She’d been dumber then, less aware of whatever danger it was that he represented. Not that she knew more now, but at sixteen, anxious to flirt and see what might happen, she’d been a different person. At twenty-three, she knew better what might come of tempting fate, or tempting a touch of darkness.
She knew better how to flirt, too.
She pulled her hand back slightly and played her fingers in and out of his, letting her nails tick into his skin as she enjoyed his warmth and tried to focus on the moment. When his fingers formed a light circle around her wrist, and then released her to continue tracing the lace of her cotton above it, she found her voice.
“I need to talk to you tonight.”
“Is that not always why you come?”
“No. I mean, yes,” she corrected herself. “But this is different.”
“Different how, Ina?”
His old nickname for her jarred her eyes up to meet his, and then she took in the thin, serious line to his lips. He hadn’t used that name for her in a long time. From his question, she’d thought to find him smiling, but his gaze was as serious as ever—more so than usual. Ready to admit it or not, he’d sensed tonight was different also, then.
“Something happened,” he prodded her, and then his hand didn’t just play at her wrist. His fingers stretched to hers, offering themselves for more than play, and she took the offer, gripping his hand. “We’ve never held hands before,” he said next, and she found herself nodding.
She’d meant to stay in control, but already she’d lost it. Her mind was off of flirting, off of convincing him to help her—luring him in through some extension of feminine smiles and charms. He’d had her at a disadvantage from the beginning, and they’d both known it, but now it was out in the open. “Daelend,” she began, “I need your help. I came to ask for it.”
He remained silent, and she looked from their entwined fingers to his face for some response. His lips hadn’t softened into a smile yet. “I’m sorry,” he told her, “that something frightened you to this point, but I won’t refuse to take advantage of it, Ina. I like touching you. What help do you need from me? As you said, we apparently need to talk.”
‘Ina’ again. God, she’d needed to hear that tonight.
His hands squeezed her fingers when she didn’t answer right away, and then squeezed again as his boot kicked lightly into hers to bring her attention back to the moment.
“I…yeah. Shit, I’m crying,” she muttered, mostly to herself, upon realizing her desperation was literally leaking out of her face at this point. So much for playing it cool. “Sorry.” She fished a half-empty tissue packet from her pocket. It was the third she’d opened since that morning.
Not wanting to let go of Daelend’s hand despite the sudden awkwardness of the moment, she tucked the packet half beneath her leg to hold it still so that she could tug free a tissue and then swipe at her eyes and cheeks. Thank god she’d been smart enough not to use mascara tonight.
When she looked up again, his gaze was still locked onto her face, and it caught her eyes immediately, holding her still as his fingers stroked her hand. Usually, he looked more often at the water below, or across the river—she’d always thought he could sense that the intimacy of their meeting eyes for too long put her off. Tonight, it didn’t seem that mattered to him. To either of them, maybe.
She gripped his hand in something like thanks for the contact, and then flushed at the quick grin it brought to his lips. He was all angles and hard lines offset by black strands of hair casting odd shadows over his features, and he looked younger when he smiled—closer to her age than however old he had to be.
“You don’t often admit to needing anything. Tears or no tears, I rather like it.”
She stared at him, and then swallowed down the nerves beginning to unravel her. “Yeah, well, don’t get used to it.”
His fingers squeezed again, more tightly, and she gulped down a sudden spiking of fear rising up in her throat.
You’re fixing one evil by inviting in another, she told herself. But then she spoke anyway. “Do you remember when you told me you could fix things? Undo things that had already gone wrong?”
There was a pause, his fingers tensing…and his words came carefully when they did. “I told you that?”
“I was little, but I remember. Yes. You were telling the truth,” she added, her eyes locking onto his this time.
“When circumstances demand, and I have reason enough, perhaps. It’s not something to be taken lightly.”
His eyes had somehow gone darker, and for a moment she thought he’d let go of her hand, but the moment passed. “I was twelve,” she offered, quietly. “You looked…off. I guess you didn’t mean to make the offer.”
“You were twelve for a full year,” he pointed out, as if it might not have been true for someone else. “That’s a long stretch of time—so, no, if that’s what you’re asking, I don’t remember the moment you’re speaking of.”
She stared back at him, and felt a smile come to her lips—maybe more of a smirk—for the first time since early that morning. “It was fall—leaves were starting to come down, and you kept on suggesting I come to the opposite bank so that you could untangle them from my hair.”
What might have been a note of chagrin appeared on his face, and then he nodded. “Go on.”
“You were wearing green boots—I remember that. I liked them.”
“If you’d ever asked for green boots, Ina—”
“Yeah, yeah,” she cut him off. “I know. I’d have them by now.”
He shrugged. “For a price, obviously.”
“Obviously,” she echoed softly, the old joke between them having fallen away at the mention of a cost that was never determined. “And you had that flask you sometimes carry,” she added after another moment, thinking backward.
