his hand from his mouth to the front of my dress. His grin seems to turn darker for a second before—he tugs the dress so hard that it split down the side. “I have your true father’s blood. Augustus West.”

Augustus West.

Mayor West...

I—

I just don't have the energy to comprehend that.

I can’t think about what he’s telling me. I know he’s not yet lied to me—and so why would he lie about this?—but it’s not something I should fret over. Not while I’m about to suffer more than my body and mind can survive.

...

...Beat.

He tears the dress a bit more. Shame floods my cheeks crimson. I shut my eyes on him.

My left breast would be entirely exposed if it wasn’t for the lacy bodice beneath it.

Koal grazes his hand over the mound. Every nerve in my body is screaming to run, to fight. But I’m more trapped than I’ve ever been in my life—and I know ... I know that this is what’s to come.

...

...Beat.

He drops his hand to his side.

A breath of relief uncoils through me.

“The venom will take you,” he tells me. For a moment, I wonder why he’s telling me anything at all—best just to make me suffer in uncertainty, right?—but then he adds, “It will take you into dreams of my making. I will show you many things, just like before,” he adds, almost tenderly. His hand has found its way to my face, and he brushes his fingertips over my bloodied cheek. “Would you like to see how long it took for your sister to die?”

I choke on a whimper. My head dips.

Blood and tears fall to the floor.

He brings his face closer to mine. I feel the sickening sensation of his mouth grazing my forehead, and a surge of nausea rises up within me.

Against my sticky skin, he whispers, “I have so much planned for you, mate. I will break you, and break you, and destroy you—until there is nothing left. And then, I will kill you. What is the greatest torment if not a soul not at peace? And how I ache to steal away your peace.”

He leaves; his breath vanishes from my skin, the heat of his body disappears and leaves me much colder than I could manage.

I hear the gate shut tight, a lock clink in place, then silencing footsteps leave me.

...

Beat.

My slowing heartbeat is my only reprieve. It lulls me into a place between sleep and numbness. I’m lost in the daze, dangling on the edge of unconsciousness. But I won’t fall to it. Not if I can help it.

I can’t let him invade my mind.

And maybe—just maybe, my heart will stop altogether, and I’ll ruin his grand plan of destroying me. Yes, he will still have power over my soul, or even bring me back to life. But if I can die even for a few hours, it would be a blessing.

Though I’m fast realising, blessings aren’t meant for people like me.

SILVER

Fingers of grey smoke crawl all around him. The vapours engulf him the way they do a magician performer about to disappear.

Silver sits, crouched over, on a bleached-white boulder on the edge of the path. He has his cheek resting in one hand. With the other hand, he holds a cigarette near his mouth. But not once does he kiss it to his lips. He simply holds it there. And holds it there. His eyes glazed and far away, like grey clouds in the distance.

His gaze is immovable and rigid. And it’s fixed on what lies at the very end of the path, where the trees part to reveal a white-stone structure. The building is surrounded by a looming black wall, so tall and thick that it appears utterly impenetrable—save for the gate parked right at the mouth of the path.

Silver has found the prison.

After everything he has done to get here, how long he’s sought out this place, what he’s sacrificed to be sitting where he is—and yet, he can’t seem to summon even a scrap of excitement or triumph.

Silver feels entirely deprived of emotion and sensation. He simply ... exists. Numbness has already coursed its way through his icy veins and taken root. Now, it fills him, making a home in every nook and cranny of his body, and left him hollow.

Fleetingly, he wonders if this is what death feels like.

Is that what Keela feels?

She has speared into his mind again—and suddenly all of that numbness shivers inside of him, and fear creeps in at the edges.

A breath loosens from him.

The cigarette drops to the path, still lit. Vapours lick up from it.

He drops his face into his hands.

For a long while, he sits there, hunched over on the boulder.

Of all the things Keela could be feeling, he hopes that numbness is it. He hopes that envelopes her, takes her as its prisoner, and protects her against all the tortures Koal is inflicting upon her.

But what tortures is he delivering to his runaway mate?

A frustrated sound catches in Silver’s throat. He slaps his hands to his thighs and pushes up from the boulder. Shoving his fists into his pockets, he paces back and forth, kicking his satchel out of the way.

“One love,” he mumbles, his head bowed, his face twisted in concentration, “one obsession. One love, one obsession. One must be sacrificed. One must be sacrificed. It can be no other way.”

That’s all it is. An obsession. One that has yet to fade away. But it will, with time, with the return of Luna into his life. Then, Keela will drift out of his mind—out of his damn body—and he will stop catching her sweet, fruity scent in the air, mixed with dirt and blood, and he will stop seeing her golden hair in the beige straw-weeds that sprout along the edges of the path.

Once he has Luna, Keela will become a piece of his past life that will, over time, be lost to faint memories.

A sudden pulse stings his hand.

Silver stops his marching.

He lifts his hand and angles it towards the moonlight spearing through the trees. The black mark is growing. It’s spreading like ink spilled onto white parchment.

The sacrifice must be close, he decides. Keela will face the bonding ritual with Koal soon—and then she will be lost to Silver forever. It is only then that the mark will leave his hand, that the curse will be fulfilled, and that will open up that hidden pain inside of him and release it all; purge it from him.

His mouth flattens into a grim line. He looks ahead to the end of the path at the reaching walls of the prison.

Then he snatches up his satchel from the ruby-stones and marches onwards.

He can’t go back and he can’t look back.

He must leave Keela behind.

It is the only way.

KEELA

Creak, swish, creak, swish, creak, swish, groooaaannnn.

The song of the ship swaying on the waves is a threat—it dares to try and lull me to sleep. There’s something therapeutic about the noises, and distantly I have a faint understanding of pirates, of the slight pleasures they enjoy in their lives at sea.

But I am no pirate, shedding society and community to sail the waters of this world. I am not here by choice, and so I battle against the lullabies around me.

I fight sleep for as long as I can. Just when I start to slip away and my eyelashes droop, casting my sight into darkness, the creak of the gate spears through me.

Alert, I jolt against the shackles. They rattle above me as my wild stare lands on the man standing in the gateway.

It’s the brown-skinned pirate, the same one who shackled me upright in this cold, damp cage.

He lingers in the entrance. Uncertainly pinches his mouth and tugs the corners down. Even his gaze flicks all over the brig, looking anywhere but at me.

I shift my attention to his hands, bundled at his naval. In his firm grip, there is a long, bulbous shape that I can barely make out through the daze clinging to my sight. I blink a few times until the gloss clears and I can see it for a leather-strapped bottle of water.

The pirate tosses his caution to the sea-winds; he kicks away from the entrance and wanders over to me. The water swishes in the bottle.

Tracing him with my hooded stare, I barely summon enough energy to lift my head as he comes to a stop in front of me.

Still downcast, his eyes refuse to meet mine. He fumbles with the bottle in his beefy, calloused hands—hands roughened by years of hard labour—for a slow moment. Finally, he manages to tug the cork free of the bottle and he lifts it up, angling the rim at my cracked lips.

I blink at him. Confusion is fast to crinkle my nose. Tension starts to tighten the muscles around my stiffening spine and I stand as upright as I can.

As though he reads my minds, hears my unspoken doubts, he says, “The Daemon wants to keep you alive.”

So that’s why I’m being fed water. Not out of kindness from this pirate, not out of mercy from my Daemon, but simply due to necessity. Without it, I will die. Not that my death truly matters—he’ll only bring me back, since he has my body on the ship.

Wish I just died in the Wild Woods.

Wish I died in the womb, long before I could be claimed by this creature.

“I’ve been told to force it down your throat if you don’t drink,” the pirate warns me, misunderstanding my hesitance. My mind was lost, away on dreams of death and eternal peace in the Underworld, not denying fresh water that would soothe away the crisp feeling on my tongue and the scratchy sensation in my throat.

I part my chapped lips. I’m sure they might be bleeding at the corners. Jumping into salt-watered seas to drown might not have been the best idea.

The warmth of the bottle kisses my lower lip. He angles the bottle enough to tip its contents into my mouth. I don’t bother with the usual parade of swishing the water around, tasting it, or letting it roll over my tongue—I gulp the muscle at the back of my throat, and let the water run down me; like it runs down a waterfall.

I’ve guzzled half the bottle when he finally drifts the rim away from my mouth. I loosen a starved breath that comes out with a gush and slump against my restraints.

I expect him to leave. Walk out without another word.

But he lingers—

And that piques what little interest I have stored within me.

I look up at him from beneath my lashes.

Faintly, I’m surprised to see that he’s watching me, after so long of avoiding my gaze. But he is focused on me now, and I can sense the horror of how I must look reflected in the grim pull of his face. Uncomfortably, he massages the bottle in his rough hands, rolling it around and around, and even his scuffed boots shuffle a few times on the rotting floorboards.

His voice is a low, uncertain whisper; “What did you do to him?”

A dry smile flattens my cracked mouth. “I fled.”

He cuts his gaze down at the torn strip of my dress. Exposed, my lacy bodice is all that shields my breast from him. But since I’ve watched him canoodle so lovingly with another man, I’m not too ashamed. Mind, that could be the utter defeat that’s caught me in a cloud of uncaring numbness.

“They say you’re his mate.” The pirate looks up at me which his chocolatey eyes. They swirl, the very same way that a hot cup of coco does when you stir sugar and a dash of milk into it.

“Who says that?” I ask, my voice a croak that belongs to a hag, not a young woman. I clear my throat, but it does little to vanish the hoarse, scratchy sensation.

“The other one,” he murmurs.

He tosses a look over his shoulder at the gateway. Through the bars, there seems to be little else other than darkness broken only by the whispers of gas lanterns and their weak light.

He looks back at me. “The other Daemon mate.”

My mouth forms a silent ‘oh’, and I give a faint nod.

After a thick pause, I say with the voice of a pipe-smoker, “It bothers you, doesn’t it.” It’s hardly a question, so there’s no infliction in my tone.

His brown cheeks flush with the faint kiss of maroon. “I—I only ...”

He stops himself, looks to the corner of the brig where—in the shadows—my bag has been discarded. I don’t even remember that being brought down here with me.

The pirate lifts his chin. “I reckon there are all types of love,” he finally tells me. “And they all matter—but only if both consent to it, you know?”

A bitter smile presses my lips together. “I must say, I agree.”

Then, it hits me like a roll of thunder pushing through a storm cloud. Scattered, spread-out, and so loud that it’s hard to pin-point it exactly. But slowly, the idea starts to clear in my mind, and I make sense of it.

I glance at the forgotten bag in the corner. The bag with so many jewels stuffed inside of it, amulets and pearls that I packed in a rush. Not to mention fine dresses made of silks and costly chiffons. That bag is a treasure, especially to a pirate.

I roll my teeth over my bottom lip for a beat. “Do you hold onto your belief so strongly that you might want to help me?”

He shrugs noncommittally, one-shouldered. “I do want to help you. But I can’t.” He stares at a protruding nail on a nearby floorboard, smeared with rust. “Can’t go against a Daemon.”

Disappointment deflates me.

Still, my idea has its claws in me. “Would you do it for jewels?”

This catches his attention. His eyes swerve to me, and I can see the greed light up those chocolate brown hues.

But he shakes his head. “No jewels in the world would make me defy a Daemon. I would never get the chance to enjoy them—I would surely die for my actions. And there is no place in this world I can go to hide from him.”

I nod slowly, but the determination still sticks to my flattened mouth. “But for jewels,” I press, “would you unshackle me? I would do the rest.”

That’s all I need from him. If he simply unshackled me, I could easily slip out of the brig at night, sneak onto the deck, and jump overboard. Then, my body would be forever lost at sea. Koal would only have my soul then.

But fate proves once again that she is not on my side.

“I can’t do that,” he mumbles and bows his head in shame.

I ache to kick out at him, to boot him between the legs and see him suffer. Sure, he has a desire to help me, he feels pity for me, and he would free me if he could. But he makes the choice not to act on his beliefs, and that is all well and fine for him, because in time, he will let go of the shame and guilt of allowing me to be snatched up by a beast, and he’ll go on to live a happy life with his lover. I will be tortured and killed at the hands of the Daemon.

Just when I think all buds of hope have been squashed, the pirate leans in closer to me, so close that I can taste the wine on his breath, and he whispers, “You tell me where those jewels you’re talking about are—and I’ll send you someone who might help. Someone who’s got nothing to lose.”

I arch an eyebrow with the scraps of energy I have left.

Sagging against the restraints, I speak in a hushed, hoarse voice; “Who?”

He cuts a glare around the brig, then leans back in to me. Wine invades my senses as he says, “The other mate.”

I pale instantly. I stiffen, reel back, and as I shake my head, a violent dizzy sensation rolls over me, like waves rolling over the shore.

I dismiss the glaring symptom of my body crying out for remedy. Let my sickness have me.

“You tell me where those jewels are,” he parrots his earlier words, “and I’ll leave the door unlocked to the brig. I’ll suggest to her that you’re not guarded. And I’ll lower one of the row boats to the waters tonight. The rest will be up to her and you.”

My lashes flutter as I take it all in.

It’s a wild plan—one I never could have dreamed of when I was dropped on the deck of this ship. The best I hoped for was a quick death.

But if this pirate is worth trusting, and he does all that he promises, the rest of it relies on this other mate. She might betray me to her Daemon of course, and I could be victim to the wrath of Koal all over again. But what can he do to me that hasn’t already promised is coming my way?

And say she can be trusted and she does unshackle me—then what?

I sneak up to the deck, climb overboard, drop into the water, climb into the row boat—and head back to the shore? I would have to find the Wild Woods again. There’s no other option. If I head anywhere else, it would be a matter of hours—maybe even less—before Koal hunts me down.

It’s all so very wild and utterly unlikely. I know my chances, and I know they are thinner than my strength right now.

But what do I have to lose?

Absolutely nothing. Yet I have everything to gain.

And that’s what motivates me to nod my head. “All right,” I whisper. “If she comes to see me, and all of this pans out, I’ll tell you where the jewels are.”

A frown pinches his face. He draws back slightly. “You won’t tell me now?”

I wrinkle my mouth. “If I do, then who’s to say you’ll hold up your end of the bargain? After all, you are a pirate, and you expressed how afraid of a Daemon’s wrath you are. How can I trust you will uphold your end?”

His shoulders relax. All hints of annoyance drift away from him. “I see your point,” he says. “Fine—I’ll meet you on the deck. Tonight, I’ll be standing where I dropped the boat. That’s when you’ll tell me where the jewels are.”

I nod firmly. “Agreed. But will there be oars in the boat?” I wonder as an afterthought.

He smiles something kind and small. “Yes. And water and some food.”

Relief uncoils through me. As I relax, my wrists go limp in the restraints and tug against them.

The pirate takes a step backwards. His smile slights into a faint apology. “I should...”

In answer, I nod.

And he leaves.

