It wasn’t my voice that I used to speak. Something was wrong.
Eloden squeezed me in a backwards hug. “He transferred all of her voices. Yours is there, too. Falin made sure of it by making her sing.”
Melissanda was still begging Falin for sex, although it wasn’t with her words any longer. She tried to wiggle against him, using her body that he held at an arm’s distance. She rolled her hips.
“I only wanted my voice back,” I said in someone else’s voice. I slapped a hand over my mouth in dismay.
“We’ll work on it,” Eloden reassured me. “Let’s get back so Falin can take care of your brothers.”
“Are they going to be okay?” I asked, turning in Eloden’s arms so I could look at them sleeping on the bed. Their chests went up and down, both lightly snoring.
“They will be fine,” Dain said.
“Eve, we didn’t know that you and your brothers-”
“Kier was supposed to meet you,” I said, cutting Kheelan off. I pointed an angry finger at him. “Your stupid plan to bring us along changed his target. Were we bait all along? I’m sick and tired of being used.”
Kheelan looked like he was gritting his teeth.
“Your trip to Faerie wasn’t part of our plans. We had to improvise,” Loren said.
“Bait isn’t given a pixie for protection and carried out of sight by her brothers-”
This time Eloden interrupted Kheelan. “Her human brothers are not a substitution for her Marks.”
“Jackson and Matthew have done what is in their power to protect their sister. Do not disparage them while they lay unconscious from doing what we could not because we failed to earn the privilege of Eve’s trust,” Dain said.
I dropped my accusing finger and looked at Dain in shock.
“Come here while Falin wakes your brothers up,” Dain added as I stared at him.
I had to be brave. Dain didn’t sound as angry with me as I thought he would when he found me. My Marks were going to save my brothers and they had gotten back my voice. Even Kheelan was still standing and not smited upon sight.
“I’ll stay here and help Falin,” Eloden said, taking away my hope that he would follow me over to the dark corner where Dain had taken up residence.
“Sure,” I said, using yet another voice.
Somehow, night had fallen already. There couldn’t be much of a moon, barely any light shining on Dain’s big body from the room’s only window. He resembled the scary demon I remembered first landing in the Faerie field when I had been escaping the fighting with Eloden than the dark angel that had kissed me and asked for me to believe in him. I don’t think Dain had his wings out, but he was huge even without their bulk.
I had to have been crazy to try to shoot him down a few pegs.
“What is going on downstairs?” Eloden casually asked Kheelan and Loren while I walked quietly across the room.
“Someone broke the gate and started a small battle,” Loren said.
“Told you it was a good distraction,” Falin said.
I couldn’t hear what they were doing but I had to assume they had started the bleeding.
“Don’t turn around,” Dain ordered me. I don’t know how he knew what I wanted to do.
“They’re my brothers,” I replied, tempted to ignore his command. This time it was my own voice.
Dain leapt forward and grabbed my hand, pulling me into the dark with him as he stepped back. I put my other hand up to stop myself from stumbling fully onto his chest.
“Hello minx,” he whispered.
Heat surrounded me. I trembled despite it, refusing to let my guard down and for my body to relax into his warmth as I tried to stiffen against his embrace.
He chuckled against the top of my head and I heard him inhale deeply, scenting me.
“Dain,” I simply said. It was in another voice but I didn’t care.
I had this conversation between us a hundred times in my head. Sometimes I lectured him. Sometimes I pleaded to him. Sometimes I kissed him senseless. Of course, when I finally had my moment, I had nothing and everything to say at once.
My hands found the first buckle on his leather chest armour. I tugged. He didn’t help but also did nothing to stop me. It was slow, hard work. My fingers found it tough even with the few callouses I had picked up practicing archery and I had to yank on the thick leather buckling his armour onto him.
He broke the silence first while I worked him free.
“Did you plan to kill me?”
The question felt like an attack. It was a strategic hit, piercing my biggest vulnerability. I had worried for a while that I had taken things too far and done more than injured him in my desperation to keep him from chasing after me.
“You’re hard to kill,” I whispered, working a particularly stubborn strap. I wasn’t going to admit any regrets.
Dain’s fingers finally joined mine to help. “Were you afraid?”