“You were sixteen before you asked me to try what I carry in my flask.”
“And you said no,” she pointed out.
He shrugged. “I might say yes now.”
The comment had come with a smile for both of them—true smiles—but it passed into silence, and she wondered if he was thinking over all of the things he’d tempted her with over the years. All of the things she’d refused, and thought to always refuse.
When she’d been a child, he’d tried to lure her to his side of the trestle, his ground beyond it, with sweets and magic tricks. Later, the temptations had turned to fine gowns, jewelry, and heady promises of things to come. She’d always refused even the slightest offers, and thought it more of a game than any sort of a serious exchange. It’d been that way for more than a decade now. But she still came to speak with him, and couldn’t quite ever bring herself to stay away for more than a handful of weeks, if that. More often, only two weeks passed before she ended up here again, at the edge of the trestle at the edge of the ironworks at the edge of town.
“I’ve offered you many gifts over the years,” he said quietly, as if reading her thoughts. “I imagine I’ve forgotten many of them. That you have also. You should perhaps forget that one.”
She ignored his last comment, focusing instead on his weighted wording. “Gifts?”
Another squeeze of his fingers. This one firmer. “I admit, I would have hoped for small gifts in return—in most cases, at least. None serious. You reading some of your poetry to me, for instance, might have done the trick if you’d wanted those green boots. When you were older, stepping to my side of the bridge for a dance, or a kiss,” he added pointedly, his fingers tangling with hers and then beginning to trace her wrist and sleeve again, and with a slight pressure of warmth that near took her breath away.
He’d been right—all of her was cold except for her hand and wrist now.
“But in this case,” he continued, “what you seem to be speaking of now…that’s a serious exchange. Not one to be taken lightly, or even one for me to have mentioned at this stage, I think.”
This stage?
Marina tugged her hand a
way from Daelend’s hold and rested her hands firmly on her knees, staring at them. “Right. We’ve only known each other for—what? Seventeen years? Going on eighteen?”
“One of your favorite songs when you were younger. ‘You are sixteen, going on seventeen—’”
“It’s not funny,” she said, cutting him off.
His humming stopped, and she sensed more than saw his head shaking. She knew without looking that he was readjusting his grip on his knee, tugging his jeans down further to be adjusted over his black boots. Maybe rolling his eyes at her lack of amusement.
“No, it’s not funny, Ina. But considering just what you’re asking and the fact that we’re only now holding hands, that you’ve never yet dared even to come off of the trestle to get closer…to be less than delicate, child, I’m not sure you’re prepared for the price of having anything undone.”
“I’m not a child,” she hissed at him, scowling now. “And you don’t know what I’m prepared for, either. It’s not as if I expect we’re friends, Daelend. If I didn’t know that earlier, then I do now,” she pressed, unable to stop the retort or hold back the bite from her words.
Did he not think she understood there was something unnatural here? If she’d ever hoped otherwise, she didn’t now. All day, truth be told, she’d guessed that he’d want to take advantage of her desperation tonight, and be willing to—that what she was asking wouldn’t simply be gifted to her. But she hadn’t expected to be treated like a child who didn’t know what she was doing or who she was dealing with. They’d come far beyond that, she’d thought.
Tears stung at her eyes, but she willed them down and met his stare, unwilling to take back anything she’d just said, even if the hurt that crossed his face made it more than clear that he wished she would.
“I care about you, Ina, believe it or not. Maybe it’s not friendship between us, as you say, with this borderline territory here that we’ve always honored, but I do care. And, no, I don’t know what you’re prepared to offer. Perhaps if I knew what you were speaking of, which has you more scared and sad at the same time than I’ve ever seen you.”
Marina opened her mouth to speak, but coughed on air instead—violently enough that her hand flew to her mouth and tears came to her eyes, and it was seconds more before the coughing subsided, and a minute before she could take a full breath.
A moment later, Daelend remarked, “Don’t take this the wrong way, Ina, but please, don’t choke to death. Not here, and not now.”
“You couldn’t save me?” she joked, her voice hoarse.
“Not while you’re on the trestle. Perhaps if you fell, then I could.”
Marina’s head jarred upward, her eyes landing on his. His tone had been so serious, so deadly done with any idea of a joke. The sound of his voice could have itself stopped her coughing, if not her breath. “You mean that,” she whispered.
He shrugged. “You’ve guessed it by now. I can do many things. Crossing the iron of the trestle is not one of them.”
Unbidden, unthought, the question she’d always feared asking rose to her lips. “What are you, Daelend?”
A bark of a laugh erupted from his throat. “Near two decades of talking, a thousand gifts offered, and I, here, un-aging as you’ve moved from being an irresistible brat to a gorgeous young woman, and now you ask me, what am I? Now, Ina?”