KEELA

My dreams are floods of awful, gruesome things. I see Olivia’s face, contorted in a mangled scream, but then it rolls away—her head, decapitated, bouncing down the familiar stairs of my home. And the flesh at the bloody base of her neck is so jarred that it looks as though her head was torn off.

I see other things too. Things that will haunt me into the next life: My mother’s corpse, lying on the bed in her dark, dingy bedchamber; Mayor West writhing on the floor of what looks to be an office, a stream of blood flowing out from the dip of his elbow, and a pale-faced Mikhael standing in the corner, frozen by fear; And worst of all, my own blooded and beaten body sprawled out on the damp stone floor of the Underworld.

I’m freed from these wicked images when the groan of a gate plunges me back into the now. I’m torn from my dreams into the ice-cold chill of reality.

As I jolt awake, my wrists instinctively tug against the shackles. They rattle, a reminder of my confinement, of being trapped, and I’m quick to slump in defeat.

Weary-eyed, I lift my gaze to the shadow slipping in from the open gate. It’s a slender shadow, slight and frail almost. Long red hair—like the flames of a tall campfire—rope down either side of a narrow, pale face. Freckles dot all over a cherub nose and a pair of fine lips are thinned even more with the grimace on the woman’s face.

She can’t be much older than I am. But the dark circles haunting the space beneath her eyes and the sagging of her shoulders and curve of her spine all speak of a long life already lived, burdens carried, and a yawning eternity lying ahead of her.

A somewhat tattered beige dress hangs off her bony frame, and the visible toes of her slippers are stained with mud and scuff-marks. Still, she tries to carry herself with a little more confidence than I imagine she possesses.

I recognise her from the deck. She was the Daemon mate who watched me from afar, her eyes glassy with unshed tears.

She says nothing as she approaches me. Her steps are slow, but there is no hesitation in the way she moves. It’s not fright holding her back, but the weariness that she wears like a cloak.

I watch her closely as she advances on me. Her eyes pierce into mine; ordinary brown, less muddy than dirt, less shiny than melted chocolate. Just as ordinary as a bland face in a crowd. And yet, there’s something in those eyes that she means to relay to me—unspoken intentions, reassurance perhaps.

I can’t quite work her out.

The woman reaches up her spidery fingers for my shackles. Her lips suck into her mouth with a grim look as she delicately frees me.

Released, my arms slap to my sides and hot blood is quick to rush through them. I flex my fingers, feeling nothing but the full ache of numbness.

I look up at her.

She smiles—and my heart constricts at the sight of it. Before that smile, she looked sickly and tortured, but still rather ordinary. But with that smile, scars are revealed; little crescent scars that gleam like the growing moon in the sky, and I have the sickening realisation that her Daemon has gone as far as to bite into her face, bite her entire mouth.

I can’t fight the shudder that rinses through me. I wrap my arms around myself and rub the prickles on my arms.

Her smile fades away and she looks down.

She lingers for a moment. It’s a moment thick with those unspoken sentiments she wishes me to know. But I do know—she wishes me luck in escaping a fate that she can never be free of herself.

She turns around and she slips out of the brig as silently as she came.

I hesitate in the cage for a few moments, waiting until I’m certain she is gone and I can hear nothing but vermin skittering in the dark, damp corners. Then I sneak out of the brig, and head up the creaky stairs. Even with gentle, soft footsteps, the wooden boards groan in protest of my weight.

I hold my breath, as if it will help keep my presence a silent secret, but it does little good against the noise of the stairs. Still, it’s not as though turning back to the brig is an option. I have to get out of here—no matter what it takes to do it.

The stairs take me up one level to a shadowy, grim corridor. I suspect this hallway leads to the chambers and the sleeping quarters of the pirates. I don’t hang around to investigate. I’m quick to sneak up the next flight of stairs, this one leading me to the deck.

I pause at the empty doorway, hidden back in the shadows of the inside. I run my gaze over the deck.

Even over the violent crashing of the sea beating against the ship, I can hear the warped sound of my heartbeat in my ears; like water pressure pulsing over me.

I see very few pirates on deck; one in the wood washtub under the sails, another passed out under the stars with a bottle of rum loose in his hand, and one manning the wheel at the nose of the ship. There must be other pirates around, lurking in the dark spots of the deck, but I don’t spot any. And I see not a single Daemon.

The Daemons might be hidden away in a chamber somewhere, perhaps deciding what their next move is—where Koal wants to perform our bonding ritual, perhaps back in the Underworld, or if they will return to the Capital. Maybe dreaming up ways of torturing their mates. I don’t know, and I truly don’t care to learn the truth. All I know is that the mate who freed me chose that very moment to do it—she chose the best moment I would have to escape.

And so I take it.

Once I spot the pirate shadow standing by the wall of the ship across the deck, looking right at me with his warm brown eyes reflecting off the moonlight, I make my move.

I slink out of the doorway. Keeping my back against the wood wall, I stick close to the shadows and edge my way along to him.

As I near, he reaches out his hand for me and cuts a nervous look around. He flexes his fingers as if to rush me, and it works. I push from the wall and scurry over to him. He grabs onto my hands, spins me around so that I’m pinned between the ship-wall and his body.

I whisper, “The jewels are in my bag, in the brig. You’ll want to loot the bag before anyone goes down there.”

In answer, he gives a sharp nod. I’m almost sure he murmurs a thank you also, but the whistle of the sea wind is so loud that I can’t be absolutely certain.

He helps me over the wood railing.

For a moment—with my heart leaping up into my throat—I fear he’s going to let go and I’ll fall back into the sea. But his grip remains firm as he lowers me onto the rope ladder, already unspooled for me. I glance down at the rope and see that it lands in a boat, waiting for me to whisk it away.

Once I have a grip on the rope ladder, the pirate’s hands slip away. He lingers for a moment.

“Good luck,” he whispers, then pulls back, vanishing behind the wall. Probably off to collect his reward.

I rush my way down the ladder, not caring if I slip and fall to the boat. With being so close to freedom and escape, I can’t risk even seconds of Koal catching up to me. I need to put as much distance between me and this ship as possible.

So once I’m in the boat, I toss out the ladder, grab the oars—and I row myself away from the ship’s edge.

The pirate didn’t lie to me when he promised to provide supplies. There’s a waterskin full of fresh water and a wicker basket with some fruits and seaweed-wrapped fish flakes.

I don’t bother about the provisions, or the growing hunger deep in my belly. I’m only interested in getting the hell away from Koal.

My arms don’t take long to start to ache; a dull, strained sensation inside, pulling against my muscles. My heart is beginning to thump and tug in my chest; it’s rhythm is all wrong, a familiar symptom that I need my remedy fast. I have none—no remedy, no aniel to drink from—and so I ignore it as best as I can.

I push through the pain and row, and row, and row, until even under the clear-sky moonlight, I can’t see so much as the silhouette of the ship anymore. And I still don’t stop.

If I reach the shoreline, even a rocky cliff, I can make it back to the Wild Woods. That’s all I need to do.

Make it to the Wild Woods, and I’m closer to freedom. I can maybe find the path all over again—maybe it will recognise me, recognise my unfinished business with it, and lead me straight to the Witch. But if I don’t find the path, then I might very well die off of it, and then how can Koal find my body to resurrect me? I’ll be lost forever.

Either of those possibilities is looking a lot better than being his eternal mate, his eternal victim.

In search of any alternative to Koal, I row all night.

SILVER

Slumped over on a dusty old couch, Silver threads his fingers through his hair. He was taken to this stuffy parlour room almost an hour ago, and still he waits for Luna to come.

He knows she is here. The aniel who took him to this room didn’t look concerned or confused when he asked for a meeting with her. So Luna is here in the prison, somewhere—and from what he’s gathered, he suspects she is no prisoner, either.

And yet, knowing all of this—that Luna is safe and alive—does little to ease the hollow ache carved deep into his chest.

With a wispy sigh, Silver sinks back in the leather couch, his curse-bruised hand rubbing at the sore spot of his chest absentmindedly. His severe gaze lands on the lit hearth on the wall opposite, tucked just behind a torn armchair. Beside the fireplace, there stands a wall-length window with iron bars on the outside.

Shadows move on the other side. He watches them for a moment, his mind drifting away—back to Keela. He can’t fight the thoughts of her haunting him. That is what they are doing; haunting. She is a ghost to him, yet she floods his mind and body all the same.

Thinking about her does little good. It only worsens the ache in his chest to the point where his breath shivers with pain, and he shifts uncomfortably on the couch.

Is she dead now? Did Koal decide he has no use for her mortal flesh, and curse her to a life trapped in the Underworld, her soul in a cage?

There is no mistaking the heavy pull at his heart. He feels guilt, and he recognises the sensation, though he cannot recall the first or last time in his terribly long life that he has felt such a thing.

Fortunately, he is saved from delving into his emotions (emotions far too vilas for his liking) when the door swings open. He sits forward on the seat, his disinterested eyes shifting to the doorway and the aniel who stands there.

He recognises that moon-like face in a heartbeat. And when a smile stretches her face ear-to-ear, he expects to feel some of the pain be replaced with a hint of joy, happiness, anything. He’ll take what he can get at this point.

Instead, his heart sinks, and he has that awful sensation of disappointment. He looks at Luna, the love he lost so long ago, and still, he can only think of the vilas he left behind.

KEELA

There are three problems.

I can’t swim. Not very well, at least. And my journey has ended with spanning rocky shallows that my boat refuses to pass.

Every second that ticks me by, my boat cracks off the edge of a rock underwater, and I’m thrown to the side. Promises of bruises are sprouting all over my sides, aches deep in my rib bones, and a dizzy sensation has started to pulse in my head.

Time is running out.

My breaths are coming out short and choppy; my heart is straining with every beat is struggles to take; and my lashes are fluttering as I fight to hold onto consciousness.

I have to abandon the boat.

At least the waters here are shallow. So when I hold onto the edge of the boat and lower myself into the cool kiss of the sea, I find that I can stand well enough—the water level rises up to my neck, but I can still breathe, and that means survival. That means hope. Even if hope is a dangerous thing, especially since the morning sun is up in the sky, and that means Koal definitely knows by now that I’ve gone, and he’s likely already launched a hunt for me.

I leave the waterskin and wicker basket in the boat. I don’t have the strength to carry them, and I’ve already worked my way through most of it. The water stores are down to the dregs, and all that’s left in the basket are some purple-apple cores and the outer skin (toxic to vilas) of a black-plum.

I abandon the boat between two jagged, tall rocks and start to wade my way to shore.

There is no beach ahead to greet me. Where white sands and mossy rocks and tufts of grass should be, there are only rocks. Huge, tall, rough rocks. I haven’t even reached them yet, and I’m already feeling the scrapes and scratches they’ll deliver all over my hands and knees.

That’s if I make it to the rocks.

I’ve waded far through the shallows, far enough that the water is swaying over my hips now, but I’ve slowed down. A lot. There is no more urgency to be summoned within me. I’m a cave-turtle, fleeing a predator. I’m slumped over, my hands grazing the water as if to hold me upright, and I force my burning legs to push through the weight of the sea.

The skirt of my dress is catching on the underwater rocks. Tears and rips are destroying the remains of the once-lovely dress, but I find I care less about that than I used to with the other dress, because they now remind me of him. Of Silver. And his wicked, heartless betrayal of me.

Even just the fleeting thought of him spears me through the gut with an ice-cold feeling, and I shut my eyes on tears that dare blossom.

I suck in a long, shuddering breath, and push through all the pain wrapping me up in its tight, cold embrace.

Blocking it all out, I eventually reach the rocky shore after what feels like the better part of the morning. But I hope it wasn’t that long—that’s just more time that Koal has to catch up to me.

I can’t survive another defeat.

Wet hands slap wearily onto the faces of the rocks. My dress adds too much weight to my body; I try to heave myself up onto the rocks a few times before slipping back into the shallows. Finally, I manage to crawl and climb and scrape my way up the first rock. After that, it’s a bit easier. Now, it’s just moving from the tip of a rock to another and taking care not to slip off.

It isn't long before I spot the promise of the Wild Woods at the end of the shore. Tall ordinary-looking trees, all too familiar from the shore that Silver took me to. I know that once I step beyond the treeline and announce who I am and what I seek, the trees will turn to stardust-blue willows and the morning sky will be sucked up by twilight

Careful not to slip, I use the last scraps of energy I can muster to reach the trees. And when I do, I let myself slide off the final rock, where I slump on the wet grassy floor, and I crawl my way into the trees.

I shut my eyes.

My mouth, blue with the cold enveloping me, moves with the whisper I speak to the Woods; “My name is Keela. I am here to finish my journey. I am here to take back the Never-ending Path which was stolen from me. I am here to find the First Witch and be free of the Daemon who hunts me. I am Keela. And I seek your help.”

Hesitantly, I part my eyes. Droplets of water cling to my lashes, weighing them down. I’m crouched on the dirt floor, kneeling in utter defeat. But when I look around me, I can’t help but let a smile take my numb lips.

The Wild Woods has welcomed me—

And just ahead of me, there is the Never-ending Path. It is not crimson cobblestone. It is padded, pulverised rubies, embedded into the path—the final stretch of the journey.

The Wild Woods allows me to pick up where I left off. And the welcome is strong enough to flood me with so much hope that I double over and sob tears of joy.

For once, fate seems to be looking down on me with kindness.

SILVER

Dressed in all black, Luna kicks back her heeled boot; it connects with the door, slamming it shut behind her. She waltzes to the chair opposite Silver, a stiffness to her set shoulders and her nose raised just a tad higher than usual. She carries an obvious air of importance, something he is quick to pick up on.

Silver remains seated, hunched over, as she sinks into the armchair. His lashes are lowered on her, his eyes giving away nothing of the battle raging on inside of him. Between his spread legs, his hands find each other and clasp tightly.

“So you work here,” he summarises from her confident demeanour, his reception, and her fitted silk blouse. “Not a prisoner, but a guard.”

“Higher than a mere guard,” she counters, her nose crinkling faintly. “But not yet a warden.” She folds one leg over the other, draping it almost, and leans back in the chair. “It took longer than I expected for you to find me.”

His lashes flutter as he cuts his gaze down at the musty rug between them. “Did you want me to find you?”

She thinks on this for a beat. Lazily, she picks tiny balls of lint from the knee of her breeches. “Half and half,” she finally replies.

A dry smile taints his pulled mouth. The bitter realisation of her willingness to be here is dawning on him; and still, the ache in his chest only pulses with emptiness, unaffected by the prickles of anger raining all over his tensing body.

He looks up at her from beneath his long lashes, danger darkening his eyes into thunder clouds. “Why did he send you here?”

Her hand stills on her knee for a moment, then she rests it on her thigh, flat. The arrogance slips away from her as she meets his stormy gaze. “I heard what Prince Poison and Blaze were building out here,” she confesses. “And I wanted to be a part of it—to make my mark and find my place among our kind.” She shifts, uncomfortable. “I didn’t know how to tell you at the time.”