The difficult questions kept coming. I had felt so many things in that moment before I decided to reach for my arrows.
“Yes,” I softly said. It was easier than trying to explain the complex emotions I had experienced. “Armour off,” I demanded as the last buckle was freed.
My fingers were on a mission and I found it easier to talk with them than my mouth. There was a moment of awkward silence when I figured he was going to refuse me. My boldness even shocked myself.
He grabbed over my hands at the bottom of his leather vest. “Can I regain your trust?”
This last question was the most unexpected. How could he speak so easily of trust between us? There was betrayal to address first, and I had to get his shirt off to take measure of the wound I had dealt him.
Some nights, I had convinced myself that I truly sent him to a watery grave. With so much magic and illusion around us, I needed to be sure he was real, that Dain really had come after me and shown up with perfect timing.
I pulled up on the bottom of the shirt but he held me fast by his grip over my hands, not letting me move until I answered. The pressure of his magic squeezed at my chest.
“Not unless-” I panted against the heavy magic. “Stop it,” I said.
The pressure lifted along with his armour. I slipped my hands under his shirt and felt the scars over his heart. They were monstrously huge, ridges of rough flesh where I had pierced him over and over.
“Checkmate,” Dain whispered, flattening my hand against his scarred chest as he pressed over mine through the shirt.
“Checkmate?” I whispered back, hating hearing that word again. Was he still playing games with my heart?
Dain bent over me and gave my ear a nip. “Brave girl to face the danger head on,” he said. “Not afraid, little liar.”
He was right. It hadn't been fear that had driven me to shoot my arrows, although I had convinced myself at the time that fear for my life was a good motivation. I had been hurt and bewildered and falling both in love and out just as quickly for a dark hero with such murky origins and an end-game that I could only wonder at after Orin’s scattered explanation for what Dain wanted.
In the end, I had done the one thing that never failed me and ran. It was cowardly but fear wasn’t what chased me.
“Should I be afraid?” I asked. I meant now and not then.
Dain understood. He smiled and shook his head, backing me up into the wall as he took a step forward. “Fear isn’t for living. It will smother the life from you, minx.”
I felt his heart thumping, slow and strong under my hand, curling my fingers so the clawed tips scraped gently against him. I still was confused, although I was beginning to think I had misunderstood his checkmate. Was Dain the hero or not?
“Orin told me how to keep Kheelan safe,” I said. I didn't tell him in order to put the blame on someone else. I wanted Dain to know what had driven me to reverse my stance on sleeping with any of them. I didn't want him to mistake my feelings.
“He mentioned it to me after you ran,” Dain said. “He
also suggested I give you some time to adjust as it happened rather precipitously, especially for your first time.”
Orin had stolen my virginity by overcoming my apprehensions. He hadn’t forced my decision, but he didn’t let me back down from it once I made it. I thought about Falin and Eloden afterwards and then Loren and Kheelan. None of them had been gentle, pushing my limits as I left my innocence behind. Dain’s patience and forbearance seemed sweet in comparison. It made him a little less intimidating.
“I thought you didn’t care,” I said, looking up and meeting Dain’s golden gaze. “You declared checkmate after Orin completed the Claim bond by, uh...”
Dain pressed harder on my hand over his chest, chaining me to him so I couldn't pull away, duck or otherwise escape as he stared down at my face. So many times, most of my Marks had forced me to meet their gazes and let them read the truth from my eyes. Not all of them could lie like me, so I suppose it only seemed fair to them. I still found it uncomfortable, even when I wasn't lying. Hiding my feelings was second nature to me.
“You’re the one that told me the definition of checkmate. I recall it quite clearly as you were using my chest for target practice to punctuate your meaning. It is the king that is put under check, right?” Dain said.
“Yes,” I replied, meeting his eyes with a fierce glare. I wouldn’t let him intimidate me. I had won the right to stand up to him when I did it the first time.
“The queen has all the moves and is pursued by every knight, rook and bishop,” he said.
“A few knaves have tried to make off with me too,” I added.
My back finally hit the wall as Dain took one last step to crowd against me. I had to crank my head back to keep our eyes engaged.
“Orin may be an expert on fertility but he is too Light to understand the Darkness in your heart,” Dain said. “Feel what beats in my chest. Grab hold of your magic and sense what your instincts have been telling you. Know why you loosed your arrows on me and I let you.”
