I follow his finger, looking up at the night sky. It glitters with thousands and thousands of stars, each one so much brighter than any I’ve ever seen on earth.

“Stars,” I say.

“That is all you see?” he asks.

“Other than the night, yes.”

“The night,” he repeats, his thumb stroking the skin of my stomach through the fabric of my dress. “That is precisely why people take my kingdom for granted. No one sees the darkness, and yet it’s everywhere. We are surrounded by an entire universe of it. It came before us, it will live on long after us. Even the stars might form and then die, but the darkness will always be there.

“That also happens to be why the Night Kingdom is considered the most romantic of realms. Not only do lovers meet under the cloak of darkness, darkness is the most eternal of all things. To declare your love until the end of night is the most sacred and undying of vows.” More quietly he adds, “It’s the oath I will take when I bind myself to my queen.”

Knife wound to the gut.

I don’t want to hear about Desmond’s future queen, not on the wings of what we’ve done together. It’s not like he’s making the proposal to me, after all.

I’m embarrassed that I even care. I shouldn’t, but it’s like I can’t help but open myself up to him.

“Lucky girl,” I say, pushing away from the wall, and him along with it.

I feel Des’s eyes on me as I cross through his room.

“No,” he corrects, “she won’t be the lucky one. I’ll be.”

Chapter 19

April, seven years ago

This can’t last.

I lay in the Bargainer’s arms, my eyes drifting closed as he strokes my hair. I fight sleep, not wanting to lose a moment of this.

Ever since I woke from that nightmare, my window in pieces and Des inside my room, he’s stayed with me each night until I’ve fallen asleep. Perhaps even longer.

His body feels like it was made for me, every dip and groove of it fitting against mine like puzzle pieces. But it’s more than just the way I fit against him, it’s the way he smells, a scent there is no name for, and the way his arm curls around my back.

Right in the base of my stomach there’s a sense of rightness being in his arms, like this is the only place I truly belong.

Does he feel it too? Or am I simply making fairytales out of smoke and shadows?

These are question I come back to often.

My eyelids lower, and I fight to keep them open, my gaze moving to the Bargainer’s ear. I reach out and trace the pointed edge of it.

Fae ears.

Beneath my touch, Des shudders.

“You hide these,” I say. I swear that most of the time they look blunted—human.

“Sometimes,” he agrees.

Gently, he removes my hand.

It’s quiet, the lights around the room have long since gone off. Even in the darkness, I can sense Des’s shadows blanketing me, and they make me feel safe. Before him, I had so many reasons to fear the night.

Now, I anticipate it, because it brings me him.

“Thank you,” I murmur.

“For what, cherub?” he says.

“Everything.”

He stops stroking my hair for a moment. When he begins again, I swear I feel his thumb brush across my temple. The lightest of caresses.

I begin to drift off to sleep, so I’m not sure whether I imagined the final words he breathed into the night—

“For you, no less.”

Present

After our conversation, the two of us get back to business. Namely, seeing the sleeping warriors. If the Bargainer notices that I’m being distant, he doesn’t say anything.

What is there to say? That he’s sorry? In this, he’s not at fault. Love isn’t something you can fake. And while Des has been affectionate with me, kind to me, and physical with me, he hasn’t mentioned anything about love.

I’m the one that can’t smother these feelings that have been festering inside me for years.

The Bargainer takes me down flight after flight of stairs, deep down into the bowels of his castle, until we arrive at a balcony that must be located on one of the lowest levels of the palace. Beyond it the land drops away and the buildings are terraced one on top of the other, all the way down into the darkness.

We approach the edge of the railing, brisk night air whipping my hair.

I lean over it. “Where to now?”

Des’s arms wrap roughly around my waist.

“What—” I barely have time to stare at the bands of muscle that grip me and his intricate sleeve of tattoos before he leaps into the air, his claw-tipped wings unfurling.

I yelp as my body jerks up with him.

I should’ve known as soon as I saw the balcony that we were flying somewhere.

Only, Des has stopped flapping his wings. That’s about the moment I realize that we’re not flying up. We’re diving.

Nothing can describe the sheer terror of falling into an abyss headfirst. The wind thrashes my hair about my face and steals away my breath as we plummet. A dizzying number of balconies and gardens blow by us, terraced along the inner rock walls of this strange island. The whole thing looks like a doll house. I see cross sections of homes and shops, temples and gardens. And as we dive, each level gets dimmer and dimmer.

We continue down, until the buildings are cloaked in darkness. Down here it feels less like the city of night and more like a void.

Our descent slows, and the Bargainer’s great wings unfurl above me as he angles us towards an unassuming balcony almost at the bottom of the chasm. The buildings around us are less adorned than the ones above, and the thorn-covered vines that snake around the railings and column-lined porticos appear almost sinister.