“It’s easy,” he counters. “You simply use your tongue and speak the words. A simple ‘I’m leaving, do not follow me’ would have sufficed.”

She smiles something small, looking down at her lap. “You are not predictable, Silver. How could I have known how you would react? At the time, I thought it best to simply go.”

“You did a lot more than go,” he replies coldly, his fingernails cutting deep into the skin of his fingers. “There was no reason left for me to understand. The Prince never answered my questions about you. And when I learned of this place ... I thought you had been sent here to die, Luna.”

“What would you have had me do?” She throws up her hands, a weary exasperation hollowing her heart-shaped face. The perfect bow of her lips crinkles as she purses them. “I needed to forge my place in this life, and that is something I could never have done in your shadow.”

His jaw tightens on the words brewing on his bitter tongue.

“You could not have come with me,” she adds. “Prince Poison would never have let you leave his side. And would you have come with me had I told you? What we had,” she says, her voice dropping to a heavy whisper, “was always physical, Silver. It was never anything more than that, and you made certain to keep it that way. You always kept me at arm’s length. Any time I tried to get close to you, you shut me out. So tell me why I would sacrifice my future for you?”

Silver loosens a long, hoarse breath as he reclines in the couch. His muscled back sinks into the leathery spine with a creak.

He watches her for a long, tense moment.

Luna’s fingers have found each other on her lap; they twist and pull nervously. She avoids his gaze.

“You are the obsession,” he finally says. “And she is the love.”

Luna’s brow crinkles. Confusion knits her face as she studies him.

Silver’s mouth twists into a wry smile. He never told her about the curse. Suppose it was something he kept hidden to ‘keep her at arm’s length’, as she accused. And maybe she is right to accuse him of it. Because the wretched ache deep in his chest, as though someone has scooped out all his insides, is not for Luna. It is for Keela.

“It was infatuation between us, Silver,” Luna goes on. “You knew that then and you know it now. You only wanted to believe otherwise because I was the first one you ever cared about outside of yourself and the Prince.”

A pulsing sensation draws his attention. He glances down at his hand, where the kiss of black curses his pale skin. It swells for a beat before it starts to spill wider, the curse crawling over his marble-like flesh.

For whatever reason, the curse is not gone. It is only growing.

He betrayed the wrong one, the one he loved. Luna was his obsession all along.

Then the stabbing sensation hits him straight through the hand, and he’s choked of breath. Silver jolts forward in the couch, clutching his hand; it pulses and throbs with a poisonous ache, as though his flesh and bones are decaying from the inside out.

It flashes in his mind before he even knows what is happening, as if the Originals themselves are shoving these pictures inside of him; images of Keela, dead on the Wood floor, blood coating her lips, her eyes open and glassy, gazing up at the leafy sky.

Tendrils of agony unrope through him.

He loosens a shuddering breath.

Distantly, he’s aware of Luna speaking to him, saying his name over and over, but he is so lost in the storm raging inside of him that he barely hears her, because he knows it, he knows it deep down in his bones—

Keela is dead.

10.

KEELA

I walk the pulverised-rubies through stretches of unfamiliar landscape. The trees have thinned to glittering bluegrass fields and yellow-hued hills.

I don’t recognise anything around me, not since the moment I came back into the Woods. I’m uncertain whether this is because I’m on the last stretch of the ruby path or that I came into the Woods from farther down the shore. But either way, I sense a great power nearing me the longer I walk this path. It’s almost as though I can taste the magick of an Original in the crisp, still air.

I ache to move faster.

Urgency is starting to cling to my tense muscles, as if eager to propel me forward and reach the end now. But my body won’t cooperate. Fatigue is wearing me down.

As I stagger up the path, my spine is beginning to slump, my shoulders cave inwards, and it’s all I can do to simply drag the deadweight of my legs onwards. The toes of my boots are scuffed white from their constant scrapes over the rough rubies beneath me. And still, I force myself to keep moving.

Over the ache in my bones that calls out for remedy—for Silver’s fresh blood to spill down my throat—I use the last sources of energy I have left to go ahead, bringing me as close to the nearby magick as I can get.

I don’t make it much farther than beyond the bushes of withered sunflowers, and I distantly feel a connection to those dying flowers deep in my soul; how they have wilted over on themselves, their petals thinned and dried with age, their stems so weak that they can’t hold themselves up anymore.

My hooded gaze is fixed on the sunflower bushes for a long pause. I waver on the spot for a while, waiting for my strength to return to me. But it doesn’t. The longer I stand there, swaying against the stiff air, the more fatigue climbs up me.

Soon, I can’t keep my lashes up anymore, and my vision starts to darken. Black spots edge in from the sides. A quiver runs down my legs, so strong that I slowly sink to the rough path and kneel, crouched over. My hands spread flat over the rubies, my sight gone, and all that I can hear is the choppy sound of my breathing.

I need remedy. I need aniel blood.

I need Silver.

I don’t have a moment to collect myself—I’m struck hard with a blow of dizziness, and I double over on the path. A pained groan gurgles in my throat as I hold my head in shaky hands and curl up into a ball. Beneath my palms, I can feel the thick throbbing sensation behind my skull; my heartbeat, pulsating throughout my entire body. Every limb, every orifice is pumping.

The pumps are slowing down.

One pump; one heartbeat—strangled, paused for a moment.

I suck in a ragged breath that burns all the way down to my chest.

Two pumps; choppy and agonising. A guttural noise climbs up my throat.

Then nothing.

Silence throughout my body.

My lashes flutter. Behind the lids, I can feel my eyes start to roll to the back of my head. My face twists into something mangled and pained.

No more pumps, no more heartbeats.

Still silence.

My heart has stopped. I’m waiting, waiting, waiting for it to pick back up again, like it always does. But seconds tick me by, flooded with a pain strong enough to clench my body in an iron fist, and all I can do is moan.

No, my heart isn’t starting up again. It has finally stopped.

I take my final breath on the path, but I don’t even really feel it. It doesn't fill my lungs or chest, it simply dies in my throat.

And then I die with it.

All the pain slips away, until there’s nothing left but quiet.

11.

THE LONE GOD

There is something otherworldly about the dark-skinned man who stands over the dead girl on the ruby path. His skin is swirled chocolate, his eyes are entire worlds of knowledge and lives lived, and there’s an energy that embraces him, as though the air moulds to him and shivers with pure power.

His bare feet flank the frail, dead girl on the path. He stands over her, his head tilted to the side, and his unreadable eyes shimmer as he studies the side of her parchment-white face.

Her cheeks are sunken. Mud-brown blood stains darken her pink dress at the collar, but fresh blood glistens on her whitewashed lips. Even her hair looks as dead as she is; each strand is noticeably dry and course, all the light of its goldenness faded away to a straw-like hue.

The Lone God allows a pinch of amusement to tilt his mouth. It’s a wonder she survived as long as she did, so he is pleasantly surprised that she is far stronger than what he imagined. If she was any weaker, she would not have made it back into the Wild Woods, and she would be lost forever to the Daemon.

Instead, it is as he first sensed when he met her—she would need him again. He would deliver on a second promised favour, and that is just what he intends to do now.

He scoops her lifeless, limp body into his arms. He holds her close, but there is no care or tenderness in it; he could be carrying her to her grave to dispose of her or a healer to tend to her for all it looks.

Carrying the dead girl, he walks the rubies a short distance until he reaches a fork in the path. His detached gaze cuts right, where he senses the aniel went not long ago. But the Lone God turns left and he walks for at least a day and night, though the sky does not change.

Finally, they come to a snowy valley that cuts deep in between two rows of jagged mountains. Above, the sky shifts to something lighter; a pale white sky that looks almost painted onto a canvas or the ceiling of a temple. But there is no warmth to be had from the weak sun above.

To anyone but the Lone God, this valley might appear so very out of place in the rest of the Wild Woods, but to him, it is all so familiar. Here, he once lived with the First Witch in her favourite landscape, one she fashioned with her very own hands.

As the Lone God comes down the narrow slope of the valley, he spots her ahead. Packed down with thick layers of pearlescent snow, there stands a half-dozen of wood cottages. And from between the cottages, where a snow-dusted trail spirals down to the heart of the valley, there moves a curvaceous silhouette.

There is no fighting the smile that takes his lips when he sees her. She is slow to approach him, but the closer she gets, the better he sees the dark suspicion in her narrowed, grey eyes, like stones from a shore stuffed into her face. Her crimson dress is tattered at the hem, torn from many walks through this valley, and her olive-skin has faded some with the weakness of the sun here. Still, a warmth spreads through the Lone God at the sight of her, and her ink-black hair is as luminous as he recalls, sweeping past her waist.

The First Witch stops at the mouth of the valley. Her cold voice travels on a conveniently passing breeze that slithers over to him. “And so you have been freed, I see.”

“Not even your power can confine me for an eternity,” he replies, the dead vilas in his arms entirely forgotten and ignored.

The Witch’s eyes darken and a slow, slick smile slides over her lips. He has challenged her, and how she wishes to deliver on that challenge.

“I have come not to quarrel with you,” he tells her. “But only to deliver upon a promise made to this mortal.”

He cuts his gaze down to the girl in his arms and, for the first time, the Witch looks at her. Her mouth flattens into a thin line, something disappointed.

“What use is a dead mortal to me?”

In answer, the Lone God comes down the rest of the valley. He pauses a safe distance from the Witch, never daring to encroach on her home, and he lowers the corpse to the ground. The snow crunches under her weight.

With his fingers, the Lone God pries apart her cold, blue lips before he brings his own mouth to hers. He breaths into her—and her chest rises as air fills her entirely. Her eyes flutter, once, twice, then a sudden sharpness of breath spears through her.

She falls limp once more. But this time, there is a steady rise and fall of her chest, and the return of life on her reddening cheeks.

“Why do you help her?” the Witch asks as he rises to stand. Suspicion has returned to her thinned eyes.

“She freed me,” he replies.

Her eyes narrow on him. “So why should I be inclined to help her?”

His mouth quirks with a small smile. “Will you be angry with me for the rest of eternity, Esmerelda?”

There is no hesitation before she responds, “Indeed, I will. You stole my children away from me.”

“Our children.” He takes a step back. “And they wanted to be free,” he adds darkly. “Free of you, of me, of this small space in the world. But I can see that your forgiveness will be hard earned. I will return when the snow thaws.”

“It never does.”

He dips his head. “One day it might.”

And then he leaves. He walks the valley into the distance, leaving the unconscious girl with the First Witch.

12.

SILVER

Satchel abandoned at the prison, Silver storms the path with nothing but his wrinkled clothes to adorn him and his hair so tousled that it speaks of many times that he has tugged and pulled at it. He wears bloodshot eyes, betraying the rising agony within him.

This ancient and all-powerful aniel looks a mere distraught vilas, lost in too-magickal surroundings. But the only thing vilas on his mind is the one he lost—no, betrayed. He betrayed her to the Daemon she sought to flee, the only undying wish she held onto in all the troubles facing her. She only wanted to be free of the beast hunting her, and Silver offered her up to him.

And that tears him apart inside with a fresh storm of pain.

The second knife in the wound is the knowledge haunting him that he knows his decision was wrong. He walked right into the curse, arrogant in his actions leading to what should become. Only, he didn't realise that the one he would sacrifice would be the one he should have saved.

Silver is so lost in the rushes of hate that he feels for himself that he walks right by the tarry glade that spears off from the path. He sees it, but he has no interest in speaking with the Sisters. Not when none of it can be changed.

His power touches on many things, and in the Woods it all feels amplified, as though his home is feeding his magick. And so that churning, heavy feeling in the pit of his heart—mirrored in an aching chest—that tells him Keela is dead is a feeling to be trusted. He knows it as truly as he knows where he is in the Woods; she is gone from this world, and there can be nothing that will ever bring her back.

All because of what he did.

Silver is almost passed the glade when it flickers in front of him—a shadow, blocking his way down the path. His furious red eyes lift to the Shadow Sister, his jaw clenching, and his hands balling into fists.

Even through the storm engulfing him, he knows better than to pick a fight with an Original, and yet—and yet what can be the harm of it? Perhaps the Sister will destroy him and his soul, and he can be free of the agony he is drowning in.

Silver knows pain; he knows life and eternity and loss. He felt heart-wrenching loss before with Luna. But it was nothing like this. This sensation is magnified, it is consuming, and it is torturous.

So shouldn’t it be understood that this feeling will forever haunt him? And so why should he be made to suffer it every waking moment for the rest of his eternal existence? Maybe over time it will fade away—but the possibility of the Shadow Sister ending him and thereby ending his pain is a tempting one.

The decision is made too quickly. He reaches around to the back of his waistband to grab the dagger, but then she shifts. The shadows around the Sister skitter, then she’s suddenly standing farther ahead, out of swipe’s reach.

Her whispery voice snakes through the trees around them and rustles the leaves; “She is with the Witch.”

Silver pauses. His hand is wrapped around the hilt of the dagger. A frown starts to crease his brow and, slowly, he lets his hand fall back to his side.

“She is dead,” he cuts back, but there is an edge of doubt in his hoarse voice.

At her feet, the shadows flutter and snare. “She was. And now she is not.”

A heartbeat passes.

Silver spins around and heads back up the path. “I must go to her,” he demands, but he’s stopped within a few steps as the Shadow Sister appears in front of him again, blocking his way.

“The Witch will not allow you passage. You know this.” She holds out her inky black hand that drips with dark poison and secrets. “Show me your curse.”

Silver rolls his jaw so hard that it audibly clicks. He slaps his hand on hers. In silence, the Sister examines the bruise on his hand with her eye-less face.

He fights the urge to rip his hand from hers and take up the path to find Keela, to seek out the Witch and burn the Woods to the ground to steal her away if he must. And yet, he’s distantly aware that none of the pain is ebbing away. He just learned that she survived death, somehow. The agony consuming him surely must ease some. But it doesn't. If anything, he feels even more wretched.

“The vilas must have time to heal,” the Shadow Sister whispers. “It is not yet in either of your fates to be reunited. Only when the curse takes your whole hand will it be time to fulfil it.”

“I have already fulfilled the curse,” he growls, his shaky composure cracking. “I betrayed one, I sacrificed her—the wrong one!”

“Not yet,” she whispers. “The curse is unquenched. But it is set in motion. Fates are in work. When your hand is stained black, then it will be time to find her.”

She drops his hand.

“And when that time comes,” she adds darkly, “it will be your fate to save her life. One must be sacrificed for the other to live.”

KEELA

My lashes flutter on the fringe of my hazy sight. Beneath me, the plush sensation of thick blankets and a fluffy mattress cushions my limp body.

Something cold tips against my lips. The familiar kiss of a phial, I recognise it all too easily.

For a fleeting moment, my sight clears—and in that split second, I think I am looking up at my mother. Not just my mother—the mother of the world.

Then darkness takes me again and on my way back to it, I hear mother’s gentle hush carry along with me.

