Dreams of Darkness

by D L Pitchford et al.

  And so she did. As the horse took to the sky, she regaled him with tales of her worst deeds. Her crimes against her sister, the lies she told her parents. About kicking over pails of milk or breaking circles of salt on the holy days in hopes that the fae would cause mischief for the particularly annoying families. Even about sleeping with Sim to anger Ulli, whom she had been mad at for some reason she couldn't even remember now. How she'd considered—even briefly—offering Sim to the captain in exchange for Eberlyn's soul.

  “That would not have been a fair exchange,” the captain protested.

  The whole time, the captain laughed and asked questions, gasping and acting appalled in all the right places. For a moment, Nilsa forgot that she was in the night sky with a faerie, flying through space and time. They were just a man and a woman getting to know each other.

  When his wings curled around her to protect her from the wind, this time, she let them.

  Chapter Six

  Nilsa couldn't sleep.

  She lay on the four-poster bed, the moonlight falling across her bare legs, her eyes wide open in the dark. It was strange to be in this room and not be weeping, not be mourning. She still missed her sister and her family, but after just one day, she already felt freer and more alive than she had in her entire life. She'd always known the world was bigger than that, but never had she imagined anything like this. While she didn't want to spend the rest of her eternity reaping souls, she also knew it would be nearly impossible to return to Aramore.

  Throwing off the covers, she stood and went to the window. The glass was cool to the touch, and the landscape that stretched out beyond the boundaries of the house did not look quite as bleak as it had before. Some of the trees even seemed to have new growth, the leaves rustling in the wind. They made her think of the captain and the way he had changed in just one night. No, that wasn't right. He hadn't changed; it was her perspective that had changed.

  She turned and looked at the door to her room. It was shut but not locked. The captain had dropped her off after they'd arrived at the manor. They'd lingered in the doorway, talking and laughing, and when silence had fallen between them, she'd panicked. She'd excused herself and shut the door in his face. When she'd worked up the nerve to open it a few moments later to apologize, he was already gone.

  That was what was bothering her, what was keeping her awake. She couldn't stop thinking about him and what he'd told her. He was just as trapped here as she had been in Aramore, stuck paying for a crime he didn't commit. Yes, he could be rude and bossy, but he was also kind and protective of her, when she had always been the one doing the protecting. They hadn't finished their conversation, and she hadn't been able to tell him these things.

  Though to be honest, talking was the last thing she really wanted to do.

  She should have kissed him. She would kiss him. He had said she was his. Well, she would make him hers.

  Crossing her room, she slung open the door and paused. Where were his quarters? Did he even sleep? The hall was silent. No one and nothing stirred. There was no one to ask.

  She shut the door again and leaned against it.

  Then, she remembered the bond between them, and the way he had used it to almost speak to her. She touched the cuff around her wrist and concentrated. It was hard, not knowing what she was looking for exactly. And then, there it was. It was like a thread, thin but strong, stretching from her to some dark mass on the other end. Was it the bond of their bargain or something else? Something he'd put into place by cuffing her, claiming her. You are mine. She tried to move along the thread, but couldn't break free of her own consciousness. So instead, she grabbed it with her mind and pulled.

  The response was instantaneous. Surprise. Panic. Anger. Everything he felt flooded into her.

  She gasped and fell back, slamming the door to her room. Why was she afraid? It was the intensity of the feelings, the raw, animalistic brutality of them. He mocked her petty human emotions but not because he didn't have any. It was because he felt everything so much stronger than she ever had.

  Soon, she heard his footsteps in the hall and she opened her door again, stepping out to meet him. He was wearing only low-slung trousers, his black hair mussed from sleep. In that moment, he wasn’t the captain, but a man.

  “What? What is it?” He grabbed her shoulders.

  She knocked his hands away, brought her arms around his neck, and pressed her mouth to his.

  He made a small noise of surprise but recovered quickly, his own arms going around her waist and pressing her back into the room. Using his foot, he shut the door behind them and then pushed her against it, his mouth never leaving hers. Her hands traveled the length of his arms and then up his back, where her fingers grazed the soft membrane of a wing. When he shivered at her touch, she smiled against his mouth and did it again.

  A growl reverberated in his chest and he slipped his fingers under the hem of her nightdress, pulling it over her head so that the only thing she wore was the cuff of their bargain around her wrist and the iron bauble at her neck. He took a step back and looked at her. She stood panting against the door, naked and vulnerable but not afraid. Not of him.

  He stepped closer and brought his hand up to her neck. She felt a tug and a sharp snap, and he threw the iron necklace to the ground.

  “No more of these human relics,” he murmured. His hand was marked with a red line where the iron had scorched him.

  She took it and put it to her lips, kissing the burn. “What's your name?” she whispered.

