“And the others,” Marina pointed out. “She knew I was embarrassed. That I wasn’t saying anything to protect his wife and his reputation, but that he’d been pushing harder and getting me upset. I called in sick once because he dropped off roses at my house. And it wasn’t just him, remember. She met my eyes, Daelend,” Marina added, her voice breaking. “Olivia met my eyes, and I saw it. She wanted to kill him, and herself, but she knew I was avoiding a confrontation over it, or even talking to our boss about it, so she killed other people to avoid putting me in the spotlight as the reason. Four people, Daelend. Two kids who were applying to colleges on the computers. A homeless man who’d come in to exchange emails with his kids. Another librarian who always frowned, but he was a nice guy. She did it because of me,” Marina finished.
“So, the question is,” she added, after a second, “can you fix that?”
Daelend’s eyes were so heavy on her, and his silence so absolute, that Marina looked down and away, focusing on their entwined fingers. His were longer, like a pianist’s, hers short enough that she’d always blamed them for her inability to master the guitar. Her hand looked small and dark against his pale skin, but at least he wasn’t pulling away or calling her crazy. She didn’t know if she could handle that.
When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet and gruff enough that she leaned forward into it, just to better hear him. “Your guilt is unfounded, Ina. If she was going to kill herself—”
“I know that,” she cut him off, jerking her hand away from his and digging both of her hands into her armpits instead, pushing some of her own body’s warmth into them.
His eyes met hers again, narrowing at the harshness they’d both heard in the retort, but she didn’t back down. “My sister was what my parents call troubled. So, yes, I get it. If she wanted to kill herself, she was going to find a way, and it’s probably been coming for a long time. I don’t blame myself for her suicide, not really, but for the way she did it? For the people she took with her? That’s on me, Daelend. Me. I’m not talking some ramped-up survivor’s guilt here—I’m talking about actual guilt.”
The man nodded, almost imperceptibly, and she sighed. He was speechless, only able to tell her what she’d already heard a thousand times that day.
The fact that the guilt she felt now would crush the life out of her didn’t matter—this had been a useless fool’s errand from the moment she’d thought of it that morning. Worse than useless and foolish, in fact, since she’d left her parents to grieve alone.
“You sound desperate. And cold.” Daelend shifted backward and shrugged out of his leather jacket. Wordlessly, he dangled it in front of her, at the edge of his fingers for the taking.
She shook her head. “All these years, refusing your gifts, and now you think…”
“Not a gift,” he corrected her. “I want it back. But you may borrow it. No cost but your continued company.”
The coat was soft and heavy in her fingers. It hung on her after she’d slipped it on, maybe three times too big, but it offered some comfort, and smelled of the forest and of…something else, too. Sharper. Nearly bitter.
“What do I smell?” she asked, unable to stop herself.
“Beyond the woods themselves? Lemongrass. Sage. Blood. Me. Honey, perhaps.”
A smirk had crossed his lips, but Marina didn’t know how to answer. He’d just mentioned blood as if he were listing his supper’s ingredients.
“Do you want to explain that, maybe?” she asked.
He shook his head, that infuriating smile back on his lips. “Suffice to say there was a fight earlier, and I won. A mystery for you to unravel at some other time. Let’s get back to your question instead. You need to understand what you’re asking.”
She blinked, struggling to catch up with him as he flicked some dangling hairs behind his ears and stared back at her. “Okay, Daelend. Enough. Tell me.”
His boot scuffed against hers then, but this time he trailed the toe of his boot up and down between her ankle and her knee, and something about the suggestion of contact, the easy pressure of it, sent a new shiver through her as he began to speak.
“When we met, you were a game. A six-year-old playing in the woods, foolish and brave and ridiculously naïve. Don’t protest,” he added, grinning at her annoyance. “You were. At first, I was tempted to take you home as a plaything, a pet, as if you were a doll, but I couldn’t get you within reach.”
Marina swallowed down air, unsure of whether or not he was telling her anything she didn’t already somehow know. “You sound like a villain,” she commented quietly. “A kidnapper.”
He shrugged. “You know better. I’m nothing so pedestrian as that. I’m Fae.”
Fae. The word lingered again between them, indistinct and otherworldly, and Marina couldn’t find it in herself to respond before he continued.
“Considering the conversation we’re having now, you need to accept it, even if you couldn’t do so before. You’ve aged seventeen years since we met. I’ve aged the equivalent of a human week. I told you earlier and we continued sitting here as if I’d announced I was hungry, and although I waited for you to react, I don’t think you truly believed me. You need to believe me, Ina. I am not human, though I’m not so inhuman as you might think, either, based on your limited definitions. You need to accept that, and do so before we can talk of anything I may be able to do for you, as well as the associated costs.”