PART TWO

13.

SILVER

Toxic smog thickens the air. It is suffocating to the vilas brave and deranged enough to stay in the presence of the aniel. This opium den is a favourite one of Silver’s. This is the place he has spent the past fourteen months since leaving the Wild Woods. He visits the den most days, often numbing himself for nights on end. This night is no different.

He is tucked away in the dense shadows of a seated alcove. Thick heavy curtains drape all around the crescent seat, their purple velveteen surfaces shimmering with the lantern lights flickering in the den.

Loose in a gloved hand, he holds the ribbed stick of an opium pipe. His hooded grey eyes watch the gaslamp beneath the bowl burn hot and vaporise the tarry opium; but though he watches the flame, there is a distance in his faraway gaze.

Beside him, a vilas woman is slumped over on her side, the heavy skirt of her dress ruffled and stained with black spots. The opium coma has its claws deep inside of her. Or perhaps she is dead—Silver doesn't bother enough to check for a pulse. He leaves her spilled out over the lap of a loudly snoring vilas man who wears the fresh stains of spirits on his torn shirt.

Silver’s eyes only lift from the gaslamp when the nearest curtain is disturbed. He looks up as a familiar fox-faced aniel slips into the alcove.

She sinks into the seat across the table from him, her pinched nose and creased mouth betraying exactly what she thinks of all this opium and vilas business.

“The pirates have been given their payment,” Fox tells him, her frowned gaze on the suspiciously motionless woman. “Their ship is off the Forgotten Cliff. They will wait for you until sunrise.”

His fingers loosen on the opium pipe, letting it slip to the cushioned seat. Fox’s face turns grim as she watches him peel off his glove, one leathered finger at a time. She looks away when his hand is revealed; completely blackened by his curse. The hand looks rotted to the bone, ready to fall off from his milk-white wrist at any moment. And on his hand, there is not the faintest spot of his pale complexion in sight.

The curse devoured him wholly in temple this morning. He knows what that means, and yet the opium daze is so thick around him that he can hardly feel the slightest hint of trepidation or hope creep into his dead heart.

Silver tosses the glove on the table. It slaps down beside the gaslamp just as he pushes up from the warm embrace of the seat. Cushions tumble, the vilas woman releases a disturbed breath—so she is alive after all—and Fox stands to join him outside of the alcove.

It is time to find Keela.

14.

KEELA

Snow seems to dust down from the cloudless sky, and though I’ve lived with this nonsensical image for the last six months, I doubt I will ever fail to smile at the sight of this simple, elegant magick of Esmerelda’s; an eternally snowy valley, where the cottages are always warm and cosy, and the sky is always white and free of clouds.

A part of me doesn't want to leave. Esmerelda sure isn’t ready to be parted from me. She fusses over my looming travel through the Woods, incessantly reminding me that once I am free of the Woods’ border all of my sickness will suddenly catch up to me and I’ll have mere days to live.

But I know I must return to the Capital. Even if my sickness will be quick to consume me when I leave the Woods’ protection, and I’ll have at most five days to live, I absolutely must go to the city.

I have business, you see.

Terrible, dark, awful business.

In my six full moons with the Witch, I have learned many things:

One, that her magick has been keeping me alive and healthy (an invigorating feeling that I’ll be sure to miss).

Two, that my sickness is indeed born of poison—intrak to be exact; a poison made by immortals, not easily found in the vilas parts of the Capital.

Now, it’s undeniable that Mayor West is my true father and he poisoned my pregnant mother with this toxic brew to kill us both. He mustn’t have used enough of it, for we survived far longer than the poison should have allowed.

And the third truth I learned in these months is the reason for Silver’s curse.

Perhaps I’m an awfully foolish girl, but even after his slight against me, I couldn’t help but ask about him to Esmerelda. I can’t say that Silver has had a lasting warm effect on her, not at all. Her pinched mouth, folded arms and narrowed eyes whenever I mention him are enough to tell me how she feels about how I feel about him.

But how much can I be blamed for keeping that pain he delivered me alive in my heart? How much of my fault is it that despite what he did, I still carry that flame for him, perhaps hoping that one day he’ll realise his mistake and suffer?

There is no hope or use concerning myself about him now. Best to simply leave it to become a cautionary tale of how a foolish sickly girl came too close to an ancient, cruel aniel. My story of foolery might one day warn off another girl like me from falling for the tricks of an aniel. Maybe my story might save a life or two to come.

Wishful thinking, but either way, I can’t keep pining after Silver. I have to put him and his betrayal in the past, not let the worries of him and Luna with their brightly burning love overpower what I need to do. I simply don’t have the time to spare on him anymore.

Intrak is incurable.

I will die (again), and the only way to avoid that is to stay with Esmerelda forever. I’m welcome to stay, I know this. She has made her warm consideration of me clear, and perhaps she sees me of something close to family (as much as an Original can, at least). But I cannot stay. Like I said, I do have business to attend to.

I have a life to steal, just as mine has been stolen and my mother’s.

I must return to the Capital to kill Mayor West. That is what I shall do with the remaining days of my life. I’ve been given a second chance, soon to be freed from the Daemon who still hunts me out there, and it would be a waste to spend this second life on anything other than revenge for the injustice done against me and my mother.

In part, this second life was granted to me by the Lone God. Now knowing what I know, I suspect he only did this to have the chance to deliver me to the First Witch and see her for the first time in centuries.

His imprisonment in the swamp is something I should have paid better attention to back when I first met the Original.

‘Those are my children. Just as the Gods you know are my children, too.’ He had told me.

And Silver had added, ‘Meet my beloved grandfather.’

I’d learned back then that the Lone God was the father of “all life and death and everything in between”. He was the father of the Gods and the Daemons.

What I hadn’t known was that Esmerelda was their mother. She created—with the Lone God—all the First Gods and the Daemons, but she sent the Daemons out of this plane of this world, and deeper down into the earth.

Her other children yearned for freedom. They began creating their own children, Silver among them. But then the confinement of the Wild Woods become too much for them to bare, and the Lone God went against Esmerelda’s wishes.

He, along with Silver and Prince Poison, shattered the border-magick around the Woods. The three of them combined their powers and destroyed the magick caging them into this small part of the world. The Lone God had gone behind his lover’s back and released their Godly children, allowing them to create worlds and creatures of their own.

Silver and the Lone God were caught before all could make their escape. Silver was cursed, but he managed to get away. The Lone God was imprisoned in the swamp—waiting for me to come along, the sickly vilas with aniel blood running through her and the bond of the Daemon mateship in her heart.

Suppose Esmerelda never quite got over the betrayal from the Lone God. And I can’t say I blame her for it either. From my senses, I suspect she loved her partner and her children, but ultimately she was abandoned, was she not? She lives out here, all alone, and wants me to stay—perhaps just to keep one semblance of a child out of the dozens who left her.

One thing I am grateful to never experience in this life—or any for that matter—is a mother’s pain. It truly must be a dreadful, haunting thing to suffer.

Just as I think it, the door creaks and Esmerelda comes into the sitting room. I look her way as she pauses by my favoured armchair and a slight, sorrowful smile touches her thin lips.

Sleek black hair falls down the side of her oval-shaped face, like a heavy velveteen drape. The rest is braided down her back, reaching beyond the dip of her spine.

In her olive-skinned hands, she holds a wooden tray of tonics; little concoctions she mixes up from the earth and magick around us in the valley. Her fingers clench tight onto the edges of the tray and she looks at me perched on the windowsill.

“Are you certain this is what you truly want?” she asks me for the dozenth time.

I smile, something small and overly fond of a motherly figure that was robbed of me my whole life, then gifted at the very end of my existence. Even in the magick of the First Witch, it is terribly cruel how the world works and fates spiral into misery.

“Did you not seek revenge for betrayals against you?” is all I say before I shift off the windowsill. The tattered ruins of my once-pink-blush dress rustle over the wooden floorboards, parting for my bare feet as I move for her.

I pause at my armchair, offer her a strained smile that wears more pain in it than I should allow myself to feel, then sink into the seat.

She sets the tray down beside me on a rickety table that rocks with the added weight. As she fiddles with the glass bottles of concoctions, she tells me, “The path will stay alive for you until you leave the Woods. Should you change your mind ... you must only find your way back to me.”

A terrible ache twists my heart. I cut my gaze away, unable to look at her a moment longer. In my soul, I don’t want to leave her. I could stay here forever, safe in her magick, kept alive by her power and valley, safe from all the evils that lurk in the Capital.

But then what becomes of Mayor West, the man who so easily stole my life away and my mother’s? He simply goes on living, no justice delivered his way.

That, I cannot allow.

Time moves differently in this part of the world; what has been six months to me, must be over a year to the mayor. And that’s another year of unpunished life.

You might suggest my time with the Witch has fed my thirst for vengeance, perhaps turned me bitter. And maybe it has. But I see no wrong in that. I embrace it.

Sinking into the cushioned armchair, I watch Esmerelda work. She rolls up her crimson sleeves; a red so deep and dark, that it reminds me fleetingly of dried pools of blood. She gently guides her black hair back over her shoulder, moving it out of the way as she comes to bend in front of me.

One hand, tanned and slender, grabs onto the armrest of the chair. Her other hand hovers near my chest.

We look at each other in quiet for a heartbeat. Once again, she asks—with her gaze alone—if this is truly the path I want to take.

I nod, and she loosens a soft sigh.

She reaches her hand for my chest. Her palm flattens against the dipped space between my breasts, her fingers sprawled out. I feel the pressure of her touch against my thumping, healthy heartbeat. It won’t be healthy for much longer.

“I am ready,” I whisper, and that does it—

Esmerelda stiffens her fingers against my chest, hardening them into something like talons, and she scrapes her nails over my skin. I suck in a sharp wince as I feel it, something of an essence being clawed out from me.

A shuddering breath catches in my throat as I glance down at her work. Her hand is a claw against me, and trapped in her hold is a wispy black cloud of air, spiralling around and around, distressed at having been pulled from me—from my soul.

Esmerelda draws back, taking the black sliver of my soul with her.

I slump over in the chair, a sudden relief weighing down on me so heavily that I can hardly manage to focus my gaze on her movement. Still, I watch her uncork a phial and hover her fist over it; she releases the dark strand of my soul into the phial, recorks it, and traps it away.

“It is done. The mateship has been removed,” she mutters, then reaches for another glass bottle. This one I recognise from my earlier days in the valley—something to give me strength.

I take the bottle and down its slimy and bitter contents in one gulp. As I set the phial aside, a tingle of excitement runs over my body and prickles my skin. I’m all too aware of it, the loss of Koal in my soul. Feels like a thousand invisible threads all over my body being severed one after the other.

Now, I am free of him. He will not sense me when I leave the Woods. I might have some days of life without him as a burden to hunt and torture me. I might just have enough time to find Mayor West and kill him. And once that is done, I will be taken away to the dungeons beneath the city, where I will die in a damp, cold cell before my trial can come. I’ll be free of everything in this life, and free of Koal in the next.

Finally, I am free.

15.

KEELA

As Esmerelda promised, the path holds onto its pulverised-ruby life-source. At any time, I can turn back around and head to the snow valley to reunite with her.

I won’t lie, it is a tempting option. And in a fairer life, where fate is kinder to me, perhaps I would live long enough outside of these Woods to return to her and live forever in that valley. But I know the time I’ll be afforded outside of these Woods will not be enough to complete my task and return.

I must choose one or the other, and I choose justice. Justice and revenge are one of the same to me now. I see no distinction. True justice, in fact, would be to take Mikhael’s life along with Mayor West’s—two lives for two lives. But of course, I cannot do that.

Though, now I know Mikhael learned the truth about the poison and what his father did to me, since he was the very one who sent me the note about ‘intrak’ and wanted me to find the truth too, he still did not go to the authorities himself.

He could have turned his father in, reported him to the temple’s aniel, even simply told me face-to-face what he discovered about his father’s involvement in my health. And still, all he managed to do was send me a measly note, leaving me to figure out something I might never have decoded without the help of the Wild Woods.

But does all of that mean that Mikhael should die? That I should take his life to balance out his father’s crimes? Perhaps. And yet, I find I still harbour enough warmth for Mikhael that to kill him is simply unthinkable.

So I take the mission to kill his father instead, and it’s all I have, it’s all I need to keep walking the path through the Wild Woods—a wood that is much friendlier to me now. No creatures jump out from the trees to lure me in to their wicked traps. I feel as safe as I once did by Silver’s side.

The thought of Silver hits my chest with a sickening pang.

Even after all this time, the pain feels as fresh as it did the day he delivered me to Koal’s minions. But that pain is amplified, a heart-deep gash into my chest, because as I think about him, I see him. Quite literally, I see him.

He is standing in the middle of the path, beside the mouth of a familiar crimson trail that spears off to the Sister’s glade.

It’s Silver. As clear as the moon in the sky, as clear as the snow in the valley. Silver is here.

For a fleeting moment, I suspect the Woods to be up to their old tricks, that he might just be some sort of creature intent on destroying me. But then, Esmerelda assured me that the Woods are now safe for me, and excluding that, I can’t deny that this Silver ahead of me looks so very real.

My heart sinks to my watery gut. Tingles ignite in my fingers and I’m suddenly starved of air.

His head is bowed, pearlescent hair falling over his milky-white face. His eyes lift to me, and they wear the reddened stains of internal agony.

In my heart of hearts, I believe he is as real as I am.

Breath hitched, I take a cautious step closer. The worn-down sole of my boot flattens against the crushed rubies, and there’s a faint crunching sound.

Silver blinks, his long dark eyelashes heavy with the burden that slumps his shoulders and keeps his hands deep in the pockets of his breeches.

Shock has slackened my face. My lips part, as if ready to speak, but I find myself at a loss for words.

A small, strained smile tugs his face, and I fleetingly place the expression as something of a grimace.

“You look well,” he says, his tone a soft whisper, as though he is afraid that the sound of his voice might spook me and send me running back up the path. “Better than I anticipated.”

“You look like death,” I say back at him, though there is no conviction in my stunned tone; I am utterly lost at why he might be here. It’s as though he has been waiting for me, but of course that is a nonsensical idea.

“The tar does that, even to the best of us,” he says.

Confusion tickles me and I arch an eyebrow. “Opium? I wouldn't have thought that would be terribly available at the prison.” But what would I know about aniel prisons and arenas?

That strained, awfully agonised smile returns to his pale lips for a beat. He lifts his head, his eyes looking heavier by the heartbeat.

“I have not been at the prison, Keela,” he tells me, an aching edge creeping into his tone. “I have been in the Capital, waiting for you. Waiting for this—”

His black shirt—whose silver buttons wear suspicious crimson stains—rustles as he tugs his hand out of his pocket. It is gloved in black leather.

I watch as he slowly peels off the glove, and when he does, a raspy gasp catches in my throat. I take a step back, feeling the colour drain out of my face.