  “Finnegan,” he answered without hesitation. Not the captain. Not a monster.

  “Finnegan,” she repeated.

  He shuddered and pressed his mouth to her bare neck.

  “Nilsa,” she said even though he hadn't asked. She knew what it meant to give a faerie her name, but she did not fear giving it to him. She wanted him to have all of her.

  And he took it, gently and patiently, taking his time as he explored every inch of her. And then again, loudly and unapologetically. She bit into his shoulder, clawed at his back, writhed beneath his hands, begged for more, always more. He obliged, losing himself in her. Letting her in, past the walls he'd built up around himself. Letting her see the monster and the man, the good and the bad, the dark and the light.

  She saw and she did not look away. Instead, she rose above him and took him inside of her and screamed his name—his true name—as she found her release. “Finnegan!”

  Only then, when she was lying sweaty and whole in his arms, did sleep finally take her.

  It could have been hours or it could have been days later when she woke to find him studying her. They were both still naked, half-wrapped in sweaty sheets. She stretched languidly, drawing a guttural groan from him as his eyes traveled the length of her.

  Dropping back to the pillow, he said, “You called to me through the thread.”

  She propped herself up on an elbow and looked down at him. “Yes. Is that bad?”

  “Not bad. Surprising. You learned quickly.”

  “I'm still learning.”

  “I'll teach you.”

  Nilsa smiled. She felt so relaxed and so satiated, like she could sleep for a hundred years. “You know how they say that once a mortal eats faerie food, we can never enjoy human food again?”

  He nodded.

  She traced a lazy circle on his chest with a fingertip. “Is it true about sex, too?”

  Finnegan coughed, eyes going wide. “What?” he asked when he caught his breath.

  “I mean, I just thought—”

  He rolled and caught her beneath him, quieting her with his mouth on his. “You are mine,” he growled. And he spent the rest of the morning proving to her that faeries were, in fact, the superior lovers.

  When she next woke, she was alone and the room was dark, the lamps having gone out while she slept. The other side of the bed was still warm, which meant he hadn't been gone long. She pulled her nightshirt on and wandered to her door, standing and searchi
ng for the thread. She wanted to know the extent of what it could do, and if she could follow it to him.

  After standing in the doorway for a few long minutes, she finally picked up on it. Careful not to tug it so as to warn him of her presence, she simply followed it. It was easier with her eyes closed, but she opened them every few steps to keep her bearings. It was slow going, but soon she found herself outside the kitchen. A small fire flickered in the hearth, and Finnegan sat with Jock at a large wooden table, a platter of pastries between them.

  “You cannot deny it,” Jock was saying.

  “I'm not going to get my hopes up.” Finnegan took a bite of flaky bread.

  “I'd say it might be a little late for that.”

  Around the mouthful, Finnegan said, “Sex is not enough to keep someone.”

  Hearing that, Nilsa took a step back, hiding from view. Why did it hurt so bad to hear him say that so casually? Easy. Because for her, it had felt like more than sex. They’d claimed each other. Didn’t that mean anything to him, or was she just one in a long line of foolish mortal women?

  “You cannot dismiss the idea that she could be the one to break the curse.”

  Break the curse? He hadn't said anything about the curse.

  Nilsa chewed on her lip, bringing the rhyme to mind. That last line . . . Freed only by a willing life. She was the one who'd been mad at them for taking the words so lightly, and then she ignored the most important line of the entire rhyme. He needed someone to give themselves willingly to the Host—to him—to set him free from the curse the Unseelie Queen had put on him. And Jock thought it could be her.

  Finnegan clearly did not agree. “She is fun to be around, and beautiful to look at, but I could never—”

  She tried to choke back the gasp and failed. When she looked up, Finnegan was staring wide-eyed right back at her.

  “Nil—” He stopped himself, apparently remembering Jock. “No. It's not—”

  But she already knew what it wasn't, and she didn't want to hear anymore. She tore herself away from the kitchen, ran through the winding hallways, down the staircase, across the foyer, and out the front door. It was dark and cold, and she was barefoot and half-naked, but she didn't care. She couldn't stay there, not with him, not like that. She'd made a fool of herself enough for one eternity.

  So, she kept running. Across the slippery courtyard and under the arched entryway and into the dark forest beyond. There was no time to stop and turn her nightshirt inside out. She could only hope . . . What? For mercy? That the faerie realm would have mercy on her? Did it even matter if she got lost if she didn't know where she was going?

  Even with the new growth, the trees were mostly bare. Branches reached for her as she passed, like sharp claws grabbing for her loose hair and scratching her naked legs. She didn't know where she was going, only that it was away. Away from him, away from that place and the Host and the thread that was now stretched so thin between them that she thankfully couldn't feel it anymore.