Marina dug her hands further into the pockets of Daelend’s coat and stared down into the darkness below them. Had she accepted it? That he was Fae—even now, the word was familiar, but she couldn’t recall half of the legends she’d heard growing up. Sitting here, on her trestle beside his woods, they were talking of magic and fairies, it seemed, as well as darkness and wishes that, in another moment, she probably would have termed deals with a devil. But that made Daelend her devil, and the devil her only hope.
Yes, she told herself, she had accepted what he’d said—it just wasn’t her first concern. What had happened that morning was her first concern. Life and death, she reminded herself. And then, the words struck her, and her heart froze as her eyes widened and moved back to meet his.
“You’re telling me now. After all this time. Does that…does that mean you plan to kill me tonight?” Because, instinctively, she did believe him, of course—but if he was giving up his secret now…
The moment of silence broke as he barked out another violent laugh to rival the one she’d heard earlier, his boot knocking against her leg as he did. “Ina! For the love of the gods! Kill you? Really, girl, I couldn’t kill you if I wished to. Not least of all because of the way you manage to surprise me and amuse me,” he added pointedly.
She stared into his eyes even as she burrowed deeper into his coat, but his eyes were softening against hers, and had grown yet darker, as if holding apology and threat in balance.
“I’ve grown addicted to you over the years,” he said. “I won’t kill you, no. And besides that, Ina, you knowing my identity no longer holds any threat. Think of it. Should you go home and tell others that your old friend is Fae, of another world, they’ll…well, Ina, my darling, they’ll assume you’ve had your own break from reality in the aftermath of your sister’s tragic actions.”
Her heart wanted to argue with him, to say that her parents, at least, would believe her, but the truth hung between them untarnished.
“As you got older, it became a game for both of us, the gifts and temptations and refusals. But you never gave in. You never left the tracks.”
A breath hissed from her lungs, loudly.
“I thought you’d realized it long ago. Given the tales you will have heard about these woods, I suspect there’s a speck of denial in the fact that you’ve only now realized it, but I can see from your eyes that you understand I’m telling you the truth now, and that you knowing is no longer any threat to me or to my world.”
“The iron,” she commented quietly. “That’s why you thought I’d know
.”
“Can’t touch it, as I said earlier. These rails have, and will, keep you safe from me. Should you wish them to,” he added after a moment.
Holding her hands in the pockets of his coat, Marina leaned forward into the dark air above the river, knowing he’d catch her if she should lose her balance after all these years. But, she didn’t. Instead, she found his gaze as he leaned forward from the riverbank, coming closer than she’d ever seen him.
His eyes were black, though she seemed to be able to discern flecks of green at moments. His skin shimmered for a moment in time with the green, as if he’d offered her a glimpse of proof that he truly wasn’t human, and she swallowed down a gasp.
She knew she should be terrified.
But instead her heartbeat had evened out in her chest, a calmness settling into her blood and her mind alike as she held his gaze.
“You can help me.”
“I can,” he agreed. “For a price.”
“Right,” she acknowledged.
“And you’re desperate,” he added, that smirk slipping along his lips again. “At my mercy after all these years, looking for my favor.”
Her nod came automatically. “Right.”
Chapter Three
She didn’t think about what she was doing. Her feet lifted to the trestle’s planks and carried her to his side of the river for the first time, smoothly obeying his command. She might have thought there’d be some hesitation in her heart by this point, but there wasn’t. What choice did she have? Belief in a miracle being presented to her on a handsome man’s tongue—at any cost—was a better option than hopelessness and guilt.
On the riverbank, he’d risen to his feet and taken a few steps away from the ravine sinking down to the water. Marina came to within a foot of him, realizing for the first time that he wasn’t much taller than her—maybe six feet to her five inches less. He’d always seemed so imposing, so dominant, she’d assumed his height to be towering.
“Sit with me. Beside me.” He gestured to a fallen log at the edge of the nearby woods, and she followed close behind him. Wrapped in his coat, on this side of the river, she felt pulled to him, and connected in a way that she hadn’t in the past. As if whatever deal he was offering had already been struck.
Once she’d perched beside him on the log, his hand reached around her waist and tugged her closer, so that her hip and left leg were snug against his, warmed by his body heat.
The strength in the move had been wiry and absolute, and Marina thought it spoke volumes that he’d manhandled her closer, rather than used less effort to scoot himself in tighter. And yet, speechless as she was, she couldn’t complain about the warmth emanating from him, leaking into her skin so that she thought she might even be able to remove his coat and not miss it. Still, she left it in place.
Beside her, his hand went into a pocket of his jeans and came out with a circle of green that nearly glowed in the scant moonlight. He held it in front of her chest as an offering.
“I’ve been bringing this to our meetings for four years, not particularly expecting you’d ever accept it. If we make this deal—if you ask me to fix this madness your sister erupted in your world—you’ll carry this with you when you leave me tonight and forever into your future. It will…” he broke off, as if to consider his words before continuing, “cement our bond, and force you to come back to me even if you should change your mind. It will keep you safe, but it will also exact the price of our deal, keeping you honest. And you will belong to me, Ina. There’ll be no going back from that.”