Down to his stark-white wrist, his hand is as black as coal, a horridly diseased sheen to it. It is ghastly. I nearly fear that his hand will fall off at any breeze that might be too harsh, but then I decide he deserves such a fate. He can lose a mere hand where I lost my whole heart.

My nose crinkles as I take in the grotesque sight of his hand. “Not that I pity you,” I start, “but what happened?”

“It is my curse,” he says, his voice so low and soft that it’s almost a mutter. “A curse unmet.”

“You met it,” I clip, my eyes levelling on him. “You fulfilled it when you passed me over to those aniels and sent me back to Koal.”

“I thought so, too,” he says, dropping his blackened hand to his side. “But I was mistaken. I was mistaken in my belief that Luna is my love, where you are my obsession. I made the wrong sacrifice to save the wrong one.”

My heart plummets to my churning gut.

At my sides, my hands clench into fists to fight off the trembles that start to settle in my fingertips. “What are you telling me, Silver? That you are sorry?” I can’t keep the bitter edge out of my snarky tone.

“I missed the signs.” He goes on as though I didn’t speak, “For so long, I obsessed over Luna’s disappearance and whereabouts, and in a short time with you, I came to feel things greater and more powerful than anything I had ever felt before.” A bitter grimace twists his face. “But how could I admit to myself that what I felt for you was love, when you are a vilas and Luna is an aniel?”

A wretched pang hits me square in the chest. The blow is so hard that I fight myself to keep from doubling over.

Distantly, I think of Esmerelda seeing me off down the valley, and her final words to me; ‘I do not like him, child. Though I do see it in your fate to love him.’

At the time, I did imagine she meant Silver and my heartache over him, but I hadn’t put much weight on her words. Now, I suspect she knew that he would be here to meet me on the path.

And isn’t love what this is? Terribly dark, bitter, and painful?

Oh, I despise him, I certainly do, and I can never forgive him for his crime against me—but I would be a liar to claim that his confessions and terrible troubles are not warming me some.

At least now I know I am not the only one who suffered, and that he has felt a crumb of the agony I endured at his hands. But he can confess all the pain in the world to me, and it could still never change what he did.

Of all the things he could have done—leave me on the path alone, abandon me at the swamp, fight me for the final stretch of the path—he chose to send me back to Koal to save his own skin. That is what he chose, after all those times we spent entangled with each other, he sent me back to the Daemon.

That is something that cannot be forgiven.

“Keela,” he starts and steps up the path.

I stagger back, holding out my hands in front of me, as though they are shields that will ward him off. And it works—he stops, his face falling.

“Keela,” he echoes, softer this time. “I know you died. I know that your death was cold and lonely and in these Woods.”

I look away, my throat tensing as if to block any shuddering breaths from escaping me.

“It destroyed me,” he whispers, and I hear the pain in his voice. Without looking at him, I sense that his face twists with that heartache. “But then I learned that you had been resurrected. I wanted to go to you—I tried to, but the Sisters... It was not time to find you,” he finishes. “So I waited, and in all those months, I formed a plan.”

A wrinkle appears between my brows. I look at him, my mouth slanted into a confused line.

He answers my bafflement, urgent sheens of silver blazing his eyes, “The curse still needs to be fulfilled. That cannot be avoided. I must sacrifice one to save the other. Back then, I thought I was doing just that. I was wrong, of course. But now it is time to make that sacrifice.”

A shudder of fright ripples through me. My muscles clench into metal bolts, and I take another step away from him.

He holds out his blackened hand, as if to ease me. It has little effect; my still heart hammers in my chest.

“Keela, you are still ill,” he says. “You will die soon. Once you leave these Woods, I know that your sickness will be quick to take you. How long do you think you can survive it?”

I roll my jaw, forcing myself to keep silent.

“What if I can save you still?” He lowers his hand. “My plan,” he goes on with an urgent step closer to me, “is to save you—as fate has always intended. I do not expect your forgiveness, Keela, though that is what I want from you. But at least allow me to save your life. Allow it for yourself.”

I eye him closely.

The stark pallor of his face, the red hues of his eyes and the dark circles around them; all of it points to sincerity. And I’m absolutely convinced he is speaking the truth to me, that he has a way to save me and he very much plans on following through with it, too.

Before, when we trekked this journey together, I could always sense when he was hiding secrets from me, when things were not quite right with him, when he erected the wall of mystery between us. It was as though I could sense his moods and plans in my very bones. Before he delivered me to Koal’s minions, I knew it was time to get away from him, the urgency of it all had burrowed deep in my soul.

So can I trust my instincts now?

Or is he playing me the fool once again?

The risk is too great. I shake my head, loose strands of hair sticking to my cheeks where dampness gathers, and I just now realise that I’m weeping.

“You do not trust me,” he admits, and his mouth turns down at the corners. “I understand this. But at least allow me to prove my intentions to you. Come with me to the Sisters,” he says and cuts a look down the packed-dirt crimson trail that spears off from the path.

I trace his stare to the trees that hide the tarry glade tucked away back there.

Silver offers me his hand—his pale, healthy one that glows with the faint sheen of moonlight. “I might present this as a choice, but I mean no such thing, Keela. If you deny this, I will take you with me by force if I must.”

Ice-cold tendrils unwind through me.

I glance between him, his hand, and the glade behind the trees. I would be safe with the Sisters. I would learn some truths with them, too. He can deliver me no harm while I am in their glade. And if he does mean to harm me, then would it not be safer to hide away with the Sisters than walk this path alone and be exposed to him?

“You have days left to live once you leave these Woods,” he says, pulling my attention back to him. He flexes his hand, as if to lure me into him. “With my help, you will be spoilt with time.”

I decide on the Sisters—not on Silver.

“I will go with you,” I tell him warily, “but only because I have little choice.”

He drops his hand then, after a pause, nods and steps aside. He allows me to head down the crimson trail first, following behind me at a safe distance.

He keeps that space between us all the way to the stall-like tents. I head to the middle one, the one that reminds me of the larger market kiosks in the Shadow Quarter that pop up every once in a while.

Before I reach it, I spot the distinct silhouettes of each Sister tucked inside, and I sense that they have been waiting for me, as though they knew all along that I would find my way back to them.

But I stop at the mouth of the stall. My gaze burns into the lumpy figure deposited on the ground, my brows knitting together.

“Who is that?” I ask, startled.

The figure is definitely that a woman. She has slender legs that poke out from the torn hem of a silky dress, bare feet that are much too small and pretty to belong to a man, silvery ropes of hair that are spread all over her face, and she wears a cardigan that is tattered and blood-spotted as though she has been in a fight—and I suddenly recall the blood stains on Silver’s buttons.

The woman is bound by what appears to be magick. Her wrists are pinned at the small of her back, her ankles pressed tightly together. It’s as though invisible ropes keep her all bundled up on the ground, and deeply unconscious too.

Silver comes up behind me. The icy feel of his body presses against my back.

His head dips to my ear and he says, “That is Luna. And for you to live, she must be sacrificed.”

16.

KEELA

The armchair is worn down to the wood-bone, but I sink into it, hugging my knees to my chest, as though it is the same armchair I came to favour back at the snow valley with Esmerelda. It was on that chair that I would sit and listen to the tales of her past that she spun for me, how deeply she once loved the Lone God, how poorly she looks down on the Sisters who she sees as utterly useless manifestations of the world.

But I am not with the Witch anymore, I am not in her embrace of safety; I am trapped in the tarry glade with the Sisters, Silver and the unconscious Luna.

I can’t stop looking at the immobilised aniel on the ground. Everyone else in the stall seems to have forgotten all about her, but I haven’t.

A part of me shudders like a clock at noon, fearing that this is all a rouse, and Luna is here as some part of a grand scheme to finally kill me and somehow save her life. But I don’t see how that works out beyond fear and into logic.

And Silver doesn't appear too fussed by his ex-lover’s presence. He hands me a carved wood cup before he lowers himself onto the armchair opposite me. His eyes still wear the hues of red, faded by time perhaps, but he does still look utterly shattered.

As I cup the steaming tea in my hands, I watch him over the hot, ribboning vapours. And he watches me right back. Only, there is no challenge to be found in his gaze, or arrogance to be sensed in his presence. He looks just as he told me on the path—someone to be found deep in the shadows of an opium den. A man, destroyed.

I remind myself that he is not a man, he is an aniel, and that is a truth I need not forget again. The last time I allowed myself to set that threat aside, I was stabbed in the heart.

My gaze finds its way back to Luna.

Did she put faith and trust in him when he found her, and then he betrayed her as easily as he did me?

He traces my stare. “I have had time to figure out my curse,” he says after a long pause. “Figure out what I must do to fulfil it and keep you alive. Of course, the Sisters did help with this,” he adds.

I look up at him. He watches me with faint ripples of hope, like sea-foam rolling over the shallows.

“I returned to the Woods once the curse had taken my hand,” he says. “And I went straight to the prison for Luna, then I brought her here. And here I waited.”

I rest the cup on my knees. “But why do you need her?”

“Without her sacrifice, I cannot save you.”

“Sacrifice,” I mutter and shake my head. “I still am no closer to understanding what that means. Does it mean to deliver me back to Koal? To tie up your ex-lover? To come back to me and beg for forgiveness? What does this sacrifice mean, Silver?”

His gaze flickers away, over to the farther shadow of the stall, where the tree-bark Sister is hunched over her stone bowl of leaves. “You will see,” he replies after a while. “But I can promise that what I have planned will be of great benefit to you.”

He speaks no more of his schemes or Luna. In fact, he speaks no more at all. The rest of the few hours we are with the Sisters, he ensures I have drank enough tea and eaten enough of the muffins. He even asks if I would rather sleep before moving on and leaving the Woods, but I deny the offer. I want to be back in the Capital quickly. I want to finish what I started when I left Esmerelda and headed out in search of revenge for my mother and I.

Soon, it is time to leave the glade.

Silver wraps some of the muffins and shoves them into his pockets. He says I might need them later. Then he lifts Luna into his arms and carries her with more detachment than I expected. It truly is as though he cares nothing about her when, once upon a time, he thought he loved her to his bones.

I still cannot trust it all. So before I leave, I corner the slimy Sister near her piles of stones and ask if I should go with Silver. All she tells me is that “it can be no other way.” Not very helpful or reassuring.

Still, I leave the glade and Silver brings Luna with us. If he means me harm, I can only hope he might let me finish off Mayor West first.

I tell him this as we walk the remainder of the Never-ending Path. I confess why I left Esmerelda’s bubble of health and safety to return to the Capital where I will only find death.

Silver says, “I promise you will find the revenge you seek.”

And it’s enough. Because with my life so close to the end, even with Silver’s promises of saving me that I can’t bring myself to hold much faith in, all I want with the last days I have is to destroy the mayor. I want him dead.

So I go with Silver to the end of the Woods.

We come out at the shore we first arrived at, and on the horizon, there awaits a distinct pirate ship. At first, I can’t be sure if this is the same one that we arrived on and the same one that Koal caged me in. But when we take the row boat out to the ship and we climb on deck, I don’t recognise any of the pirates’ faces around me. Not a single one, and that dares flutter in my chest a mere flame of hope.

Maybe Silver doesn't have dreadful plans for me after all. At least, he might have no plans to send me back to Koal again.

Since Esmerelda severed the mateship bond, Koal has no more ties to me. But does that mean he will not hunt me down once he realises I’m free of the Witch’s valley? Just for all the trouble I caused him, he could well intend to do me much more harm than I can ever imagine.

Still, life will leave me fast, and even if he did catch up to me and torture me, it wouldn't last very long, because I would die before he could finish the task of destroying me.

The pirate ship surprises me as it sails into the busy harbour at the shore of the Capital.

Silver brings the lifeless Luna down into a row boat, and I follow him. We speak not a word to each other—days of silence that unnerve me to the bone—as we row to the Port. There, a carriage is waiting for us with a burly-looking hairy-faced aniel inside, and I learn that Silver really did have all of this planned out before I even left the snow valley.

The carriage ride is long and rocky. I peer out of the window and see that we are being driven uphill—up the bone-white hill, where the stardust palace is perched, the Palace of the Gods.

The carriage parks in a marble-white courtyard down the side of the palace. I’m assuming it is a back entrance. Two other aniels meet us there. One takes Luna in his arms and carries her as though she is a statue meant for a precious garden.

Fear rises up through me, chilling my insides.

Silver places his blackened hand on the small of my back. I look up at him, at the grave look slackening his face, and the pinch of his mouth.

I loosen a shuddering breath. And he delivers on what he promised—my legs refuse to budge, they are so heavy with panic, and Silver scoops me up into his arms. I feel a wash of magick roll over me, like river-water over a rock, and I’m suddenly immobilised, just like Luna.

He takes me into the stardust palace.

I suppose now, I will discover if Silver is true to his word. And I will learn my fate once and for all.

17.

KEELA

My only view of the palace is skewed from laying limp in Silver’s arms, my head leaning all the way back and everything turned upside down. But even then, buried beneath the building panic, I’m distantly aware of how amazing this place is. Of course it would be, it is the Palace of the Gods after all.

My whole life, I only ever saw the palace from down beyond the foot of the bone-white hill in the Capital. The closest I got to the stardust palace was in the Gods’ Gardens, tucked some distance away from the bottom of the steep, curved hill.

I never imagined I would once get to see the inside.

And though I’m terrified for what might happen to me here, the magick of it all isn't lost on me. Sets of swirling marble staircases loop all through the halls and corridors and atriums of the palace, bright gleaming balconies hang above to overlook the low-hanging crystal chandeliers glittering like stars themselves, and each set of double-doors we pass is grander than most I’ve seen outside of the temples in the Capitals with lacquered paints coated all over them and polished silver knobs and the symbols of the Gods carved into the treated wood frames. Twisted tree-like columns punch up from the ground in each foyer I’m carried through, ribbed and ending in curled marble designs. Most of the single doors that we pass are shielded by heavy velveteen curtains, as if to conceal what lies beyond them.

The walls change first. Down a new, narrow corridor, they turn to glass panels—ceiling-to-floor windows—that look out into what appears to be a lush, private courtyard. Out there, I can faintly make out stone pews hidden between purple-rose bushes, and some natural hot-baths dotted beneath midnight-blue willow trees (like those in the Wild Woods) whose leaves act like privacy curtains. Pinkish rabbits spear through the white shrubs.

Then the floors start to change from my upside-down angled sight. Sleek marble turns to ruby-red carpets so plush that I don’t hear a single boot flatten against them.

The aniels now move silently, Silver carrying me, the other holding Luna. One of us could be headed to our death—and for the love of all things Godly, I do hope it is her and not me.

Finally, we stop.

I crane my neck to look around Silver’s back, and see a single lacquered blood-red door tucked between two wall-fountains whose crystalline water rains down with a gentle sound that dares to lull me into a false sense of calm.