  Stopping to catch her breath, she looked up, past the trees and to the clear sky. The stars twinkled and shone, and some even seemed to be blinking at her.

  Blinking at her? What was it Killian had said?

  If you need me, dear girl, just follow the stars.

  She studied the sky and the patterns, and realized that they were leading her away from the manor, urging her to continue the way she'd been going.

  Could she trust him, this golden lord of the Court of Stars? She didn't know. She couldn't even trust herself and her own judgment. She'd given the captain her name, for goodness' sake. The way she saw it, she didn't have much of a choice.

  She walked more slowly, her eyes on the sky instead of on the ground. Soon, though, she was running again, the stars blinking faster, more urgently. She did not stop, even when she heard the sound of music or saw the twinkling of faerie lights. Finally, when she thought she couldn't go any farther, when her feet were scratched and bloody and her hair was frozen to her neck with sweat, she came into a clearing and stopped, eyes wide.

  This was worse than a hunt, worse than a battlefield, worse than a man who couldn't love her.

  This was a faerie revel, and she was standing right in the middle of it.

  Chapter Seven

  Nilsa had grown up knowing the rules of the fae. Do not eat their food or drink their wine. Do not accept a faerie gift. Do not thank them. Do not give them her true name. And do not, under any circumstances, follow the music.

  But it could not be helped.

  She was swept into the faerie ring, hands pulling her and spinning her this way and that. There was laughter like the tinkling of bells, and small, gentle lips on her cheeks like butterfly wings. She did not care that she was half-naked, broken, and bloody. Those things seemed far away, inconsequential. All that mattered was the music. She could dance for an eternity, until her feet were bloody stumps, until—

  She smacked into a hard chest. A hand went around her waist and she tilted her head back to meet cunning, ice-blue eyes.

  “Mortal child,” Killian said with a mischievous smile. He smoothed her wild hair away from her face. “Whatever are you doing here?”

  Her heart raced but she did not push him away. “Escaping,” she said.

  He laughed. “I knew it. I knew that cad Finnegan was keeping you there against your will.”

  Of course, he’d known about the curse. He’d suspected hers was the ‘willing life’ that Finnegan needed. How wrong he’d been.

  Then, looking down at the rest of her, he said, “And look at you. He did not give you any clothes?”

  Before she could confirm that he had, in fact, allowed her to dress at some point, Sir Killian snapped his fingers and her nightdress transformed into a white and gold gown that matched his own leathers and came with a pair of slippers to cover her sore feet. The only thing he hadn't been able to rid her of was the metal band around her wrist, the one that tethered her to the captain.

  Killian did not seem to notice it. “Dance with me.”

  She should have said no, walked away while she had the chance, but he held her so close and the music beckoned her to keep moving. And everything was just so bright and lovely.

  He twirled and dipped her, and they chased the melody around the dance floor. No one dared get in their way. When the tempo slowed and he pulled her in close again, he dipped his head to her ear.

  “What does he have over you?” He tilted his head toward her wrist and the bracelet there.

  “My sister summoned him. I offered myself in exchange.”

  His brows knit together over his eyes. “How very . . . noble of you.”

  It sounded like he wanted to say stupid, but she let it go. She didn't want to think about her sister, or the captain, or how he'd used her. She was his puppet. A toy, a plaything, to be manipulated and controlled until he was done with her.

  But not anymore.

  When the music picked up again, she spun away from Killian and into a group of lesser faeries with their strange, exaggerated features and skin of blues and greens. They welcomed her into their circle, grabbing her hands and pulling her along with them.

  Nilsa did not know how long she danced. A red-cap whisked her across the dance floor into the arms of a pixie with skin like tree bark and teeth like razors. The pain and the fear went away, and there was nothing but this moment and this music. Nilsa closed her eyes. The pixie released her and she spun into someone else's arms, and then someone else's, until strong arms went around her waist and held her still.

  “Release me,” Nilsa commanded, still trying to sway to the music.

  “No.” The voice was low and gruff and lit a small fire in her chest.

  Her cheeks flushed as she opened her eyes and came face-to-face with the captain. He scooped her up and as soon as her feet left the dance floor, the music stopped and all eyes turned to them.

  “Put me down.”

  “No,” he said again.

  “Finnegan,” came
a sharp voice that belonged to Killian. He was in front of them in two long strides, blocking their path. “You have no authority here. She is a guest of the Court of Stars. Release her at once.”

  “How long were you going to let her dance?” the captain asked, ignoring the command.

  “I would have stopped her eventually.”

  “When you were ready to have your way with her.”

  Killian laughed and then inhaled deeply. “I wouldn't be the first one. I can smell you on her.”

  Finnegan's snarl ripped through the tense silence as he put her down and tucked her behind him. Protecting her. Funny, after he had failed so severely at protecting her from himself.