Daelend stopped speaking, and the circle of green hung between them on his palm. Marina’s fingers ached to touch it, but she clenched her fists in the pockets of the leather coat instead, holding herself back and thinking about what he’d just said. “I’ll belong to you,” she echoed, breathing the phrase out as she stared at his proffered gift. “What does that mean? I’ll be in a cell? I’ll be a servant? I’ll be—”
“Something else,” he supplied. “Both more and less. A servant or a slave has their own will, their own goals, fate, and rights, limited as they may be in scope. I’m saying that your will shall bend to mine in all things, all matters. You’re a beautiful woman. That is how I want you to belong to me—lust and love are the matter of the belonging I’m speaking of. I want your belonging to me to become the whole of your identity, but through your own submission and surrender. Not through servitude or enslavement. You’ll be in my world, and have anything you might desire in the way of luxury, health, and affection, but you’ll belong to me and only me. Not yourself, or some career, or your family. Me.”
Daelend’s hand lowered so that his knuckles rested on her closest knee, his palm still open to display the green stone, but his body twisted toward hers, and her eyes came up to meet his. Marina opened her mouth to respond, maybe to negotiate, and then caught her breath and her words in her throat. Fae or not, the expression in his eyes was heated and clear, desire and power shining back at her and clarifying that she’d been right to stay on the trestle all these years. The man—the being in front of her—would settle for nothing less than possession.
“You’re saying I’ll never be able to see my family again, aren’t you?” she whispered.
That maddening shrug rippled through his shoulders again. “Tonight, you will, assuming you want to say goodbye and prove to yourself that I’ve kept my side of the bargain. After that, there’ll be no need. You’ll let them handle this stone tonight, and they’ll not worry about you. They won’t forget about you, exactly, but they’ll not worry about your absence, and won’t ever truly remember when they last saw you. They’ll make up some reason for you to have left, to suit their perceptions of you, and you’ll remain with me long after they’ve died of old age. It’s the simplest solution for you and them, with the least questions.”
She couldn’t process the idea of not seeing her family again after that night, of not going back to the library to work if things could be made right again, but those would be problems for later, and better problems to have than the guilt which clouded even her survival instincts at the moment.
Knowing that she’d already accepted the deal in her heart if not in her mind, Marina untangled her right hand from its pocket and reached out to brush her fingertips over the green stone—it was cool to the touch, solid and smooth. Taking her fingers away, she rested her hand on Daelend’s wrist, which seemed oddly vulnerable and somehow endearing, stretched out beside her leg. Its pulse was fast and warm—reassuring her that he was, at least, flesh and blood, whatever else he might be.
“What is it?” she asked. “Will it hurt me?”
Again, that bark of a solid laugh erupted beside her, and the green circlet nearly fell from his grasp with its force.
She glared sideways at him, biting her lip to hold back the curses she wanted to respond with.
“Ina, it’s a worry stone—enchanted, yes, but it will not inflict pain, not by itself. It’s solid emerald, molded into a worry stone like those of common stone you’ve seen in the past. If you accept it, it will pull you back to me, and you will not be able to discard it. Consider it an anchor, and a conduit for my will in the long run, but for now it is just a worry stone. That is all.”
Her skin flushed, embarrassment heating her blood despite the fact that she knew she had every right to fear him. “You can’t blame me for…for asking.”
“Emerald is my power stone—where my magic is sourced from, what centers me, what I use for controls and tasks and houses of power like this, in some form. It carries my power, and serves as a conduit for it when needed.” He flipped the stone in his hand, and then used his other hand to take her fingertips and brush them against the face of the stone. Sure enough, she felt the thumb-sized indent hollowed out for worrying from a finger. Instinctively, she pressed into it, rubbing it for a moment so that she felt the pressure of her own finger transferring into Daelend’s hand, pressed harder into her knee.
“I used to c
arry one when I was young. It had a horse on it,” she said quietly.
“And you lost it on the trestle,” he commented. “I remember. It’s the reason this emerald offering is a worry stone rather than a necklace or some other bauble—I thought you’d appreciate that. As well as this.” His fingers dipped into another pocket and pulled out the small white-pink worry stone that she’d lost something like a decade before.
“My rose quartz horse,” she whispered. “That’s impossible.” Her eyes darted up to his before refocusing on the stone.
He shrugged, a smile on his lips, and then flipped over the stone in his hand so that she could see the tiny black horse painted onto its other face. “I found it, and kept it as a souvenir of you. It’s also helped me stay attuned to you, your presence here—made it easier to know when you were approaching, and meet you more quickly. You can have it back with the emerald if you like—you’ll be more than repayment for what it’s offered me.”
Dreams of Darkness Page 24