Silver angles me right against him, then reaches out to rap his knuckles on the door. He waits a silent moment, a thick pause in which no one moves or breathes too loudly or even shifts their weight. Then his hand moves to turn to the moonlight-doorknob, and the door is pushed open.

The heat from the room hits me like a punch to the face. It is instant, not dissimilar to naked flames much too close to the skin. I can feel my flesh burning red before he carries me inside.

As he moves into the room, I’m blinded. I’m angled such a way now that my head is dipped to the side, around his shoulder, and all I can see is the aniel coming in with Luna behind me, and the wall there. On that wall, there is little other than a tall portrait—taller than I stand on my healthiest day—of a familiar pink-haired and horned God with the silkiest white skin I have ever seen in my life. Princess Monster.

My heart stops at the sight of her painting.

Is it Princess Monster he is taking me to? But ... why? What in this world does a Third God have to do with what Silver wants from me and Luna?

Silver carries me to a plush loveseat, riddled with cushions. Gently, he sets me down at the arm, propping me upright, and when he steps aside, I see—for the first time in my life—a God. No, not just a God, I see two.

Ice-cold fear runs down my chest, freezing up my insides. My breath is trapped in my throat, and all I can manage is to stare wide-eyed at the pair.

Princess Monster and Prince Poison. The God I want to worship, and the God I was forced to worship. A Malis God and a Beniyn One; cruel and kind, bound together as eternal lovers.

First, I find myself staring at Princess Monster for a few reasons. Her beauty is so striking that I fail to tear my gaze away from her. The curved horns that wind out of her hair are so peculiar that I’m suddenly fascinated by them, and even though she is still a God, she is a kinder one—one that pales in comparison to her lover.

Wrapped in a silky black dressing gown, as though she has only just been disturbed from her bed, the pink-hair God sits neatly on a crimson velvet armchair near the tall marble fireplace dug into the wall behind her. Her legs are crossed (one over the other, the very same way that I was once whipped for when I was a girl, and Arthur told me that true ladies cross their ankles, not their knees), and in her pale slender hands, she holds loosely onto what appears to be a simple cup of coffee. Only, the scent from the cup soon floods my senses, and I’m suddenly doubting that whatever she is drinking is anything other than hot blood.

A shudder runs down me at the thought.

Then, I can’t hold it off a moment longer. I look at Prince Poison.

He stands at the side of the armchair, his bare hand resting gently on Princess Monster’s shoulder. He is better dressed than his companion, with a loosely fastened shirt and done-up breeches with silver boots to match, but he goes without a cravat or a formal coat, and his silky silver hair looks a tad tousled, and so I do suspect that they were taken from bed for whatever this meeting is about.

And the resemblance strikes me like a match down a tree trunk. I feel it zap and ignite throughout my body, and it seizes my heart in an ice-grip.

Prince Poison is undoubtedly the father-God of Silver. The resemblance is simply uncanny. Their eyes are moons, shining and swirling with the ripples of sea-foam; their silken pearlescent hair matches even down to the length, just short enough to start curling at the temples and ears; and they each wear the skin of cherished marble. This God definitely made Silver—his first ever aniel—in his own image.

Yet, I see the slight differences nonetheless. Though they are both ancient, there is an aged wisdom in Prince Poison’s entire presence. His aura is severe and tense, weary almost, and there is a tired touch to the way he watches me, as though he has seen this exact scenario play out a hundred times in his life.

It is only when Princess Monster speaks, and he looks down at her, that I see any signs of life on him; his eyes flash with unmistakable emotion, and his hand tightens on her slender shoulder.

“Remove the magick, Silver,” Princess Monster orders in a sleep-deprived voice that even aches a yawn in my own throat.

And just like that, I feel the magick peel from my bones. My arms suddenly spring back to life, my legs ignite with a flurrying sensation, and I sit up straight, my tingling spine as alert as my eyes.

A shuddering breath escapes me.

I cut a glance at Silver. He stands at the end of the loveseat, his hands behind his back, and on his other side, the gruff-looking aniel holds Luna still.

Silence floods the room.

For a long while, I just sit on the loveseat, my hands clenched on the cushions, my breaths ragged and whispered.

Princess Monster watches me, her mind churning behind her stark-white eyes. Prince Poison has his liquid-metal gaze on Silver, and his lashes are lowered as though he is working him out or biting back a fury within him. Who knows?

I imagine that to me—a mere vilas—Gods are truly impossible to read. But most unreadable of anyone in the cosy parlour room is Silver; he gives nothing away with the firm set of his jaw, the stiff stance of his posture, and how he looks straight ahead at the flames licking up the logs in the hearth.

What am I doing here?

What do you want with me?

Please don't hurt me.

I still need to destroy the mayor—the man who stole two lives.

I just need time.

Those words whirl around my mind, aching to spill out of my quivering lips, but I clamp my mouth shut and refuse to let them out. I know my place even among the lesser aniels. Now, I am in the presence of Gods. One word out of line, one blink that they might take offence to, and it’ll be a lot more than death facing me. It will be absolute agony.

“She is more poorly than you described,” Princess Monster says, and still, she is the only one to break the silence.

No one responds, and I suspect that we are not meant to.

“Are you so certain this is what you want?” She looks at Silver, her blush-hued eyebrow arching above a particularly glowing white iris.

Silver nods once, keeping his gaze straight ahead.

The nerves are starting to attack me now with a renewed panic. The thumps of my lazy heart are so hard that I can feel it punching against my aching ribs. My stomach churns so violently that it makes audibly vilas pops and crackles that are quick to burn my cheeks crimson.

“What if we deny this request?” Princess Monster probes, and there is a distinct edge of curiosity in her light voice. Fleetingly, I notice Prince Poison’s lashes lower on his aniel. “I could offer you what I offered Jasper when he fell in love with a vilas.”

My heart stops dead for a moment. The sensation strangles me, and I lift my alarmed gaze to Silver. Still, he remains unreadable, as though wearing an unbreakable mask fitted over his face.

When he fell in love with a vilas...

So it is true? It is to be believed that Silver has decided the love he possesses is for me and not for Luna?

Panic starts to ebb away inside of me. Though enough of it lingers that my toes are still curled in my boots and my fingernails cut so deeply into the seat’s upholstery that I’m sure to pull some threads loose.

Then, Silver’s mask cracks. Just a little, but since I stare at him so wide-eyed and stunned, I catch it. A deep dimple appears in his cheek, as though he clenches his jaw.

After a long pause, he says, “If that is what you offer me, then that is the fate I will accept.”

“Is it the fate you want?” Princess Monster presses, a small smile dancing on her faintly pink mouth. Amusement in her eyes, she glances up at Prince Poison; he cuts a glare down at her, not having nearly as much fun as she is, and I can see the noticeable difference in their ages with that one shared look.

“It is not.” Silver’s voice is firmer than the marble texture of his skin.

Prince Poison speaks for the first time. The deep, sharp sound of his voice shudders my muscles with bone-deep tension. “No. What he wants is to steal away an aniel of mine to save a vilas, by making no sacrifice on his end.”

Shame flushes Silver’s cheeks. He looks down at the carpet.

My stomach stirs with unease. I ache to shift on the seat, to clench myself closer together as though to curl into a safe ball, but I daren’t move, I daren’t do anything so vilas in front of these immortal beings.

Keeping his head bowed, Silver says, “I would sacrifice my immortality—my magick and power—to achieve this end.”

Princess Monster breaks out into a smile. It is small, yet dazzling still, and it stops my heart for a beat. “You need not. We have already agreed,” she adds, looking up at Prince Poison, “that I will adopt this child. But you understand that the effects will not stretch beyond immortality, don’t you? Immortality is all that I can offer with this transfer.”

He nods. “I am aware.”

“And you are so willing to ruin her life?” Prince Poison asks, his tone curt as he glances sharply at Luna.

“She will not die,” Silver replies, his tone so low and strangled that it is almost a murmur, and I can’t tell if it is obedience or shame that rattles him. “She will simply become vilas.”

I blink, and it’s suddenly all hitting me, like a pile of rocks falling from the sky.

Become vilas, transfers, giving up power, sacrificing one to save the other, giving up immortality and power, Luna ...

I—I understand what he means to do, why he brought me here to Prince Poison but also to Princess Monster.

Of course. I don’t know why I didn’t piece it together earlier.

Each God has abundant powers. But each one is also known for their one, particular power. The Prince’s is poison, of course; all that he touches—besides Princess Monster—is flooded with deadly poison. Lover Lust throws all aniels and vilas around her into pools of desire only for them to drown in it. Blaze is known for his control over fire and lava. Loki for shapeshifting. And on it goes.

Princess Monster is renowned for her most peculiar ability—the ability to steal power from one thing and push it into another. According to the tales, she can remove the curse from an amulet and shove that curse into someone who has slighted her. Or she can very well steal the power of an aniel and store that magick somewhere else, like a vilas.

As it all slots together in my churning mind, a choppy breath escapes me. I turn my widening eyes on Luna, limp in the hairy aniel’s arms, then look at Silver. For the first time since entering this parlour room, he looks at me, albeit out of the corner of his eye. His lips tighten into a flat line, and I know that he knows what I have realised.

Silver means to have Princess Monster steal away Luna’s aniel magick—and push it into me. I would not have her power to use, but it would live within me and from it, I would become ... immortal. For all intents and purposes, I would become an aniel. The lowest of the lesser ones, but still.

And I don’t know how to feel about it all.

Before I can stop myself, a groan slips out of me, and I double over on the loveseat. I hold my head at my legs and clench my eyes shut against the dizziness washing over me like waves hitting the wall of a cliff.

I doubt they even spare me a glance, any attention at all.

Faintly, I’m aware of murmurs, of muffled voices slithering over me. They still speak, work out the details of what they will do, perhaps Silver is pleading his case, I don’t know, because all I can hear clearly is the sound of my blood pumping behind my eardrums.

Then I’m jolted out of my dizzy spell when a familiar cold hand slides its way behind my neck and holds there. I look up and realise that tears cloud my sight. Still, I know it is Silver holding onto the nape of my neck, looking down on me. He has come to my side.

I blink away the daze of tears, feeling droplets roll down my cheeks.

My voice is a whimper, “No one has asked me what I want, how I feel about this.” But it doesn’t really matter. I would and could never reject such an offer. What is causing me hesitation is one thing, and one thing only—what if I do not survive the process of this magick and then Mayor West gets to live out his full and happy life without punishment, without justice.

If that comes to be, what would the purpose of everything that has happened be? Escaping Koal, being brought back to life by the Lone God, loving Silver,his betrayal of me, surviving as viciously as I did … It all came to a close at the severing of my mateship with Koal. But in my time with Esmerelda, I came to understand that my journey and destination were never about Koal. He was the catalyst. This journey was always about me and the wrongs committed against me.

And this procedure from Princess Monster could very well kill me. I’m not a strong vilas; I’m a terribly weak excuse for one. Yet I seem to have no choice in this at all.

His face turns grim. “Paint me selfish,” he murmurs, “but I will not allow you to die, even if that is what you choose.”

In one strangled heartbeat, movement shifts all around me.

Dazed, I look around, but I can’t seem to focus on one thing for a mere second. Still, I see enough to put an outline together; Luna is being moved to my side on the loveseat. Silver’s hand has fished mine up, and he holds it firmly. Princess Monster is standing between my knees and Luna’s, flexing her hands as if to prepare them.

I choke on a whimper.

Slowly, I sink back into the seat, as though I can escape this sudden, shocking reality. But there is no escape, not from the Gods, not from the palace—and apparently not from what Silver means for my future.

I’m given no moment to figure out how I feel about this—this impossibility. Something I never thought would or could happen. And yet, here I am. And the warmth of Princess Monster’s hand wraps around my other wrist; her grip is so tight that I feel my wrist bone aching.

And then it starts.

The strangest sensation I have ever known sludges through me. It is awfully thick, like sticky honey, being pushed through my veins, somewhat warm yet tainted. It is slow to work its way through my body.

I’m in a daze as I lean back against the loveseat, my restless eyes darting between my white-glowing arm, the honey hue working its way through my visible veins, and Silver standing at my side. He simply watches me, his lashes low over his molten eyes, and his jaw set tight. He nods his head once as if to reassure me.

And it’s over as suddenly as it started.

My lashes flutter as the honey sensation fades away.

Everything inside of me starts to ... shift. The eternal hurt in my heart softens to a distant dull ache, like a memory. The nauseas sensation that always seems to be buried deep in my bones lifts out of me and disperses, like cigarette smoke carried away on the wind.

I get the familiar sturdy feel of vitality rushing through me, similar to when I would take a shot of energy in the Shadow District when I would pick up my remedy, or the after effects of drinking blood straight from Silver’s veins.

The hurt and anger that lives within me is fading away, until my body threatens to forget it entirely.

I’m limp against these new, strange sensations. I’m still slumped in the seat, my breaths steadying, my heartbeat gaining some strength. Distantly, I hear voices speak around me, while I’m lost in this oddity.

“What about Koal?” I recognise the distinct sound of Silver’s tone, a hint of worry sharpening it. “He could still hunt her for the troubles she has caused him.”

“I will pay him off,” speaks a colder voice, unmistakably Prince Poison’s. “He owes me many favours. Have faith in me, Silver. I will do what I promised.” There is a thick silence for a moment before he adds, “For I fear that losing her means I will lose my first child.”

The unmistakable sound of leather creaking creeps into my mind. I flutter my darkening gaze to Silver. He peels off his glove, and I’m prepared to see his blackened hand, consumed by the curse. Only, it isn’t black and toxic anymore; all those dark spots are fading away, like ink blots reversing somehow, and his hand is—in a few blinks—entirely white once more.

Then I drift away, sliding into a pot of warmth.

I don’t drown, I simply rest there, smelling the raw sweetness that’s tainted with a dash of bitter poison. And a part of me wants to stay here forever. Wherever I am.

18.

EPILOGUE

Worship Street is a downhill spiralling flood of vilas and aniels. Heavy skirts rustle over the road, the faint click of canes hitting stones echoes in my ears, and I can pinpoint the distance between myself and a screeching child so far down the street that it is out of sight.

Months after my change and I still doubt whether I will ever become accustomed to these new, loud senses.

Around my bony wrist, Silver’s fingers tighten their grip. He steadies me in the tornado of noise whirling all around me. I let him pull me into a pause at the tip of the street; he guides me closer to him until I rest my head on the sharp touch of his collarbone, and I faintly feel the steady beat of his heart pulsing beneath his hard skin. His other gloved hand comes up to press against the small of my back.

For a moment, it is only us, standing amongst silence; a dead street. But it comes time to pull apart from him when the bell rings through the street—the first chime of the day announcing that temples are about to start.

My groan is audible as I peel my face from his chest. I cast a lazy gaze up at him.