Marina stared at her knees, beginning to feel a quivering in her hands. From the cold or from fear, she wasn’t sure. Did she want to know if she was meant to be afraid of this man?
“Fae, Ina. I am of the Fae. And I have never told you I can do anything which I cannot do. But there are prices to all gifts, and some of them are dear. You want to know what I am, but what matters here
is that I am not human, and you’re bargaining with chips that you haven’t yet begun counting.”
Chapter Two
His words wrestled with her reality, and she tried to give them up—to focus only on what she needed, and on any possibility that Daelend—her stranger—might be able to help her. Whatever he was, whatever he said. Whatever it cost her.
Over the years, there’d been times when Daelend had suggested he could help her in any way she dreamed up, if she’d just cross onto his side of the tracks. Now, she knew, she’d be testing him, and the truth was that if he could fix what had gone wrong, she’d cross the trestle to his side and do whatever he wished in return. She knew, without asking, money had never been part of the equation between them. Not when she’d been a curious six-year-old, and certainly not now.
“Let me guess,” he offered quietly. “You slept through work and want a do-over because you were fired. Or you borrowed money and wish you hadn’t, or wrecked your car, or slept with a friend’s boyfriend and now…”
“What?” She dragged her gaze up to meet his black eyes again. Much as they repelled her, and scared her, she couldn’t seem to avoid them tonight. “That’s who you think I am?”
“Guesses only,” he muttered, seeing the look on her face. “Wrong guesses,” he added, his eyes narrowing even as she looked away.
“Very wrong,” she answered, hearing the growl in her own voice. Maybe this had been a mistake, after all. He was thinking of indiscretions and casual regrets. She was thinking of life and death.
She pulled one foot up to the rail, mirroring his position unconsciously in the way she braced her elbow on one uplifted knee, until his quirked smile drew her attention to it and she let it fall sideways, her toe tucking into the thigh of her still dangling leg.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
The words had been gruff, almost angry-sounding, but they caught her off-guard. Daelend had never apologized to her. Never. He’d used the phrase ‘I’m sorry’ as a colloquialism, rhetorically, but he’d never once apologized for anything he’d said or done. Not until now.
“Since we met,” he began, “this has almost become a game between us. For you as well as me—don’t deny it. This give and take, tempting and flirting with engagement of more than words, acting as if anything will change. What you’re talking about now, changing what’s already been written into history, so to speak, it’s a serious thing. A dangerous offer, too. Not one I remembered mentioning until you brought it up. And this, between us…this is not something I’m accustomed to. A girl who’s made a lifetime habit of saying no, now suddenly asking for a leap-year-sized lunge forward in a sudden and tempting and irrevocable yes to an exchange that will…alter things. A girl presenting me with challenges that have no answer. Ina, you are special to me. Don’t ask me why—I don’t know—but you have always been special. Maybe because you’ve always refused to cater to my whims or fall to my charm. I suppose that’s it. And, now, you come to me saying that you are willing to give me something, finally, in return for a gift I long ago forgot making an offer of…I must question both you and myself. Not necessarily in that order. So, tell me what you’re truly asking before you pout your way away from this trestle, as I can see you’re tempted to do now.
“Don’t go. Tell me what you’re asking for, Ina.”
Dazed, she let her leg back down, leaning forward over her knees and processing his thoughts as well as her own. And, finally, it came to her—what he was didn’t matter in the face of whether or not he could help her. Whether he was crazy or she was, whether Fae were real or not, whether any of his offers had ever held weight…all of that would be figured out, and her world would bend accordingly. But what she’d come here for had nothing to do with logic or reason anyway.
A second went by, and then another, and then she reached her fingers into thin air, her hand dangling for a moment before he took it, this time holding it in a looser grip than before. It was what she needed.
“This morning, maybe yesterday now, I guess, my sister killed some people. And herself. Maybe partly because of me.”
Daelend’s fingers had been stroking hers, playing against her skin. Now, they froze, and another minute passed before he spoke. “Your sister has…had prob
lems. You’ve told me of them yourself. I doubt sincerely that this was your fault.”
Despite the voice in her gut, she nodded. “Not totally,” she acknowledged. “Maybe she would have…done this, somehow, somewhere, yeah. No matter what. But she came into the library—”
“Where you work,” he supplied, when it must not have seemed that she’d keep going.
“Yeah, and she killed a guy who’d been bothering me, who’d been pushing me to go out with him even though he’s married, so that I was stressed about it. And four other people. Four other people besides him, and then herself. In her own fucked-up way, I think she was protecting me.”
Another pause. Another brushing of his boot against hers. Another squeeze of his solid, warm fingers over hers.
“You don’t think she killed herself because of you. You think she killed this other man, who was bothering you, because of you.”
Dreams of Darkness Page 23