As usual, Silver’s marble-like face is unreadable. It’s as still and cold as a porcelain mask, fashioned for a ball for the Capital’s elite vilas. Even his eyes, like the grey icebergs that riddle the farther corners of the seas, remain cold for me. It’s the fleeting slight tug of his lips that gives him away. He fights off the smile, but not before I caught it.

He is colder around the vilas. Here, he adopts his fierce and icy reputation, even when he is with me. Here, he is all business on behalf of his father-God.

But even Silver cannot fight off the cruel turn of his mouth when a familiar voice calls out my name. The voice is hoarse with desperation, shadowed by the rapid thump of bootfalls coming up the windy street.

I cast my gaze down at the bulging, red-nosed man headed my way. A father to me in another life, a man who ensured I had little joy in my vilas existence, and who I have avoided like a plague since returning to the Capital one month after my change.

Today, Arthur carries a silver dish in his arms. The scent of freshly-picked plums wafts out from the dish—a common offering that vilas will give to aniels on Worship Street. Yet an offering that I am not at all interested in.

Before Arthur can reach me, Silver tightens his arm around my waist and speaks one firm word that stops my ex-father dead in his tracks; “No.”

The grim hope that Arthur wore on his blotchy face starts to dissolve into something lost and filled with despair. I can’t imagine why he feels so desolate that I want nothing to do with him, since for most of my life it was the other way around. Perhaps it’s because I am now one of the creatures he holds in such high regard, as most vilas do. Perhaps now that I am an aniel of Princess Monster’s temple (albeit, utterly powerless, other than the immortality of the magick within me) Arthur sees me as someone who might be able to hike up his rank in the city.

I will offer him no such advantage. He will find no favours with me.

And he will find no company with me, either.

I am the last of the family, besides Arthur. Olivia is gone, lost to the Underworld, where her soul survives with our mother’s. But in that home that we all once lived in, it is only Arthur left with the servants, and no one else.

Holding the freshly polished dish, he turns his beefy back on us and heads back down the street. I watch him go for a moment before I look back at my stony-faced companion. He cuts his icy gaze down at me, seafoam glittering in his eyes.

A part of me—deep, deep down in the pits of darkness that ladies should not possess, but that aniels savour—itches to strike out at his perfect marble-esque face. I ache to kick out at his shins and bite into his hard skin.

All that anger and hurt from his betrayal still carries with me, buried in that hollow spot that lives within my heart. But how can I continue to begrudge him, or even abandon him, after he did so much to make it right—to keep me alive?

Maybe I’ll never fully forgive him, but I will stay with him. Perhaps being raised the way I was has something to do with why I have chosen a life with him; starved of affection and love and protection, yet still raised to lust after the security of marriage.

Of course, we are not married. But we are close to that in the aniel world—we wear ribbons on our wrist to show our commitment.

Suddenly, Silver’s hand slips away from my back. I’m cold without his touch.

He ghosts a kiss over my temple before he sweeps down the rows of temples, deeper in to where the temples of the First Gods are kept. Since Princess Monster is the last of them, her new temple is parked at the very tip of the street, smaller than the rest, but by no means less grand.

Out the front, Fox waits for me. She leans against a moonlight column, toying with a pink-blush ribbon in her nimble fingers. Her fox-white eyes gleam up at me, and on her fair mouth, a wicked smile dances. How she likes to remind me with those looks that I am in debt to her; that I still owe her the favour promised all that time ago, when I first fled the Capital.

Of course, now that I am somewhat of an aniel and no more a vilas, the favour doesn’t hold as much power as it once did. And she can’t use the promise to harm me in any way, since we are both children of Princess Monster; we both serve the same God, and so our God’s wishes must come before everything else. But that doesn’t prevent Fox from toying with me now and then—how she loves to dangle that favour over my head.

There will come a time that she will collect on this favour. I am no fool, I do not expect it to be forgotten. But until then, we remain sisters of sort, friends almost.

Not all of the other aniels take so kindly to me.

Many see me as what I once was, just a vilas who ‘got lucky’, as an aniel named Adrik once told me (the most favoured of Princess Monster’s aniels, stolen from Prince Poison long ago). But Adrik is an all-round ass, to be frank, and his opinion on my status means little. Besides, not many of the aniels have the gall to mess with me, since my lover is none other than Silver, one of the most powerful aniels of all.

Except Fox, of course...

As I come up the stairs to the open archway of the temple, she tugs the silver and crimson ribbon fastened around my wrist. The ribbon is a display of my commitment to Silver, who wears my ribbon—a mix of pink and silver—in return. But Fox tugs it clean off my wrist and I luckily catch it before it lands on the marble floor.

I shoot her a dark look, but she just winks before she sweeps through the archway. I trail her inside.

As I move between the rows of pews, lingering vilas part way for me, and a slight chill tingles deep in my gut. I’m uncertain when I will get used to the way vilas move around me, the way they turn their gazes downcast as I pass them by, and how many offerings they bring me each week. Mind, Silver receives a lot more than I ever will, since he is the head aniel of Prince Poison’s temple, and Princess Monster is fairly new to the world.

Still, even as I sit myself beside Fox on the stone bench atop the altar, I run my gaze around the temple and see a handful of new faces, come to worship my God. Word got out of how she saved me, a sickly and dying vilas, and turned me into one of her own immortal children.

Some of them hope to meet the same fate one day, and others are simply in awe of what she did. It shouldn’t take too long for the temple to be packed to the brim with worshippers.

Today, the sermon revolves around my story—but angled on Princess Monster, of course. And it’s what the newcomers came here for. They want to know all the details of the stories running around the Capital. They want to know of how this new God managed to turn a mortal immortal.

It’s the story they are given this morning.

Once temple is finished up, I follow Fox into the office down the back of the building. Unlike the moody, dark and crimson room Silver receives his visitors in, this one is pearlescent-white everything, and it’s something that faintly has me thinking of holiday cottages on farther isles that the Gods sometimes attend.

I learn the ropes of receiving, lodging and counting taxes for an hour. Fox shows me all that I need to know to head the temple should other business ever call her away. She considers me somewhat her deputy. I suppose, in a way, I am.

I don’t hang around for Silver to find me after all the taxes are wrapped up. He takes longer to tend to these matters than I do, since Prince Poison’s grip on the city is so much wider than that of his lover’s.

So I go off on my own to the hospice. The white-stone building is tucked away—some distance from the baths—in the Spa Square. I wander the lengthy walk there, no more uneasy heartbeats to slow me down or dizzy spells to rock me to my core. Health floods me in all corners of my body.

But that doesn't necessarily mean I don’t look sickly.

My skin possesses the faint aniel glow that is stronger in others, the dark circles under my eyes are gone, and even my hair holds a golden sheen to it now.

Still, my body shape has stayed the same as when I was changed. It is rather bony where I would hope it isn’t; my hips refuse to submit to curves, my breasts are still quite small, and there are even some shadows around my ribs that speak of a past life filled with disease.

Not even the magick within me can change my shape.

And even in my new position, I find I’m still insecure about it all. My peachy gown today was specially made to give the illusion of shape where I have none. It cuts in sharply at the waist before tulle beneath the crystallised skirt spills out like a bell. And since I’m no more fought for breath, I wear corsets with much more ease than I ever thought possible. Though today it has been tied rather tight and I itch to rip it off.

I manage to reach the hospice without attacking my corset (though I am forming murderous plans for it later). As I push through the cold white doors, a vilas secretary rushes out from behind her desk as if to meet me. But she looks at me and pales noticeably. She sinks back into her seat.

I spare her a fleeting glance before I take the staircase up to the third level. My heeled slippers clack loudly all the way up. Most of the hospice workers I pass on my way to Room 3008 avoid looking at me and some stare out of—what I imagine is—medical curiosity, but I suppose that is no different to when I was a poorly vilas. They want my secrets, my blood, to test on their ailing patients.

The door to Room 3008 is ajar when I reach it. I pause by the gap for a moment and listen. From inside, there is a low, constant murmur—and I recognise it deep in the ache of my heart.

I nudge the door open. It creaks, much too loudly, the hinges in dire need of oiling. And as I’m revealed in the doorway, the man crouched over the side of the sickbed stiffens in his stuffy armchair. His ordinary brown eyes widen at the sight of me; a shock that takes him each time we meet.

I look away from Mikhael to the motionless man on the bed. Mayor West is hooked up to bags of clear liquid that pump into his bloodstream, but whatever they are feeding him here does little to rouse him from his stupor of pain.

I fight the small smile that dances on my lips as I look at the mayor, as I take in the ghastly sight of his agony.

Boils crawl all over his rashy skin—and I do mean crawl. They writhe and bubble and swell. Some crack open at the surface, leaking steady streams of wretched-smelling puss. From the corner of his chapped lips, white gunk gathers with a more pungent smell than the urine that has escaped him sometime recently.

I have a poison gifted from Silver to thank for this. Something that can’t even be found in the darkest corners of the Shadow District. Something that has delivered the faintest hint of revenge on a callous man who poisoned his pregnant lover.

“Keela.” The pained whisper seeps into my moment of joy.

I cut a dark look at Mikhael. “That is not my name anymore.”

“Kee,” he corrects himself, a sheepish blush creeping onto his cheeks. But then he fails to say what haunts him. He has so much he wants to say to me, but he can’t bring himself to do it.

It’s for the better.

Besides, I have a sense of what he desires to tell me. Something along the lines of apologies and wishing he went to the authorities rather than merely writing me a note and the very humiliating realisation that we are half-brother and sister.

I turn my attention back on our father.

Each breath he takes is a horrid wheeze that I can hear crackling deep in his chest. I step closer, close enough to see the steady streams of blood leaking out from his ears.

His eyes flutter as I step into his line of sight. He cuts his bloodshot eyes to me, his eyelids nearly glued together by the mass of gunk gathered there.

Finally, I let the triumphant smile sit on my lips. I lean closer, revelling in how his eyes follow me and his hands clutch onto the rough blanket covering him.

“This is for my mother,” I whisper, my smile spreading wide enough to bare my teeth at him. “And for me.”

I ignore the faint sob that comes from behind me; Mikhael, falling to his pain. I could not possibly care less about their misery. I have suffered so much more of it in my life. What I have delivered them is a mere taste of true suffering.

Still, it is enough to satiate my hunger for revenge. I leave the hospice without another word, knowing that sometime tonight, Mayor West will take his final, agonising breath—just like I once did in the Wild Woods, and just like my mother did all alone in her bedchamber.

To me, Silver is predictable.

I find him easily once I leave the hospice. He is not in the townhouse or at the temples—he is buried deep in the opium den that he owns, hidden in a curtained alcove with Fox and some other aniels of Prince Poison.

I climb over the array of stretched out legs wrapped in breeches, nearly tripping over my own skirt. Silver looks up at me with his opium-heavy eyes as I sink onto the crescent-seat to sit beside him.

He offers me the pipe, but as always, I shake my head, and it is passed on to another. I don’t partake. Old sickly vilas tendencies, perhaps. Not to mention that Luna wasn’t a particularly strong or healthy aniel. If there ever was a sick aniel, it was her, with her weaker heart (a heart far stronger than my old one, but weak still). So I don’t risk tasting the opium pipe. To me, my heart is as strong as that of an ox, but that doesn’t mean I should take too many risks.

It doesn’t stop Silver from his favourite drug, though. For much of the day, he is deep in his opium haze, his lashes low over molten metal eyes, and his hand buried deep in my hair. His fingers wind around wavy strands, coiling then uncoiling them over and over, and his stare is fixed on me all the while.

It feels such a short time before it’s time to leave for the Ball of the Divine. Before we go, I change in the downstairs dungeon-like office into a new ball gown that Silver had made for me. It certainly isn't a dress (if one can call it that) I would have worn as a vilas, what with all the expected modesty and that, but given my new life, I find I wear and do what I please. The bodice and skirt match with a crystallised blush-pink, but they are separated at the gap that circles my middle, showing more skin that I once dared to.

A worshipper ties my hair in a half-up-do before I leave with Silver and the others.

At the ball, I do very little besides indulge in fruits and cakes and wines and sitting in hot alcoves. Silver tends to some business before he joins me on a hidden loveseat for the rest of the night, smoking his black cigarettes, his free and ungloved fingers spidering their way under the backend of the bodice, caressing my skin absentmindedly.

I lean into his distant, cold affections, resting my head on his shoulder. At some point, Fox wants me to join her in some dances, but I simply can’t tear away from Silver’s side. I’m lost in a bubble of butterflies and sunshine and toxic clouds. I’m drowning in his love for now.

Maybe time will change how I feel, how strongly it all manifested once I had the change, and the feelings I have for him will fade away into the echoes that they once were. Maybe not.

All I know for certain is that right now, I don’t want to be away from Silver, not even for just a night of dancing and music. I want to stay right here, by his side, feeling his icy fingertips graze over my spine, feeling the heat of his breath on my neck when he slides in for deeper affections.

Gods help me, but I feel safe with him. After all he’s done to me, against me, I’ve never felt safer in my life. Because of Silver and the choices he made, I am what I am now, and Koal doesn’t hunt me anymore (I hope that stays true for the remainder of my long, long life). Because of Silver, I can breathe easily for the first time.

We are some of the last to leave the Ball of the Divine, given what we are. We can’t very well leave early. It is our duty to represent the Gods where they do not wish to go.

When we do leave—hand-in-hand, walking the dark streets of the Capital all the way back to the Shadow Quarter—he leads us away from the opium den and down the lanes to his townhouse. Well, our townhouse now, I suppose. It’s my portraits on the wall, too. It’s my decor that has brightened the hall and the chambers. It is my tearoom that sits by the street-facing window, looking out onto the shadows of the darker parts of the city.

It’s my home now, too.

Tonight, we sit on the top-level terrace. The harbour looks dark and gloomy this late in the night.

Servants bring us sweets and cakes and teas.

Stretched out on the seat beside me, Silver kicks out his legs like he does after a long day, and lights a cigarette. The smoke crawls right over to my face, just as I’m about to sink my teeth into a caramel-chocolate bite.

I slide my narrowing eyes on him. “One day, I hope you’ll quit that habit.”

He flicks ash onto the wood floorboards, then brings his tired gaze to mine. “I offered to give you my power to keep you alive,” he says. “I offered to become a vilas so that you could be saved. And yet, abandoning this,” he adds, lifting the cigarette pinched between his fingers, “is one thing I will never do for you.”

I roll my eyes to the side, barely missing the small smile that quirked his lips. He leans over to me, pressing a firm, cold kiss on my cheek before he falls back onto his chair and carries on smoking—I think just to further vex me.

That’s what he does. He kisses me and he vexes me.

And I trust at the bottom of my heart, he will never betray me again.

It’s not my doubt of Silver that carries with me into the quieter moments of the day and night, those lone seconds where I’m left alone with my thoughts too long with little to distract me. It is in those moments that I feel the scars scattered all over my shoulders and neck tingle with a familiar icy, trickling sensation. When I feel those echoes of pain-since-gone, I fear something churning deep in my belly that, despite Prince Poison paying off Koal for my safety, the trade between them has an expiration date.

In my heart, in my gut, in my bones and in those scars, I know it. One day, Koal will come for me, mate or not. He seeks revenge and he merely bides his time to rip me out of my new life and deliver unfathomable pain onto me.

That day will come. I just don’t know when.

the end.

QUINN BLACKBIRD

If you are interested in paperbacks, you can find them on the box set pages on Jan 2021. Just go to my author profile on Amazon and click on the box sets of this series.

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GODS AND MONSTERS

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READ ON FOR DARK FAE SAMPLE\

DARK FAE SAMPLE, BOOK 1

They carry me, not kill me. Yet.

I’m limp, like cooked spaghetti, in their grips. One has me by the arms, the other by the legs. They cart me around the building. We’re headed towards the main street. The small crowd of fae follows us, but some spear off and head in different directions—no doubt to finish their sweep of the village before it burns to the ground.

Fire is everywhere.

As I’m carted down a narrow alley, the stink of singed cloth and wood burns my nose. The red light of the fires waters my eyes. I’m not used to so much brightness. Even if it’s the light of death-come-knocking.

They carry me halfway down the alley before they come to an abrupt stop. I sway in their hold, trying to wiggle my way out. But their grips are tight, like iron shackles.

I quickly still and freeze in their hold.

I hear him before I see him; the purposeful steps he takes up the alley, the clink of armour, the song of a dagger he sheathes.

I turn my head to the mouth of the alley, where the main street blazes orange. And I see his silhouette first. Tall, broad—consuming.

Danger creeps up my spine. I have the sudden urge to break free and run at the other dark fae. I don’t want to face this one coming up the alley, the one all the others fall silent for.

My breath is deep and shaky as I see him completely engulfed in firelight.

The darkness fades from him, but lashes of it seem to lick at his heels, as though the darkness itself belongs to him, he is their master, their home. His soft-soled boots are thin, onyx-black leather, matching the trousers that grip him.

At his hips hangs a belt that’s home to all kinds of daggers and throwing knives. Some blades wear traces of fresh blood, and my spine shivers at the sight of the crimson smears gleaming in firelight.

Chain-link armour—so fine that it appears to have been made from silk threads—clings to a black-leather vest he wears. Paler than moonlight, his skin is scarred all over. His arms, muscular and strong, are ribbed by these strange scars. They aren’t bumped like the scars that scatter my arms, but pale and jagged not unlike stretch marks. They climb up his neck like claws, and stop just before the strong jawline.

His face steals me.

I’ve seen some dark fae from a distance before, and up close and personal today. They are all beautiful in the most dangerous of ways, like deadly cobras or lethal panthers. But this one… he’s something else.

His sleek dark hair falls to the side and brushes over his raised eyebrow. His eyes are pits of nothingness, just pure black. As I take in his face, I think fleetingly of our old world and the likes of Henry Cavill and Matt Bomer.

Only, this guy is no pampered actor. He’s a warrior, and his onyx-black eyes are fixed on me. There’s nothing friendly about the way he looks at me, either. I get the gut-churning feeling he’s about to skin me alive.

Suddenly, the dark fae let me go and I’m not given a moment to catch myself before I slam to the ground. Cobblestone hits me hard for the countless time today, and a weak groan of pain whispers out from my clenched teeth.

I roll onto my side, keeping a wary eye on the dark fae approaching me. As he draws nearer, I see the wink of black circling his head—a diadem of sorts that sits on his head like a crown. Some dusty black material, like a metal coated with charcoal.

He’s their leader.

I feel like a damn fool for taking this long to realise it. But that’s why the dark fae didn’t kill me when I stood my ground. For some reason, they took me to him—and suddenly, my mind flashes with reminders of the human prisoners with the dark fae army. The ones who are guarded heavily out in the street.

My veins run cold and a chill trickles down my spine. Fear clutches my heart and squeezes.

That familiar cutting sound of their language slices through my thoughts. I force myself to sit, and look back at the dark fae who dropped my legs. A blond one with eyes like pearls and cutting cheekbones. He talks to the leader as he comes to a stop an arm’s reach from me. Then, they both turn their stares down at me.

I suddenly wish I could shrink into a withering flower, then blow away in the fire’s hot winds. I wish I could I turn to ash.

The leader speaks. I don’t know what he’s saying, but he’s looking right at me. Then, a sharp pain erupts at the back of my head—the blond fae grabs my hair and twists my head away.

I face the ground, my bloody hand pressed against it, as it sinks in. My neck is exposed to the leader. Whatever it was that they saw on my neck earlier, whatever it was that urged them to bring me to their leader, they’re showing it to him now.

But all I have on my neck is some freckles. That’s all. No scars from hurting myself, or war wounds, no tattoos or brand-marks. Nothing that stands out.

So I can’t even imagine what all this interest is about.

The leader takes some steps closer to me. I clamp my mouth shut and force myself to stay silent. As he reaches for me, I cringe against the ground. His grip coils around my neck. He holds me for a beat, then he yanks me up to my feet and throws me against the wall.

I grunt, though the impact didn’t hurt too bad. Not as bad as falling off the wall.

Now, I’m drenched in the fiery light from the street. Now, he can better see me, I realise.

I keep the weight off my ankle by leaning against the wall, and warily watch the leader advance on me. But there’s no murder in his dangerous eyes. He’s focused on the side of my neck as he peels hair off my skin, one strand at a time.

Instinctively, I cringe away from his touch. But that doesn’t stop him. Instead, it gives him a better view of my neck.

His sharp, black fingernail drags the final strand of hair away from my neck. Then, he runs his fingertips down my skin to my collarbone. He’s silent for a while, studying whatever it is he sees on my neck.

Most of the dark fae who crowded me before are gone. Now, only three of them remain with us in the alley. The fires still rage on—their crackling and roars singing through the village. But all I can focus on in this moment is the dark fae leader, touching me.

My skin shivers. Little bumps prickle along my arms, and I fight the urge to shove him away from me. But in reality, I daren’t move an inch. My muscles are seized up, frozen beneath my skin, and even my breath stays trapped deep in my throat like a lump of coal.

He’s so close, I can feel his hot breath on my skin. Just a whisper, but still, it forces me into a statue, unmovable in fiery winds.

His fingers leave the side of my neck and travel down to my throat. He grips, loosely. The lazy grip of a tired beast holding onto prey it’s not all that interested in.

Pain nips at my neck—the bite of his nails against my skin. I wince, the first sound I’ve made since being thrown at the wall. His grip tightens somewhat, as if to respond to my sound, as if just realising I’m a person, trapped.

He holds my neck tighter and pulls me to the side, forcing my head to turn until I face him. I look up at him from beneath wet lashes. I realise just now that I’m weeping.

The leader stares down at me with eyes blacker than the darkness that swallows the world. He studies me in a thick, tense silence that I’m sure will end with my head severed from my body.

Our faces are so close that our noses touch, barely. Just a ghost of a touch, but it’s enough to flood my body with adrenaline. Ever been this close to a wild, savage beast before? Every nerve and muscle in my body is screaming for me to run, run into the fire to save myself from the agony he’ll inflict upon me.

I turn my gaze down at his full lips to avoid his stare.

The silence is becoming deafening when he finally breaks it.

“Have you more?” he asks.

With a jerk, I look up at him, my brows arched. I definitely didn’t expect him to speak any human language, let alone the one I know.

But once the shock settles and I register his words, confusion creases my forehead and I shake my head. “I don’t understand,” I tell him in a choked, whispered voice, a voice that speaks of fear and panic.

“More of these,” he says, his tone thick with an earthly accent. His hand abandons its grip on my neck before his fingertips graze over the freckles he touched before. “Three freckles,” he explains, holding my gaze steady, “in a crooked line, like the stars.”

As if I can see the stars, I look up to the sky. But even with the blaze that eats through the village, I can’t see them, and I don’t know what he’s talking about. What stars? There are more than three out there.

But I shove aside my poor astronomy skills and force myself to focus on what he said. Three freckles, in a line—a crooked one at that.

I race to think over my entire body. I know my scars well, better than I know the back of my own hand, or the reflection that greets me in the mirror.

I come up with an answer. “Yeah… I mean, I think so.”

The word ‘why’ sits on my tongue, burning me. I’m desperate to ask why he wants to know about my freckles, why they have to be in a crooked line. But I bite my tongue, hard, to stop from stirring rage in the beast who could easily tear out my throat.

“Show me,” he says and releases me. He takes a step back, still standing in the orange blaze that grows hotter by the second. I only realise now how much I’m sweating.

With a slow, unsure nod, I peel off my cardigan. It sticks to my clammy skin like cling-film on a wet surface.

My tank top hugs me like a second skin, and I’m all too aware of the holes in it at my belly. My stomach is practically sunken in from how little I’ve eaten lately.

Shakily, I outstretch my arm, letting it bask in the fiery light. The heat is almost unbearable now. But if the dark fae aren’t fleeing from the fire yet, then maybe I shouldn’t worry. Not that I’ll live long enough to be concerned about the fire.

My arm stays outstretched between us.

The fae rinses his gaze over my tattered flesh. He lingers over the fresh wound, wrapped loosely in a cloth. Slowly, he reaches out for the cloth and pinches it between his sharp fingernails. With a gentle tug, the bloody rag falls to the ground and lands between us.

Now, my arm is bare. As naked as can be. He sees all of the scars smearing my flesh, and the red, angry cuts slicing through my skin. The tattoo between my fresh cuts and the bone of my wrist.

My heart stops as he takes my wrist in his gentle grip and, with his thumb, brushes the skin of my tattoo. His brow creases as he studies the odd shape of my ink.

It doesn’t mean anything—it’s just a shape. But he’s too interested in it. His mouth tilts into a frown to match his face as he uses his thumb again to brush over the inked skin. It’s as though he’s trying to wipe it away.

He murmurs something under his breath. Too quiet for the blond fae to hear him, and I don’t understand anything he says in his language, so I get the feeling he’s talking to himself, mulling something over.

The leader finally wrenches his stare from the tattoo. He looks up at me instead, a smouldering curiosity swimming in his molten eyes.

Slowly, his hand leaves my wrist and travels up along my scars to the three dotted freckles tucked away at the crease of my arm. He clutches my elbow tightly and turns my arm toward the flames blazing up from the street. Light blasts my arm, giving him a better look at the freckles.

I have more of them, I think. Three in a crooked line. On my ankle, on my back, just above my left breast. But I never paid them much mind before now. Even now, I’m more interested in why he is interested in them. Though, some questions are better left unanswered.

Head still bowed, he lifts his gaze from my arm and looks at me from beneath his long lashes. “You have more of these?” he asks.

I can only manage a nod in answer.

This satisfies him. He releases my arm and turns his back on me. I stay glued to the wall as he murmurs something in his language to the blond fae who waits by the opposite wall.

The blond one nods, then turns his attention on me. I shudder under the intense curiosity in his eyes. He moves for me, and without thinking, I just react.

I shove from the wall and make a run for it, headed for the blazing street. I make it two hobbled steps that sear pain in my ankle before something strong grabs my shoulder and hoists me back. I stagger, unbalanced.

The leader has me by the shoulder.

I jerk back as if to escape him, but he doesn’t give me the chance. In one swift move, he lets me go, then boots me hard in the stomach. I fly back and hit the wall—my head smacks against the brick with an audible crunch.

I crumble to the ground, seeing boots move for me.

I’m sprawled on my side at the boots of the fae leader. He stares down at me with an impassive look, as though he didn’t just crack my skull against the wall. His head tilts to the side as he studies me. I can only manage a hazy look back up at him, my lashes drooping and my grip on consciousness is loosening.

Guess they really don’t want me to get away. I wonder what would have happened if I didn’t have those crooked-line-freckles all over my body. Would he have run me through with a sword instead?

I doubt they would go to this trouble if I didn’t have the freckles. But the meaning of those small dots on my body gives way to the exploding pain at the back of my skull.

Dazed, I reach back to my aching head and gingerly touch the throbbing spot. My fingers wet instantly. Blood seeps out of the wound and clots my hair together. I bring my fingers back to myself. The blood glows bright crimson in the fiery light. Now, I feel the burn of tears searing my eyes.

I blink away the tears and watch as the leader’s boots retreat. He’s gone, leaving me with the blond fae—the one with the cheekbones as sharp as shards of glass.

Cheekbones marches over to me, scoops me up in his arms, then hoists me over his shoulder. All I can see is cobblestone and the heels of his boots. Some blood starts to trickle down my face. Drops make their way into my mouth, and I have to spit out the bitter taste from my tongue.

I’m as limp as a noodle slung over a fae’s shoulder. But I cling to consciousness as he carries me to the main street. The closer we get, the hotter and thicker the air becomes, and my breaths feel more suffocating than fresh. Already, ash and smog floods the air. I can taste the bitterness on my tongue.

Out on the street, it’s even worse. I can barely keep my eyes open against the violent blaze that’s swallowing the whole village. And that’s exactly what it’s doing. I turn my head just enough to see the street. The grocery shop we’d camped out in last night is gone already. Crushed under the weight of the flames that now simply dance over its grave.

How long has the village been burning? It hasn’t felt like very long for me, maybe an hour or so, but the total destruction all around me speaks of a whole day that might have passed.

Somewhere above the dark skies, is it night? Does the moon shine down on an impenetrable veil of black, never to touch our world again?

My thoughts are drifting away from me. A flurry of panic blossoms deep in my gut—how much damage have my head injuries done? A broken ankle and bruised ribs I can live with. But fear nips at me at the thought of my cracked skull, whose blood now completely coats my face.

I spit out a chunk of blood as Cheekbones comes to a stop. I can’t see where we’ve stopped, only the cobblestones and his boots. Then, he jerks me off his shoulder and throws me away from him.

Arms and bodies catch me before I can slam to the ground, hard. They break my fall, whoever they are. The human prisoners, I realise, as I look up at the faces hovering above me. The fae threw me to them, like I was nothing more than a bag of grain.

The tear of fabric ripping draws me in. I watch as a middle-aged dark-skinned man rips the hem of his shirt then brings it closer to me. My eyes flicker as he wraps the make-shift bandage around my skull-wound, securing it at the back of my head.

I try to focus on the faces above mine. Some look down at me with pity and worry etched onto their expressions. Some look like stony statues simply watching me. But what’s odd is that all of them are a blur. Each face has two pairs of eyes, warped noses and chins like a distorted painting, and, as they murmur to each other quietly, their mouths look like gaping black holes. Chasms of nothingness.

The darkness from their mouths is spreading, seeping over their faces and bodies, swallowing the fires that are raging on all around us.

No, that’s not their darkness—it’s mine.

Finally, my grip on consciousness is failing. I can’t hold on a moment longer. It’s slipping through my fingers, until the darkness eats up everything around me, and I’m left to fall into it with only nearby screams to carry with me and one lingering thought—

I’ve been taken