Had I thought he was less intimidating? My own heart was racing as he trapped me against the wall, letting me feel every big, hard inch of his muscular body. With a heated wash of magic his wings popped out and came around us, cocooning me in with the Dark Fae that taunted me with his power. He knew he was the pinnacle predator and didn’t bother hiding his superiority.
“You bleed the same as the rest,” I growled out at him, surprising myself with the gritty return. These weeks had done something for my independence that I had always failed to achieve previously. Now, I believed in my own strength.
“Such ferocity,” Dain mocked. “Your Light fairy prince is safe by your own actions, princess,” Dain said, and that was when I heard it.
“Are you...” I scoffed. It wasn’t possible. “Did you mean...”
No, I wasn’t going to say it out loud. He would laugh at the ludicrous notion of fighting over me. I was just a random female to him, someone to share with the rest of my Marks and a faceless mother to the children they all seemed to badly want.
“You should at least show your allegiance to your kind by giving equal favour to your Dark prince,” Dain said.
He was impossibly jealous.
“You looked at me like I was used goods,” I exclaimed.
“Such mundane human ideas. You are not a commodity or something that can be spent,” Dain said. He brought his free hand up and snagged my Fae braids, fisting them as he bent so close his lips were nearly touching mine. Golden eyes pierced me. “Orin merely had the pleasure of your body first. I didn’t know you were open to a threesome for your first Fae fucking or I wouldn’t have fought my instincts to bugger you on your knees over Orin when you were looking so fetchingly soft and sweet.”
I licked my dry lips and remembered the way Dain’s hands had felt gripping my hips on the night he Claimed me. If I had known what he really wanted when he watched me orgasming under Orin, would I really have let him fuck me too? The conquering warrior come to claim his prize?
“Maybe I should have aimed lower,” I said, not willing to let him take back what had happened. He had been an ass and the communication issues had gone both ways. He didn’t say anything nice and I had presumed he was done with me. I had actually thought him capable of harming me, armed and dangerous after chasing Selvyth’s army.
“As a flirtation, loosing arrows into my heart is rather unique, minx,” Dain said. He brushed his lips against mine. Not really a kiss, just a little taste and test of my resistance.
I moaned.
An embarrassed blush swept over my cheeks. “It’s not you. This stupid Claim or the Marks or whatever magical love spell thingy makes me want it,” I said.
“You’ll have to blame Falin if you’re talking about an aphrodisiac,” Dain said, this time kissing my lips more surely. I felt fang and opened my mouth to protest before things went too far. My brothers were in the same room and injured.
“No, this is wrong,” I said.
Dain pulled back an inch. Molten gold swept over my flushed cheeks and nibbled lips. “We have both erred, but this is not one of those times,” he said.
“My brothers,” I said, trying to squirm away. The rough wall scraped at my dress, catching some of the fine threads. “I should check on them.”
“Falin will take care of them,” Dain said. He dropped his hand from over mine on his chest and cupped my face on the other side so I couldn’t easily escape. “Besides, I’ve stolen you somewhere more private to discuss terms of surrender, minx.”
I tried to look up but all I saw were Dain’s black wings. He chuckled against my neck, giving the spot over my pulse a little lick.
“Didn’t you feel me window you?” Dain asked. “Or were you so enthralled by my magical love spell thingy that I could have dragged you to my Dark kingdom without your notice?”
I had felt his magic wash over me when he cocooned me in his wings. Had he windowed us then? I was so inept, desperately in need of the magic lessons Loren and Kheelan had promised me, but a few days ago if I could go back in time.
“I had other things on my mind,” I replied, letting ice coat every word. He wasn’t getting a surrender out of me just because he was showing off as a powerful Dark prince.
Dain hummed more amusement against my neck. I expected a bite but didn’t get one. He raised his head and stared down at me with challenge and heat. “Reach behind you with both hands.”
Bark met my questing fingers. “The forest?” I said.
“Don’t move your hands from the tree,” Dain ordered.
He lowered his wings and tucked them behind his back so I could see the trees surrounding us. They were deep green with foliage, moss and climbing ivy, fed by the thick, cool air heavy with moisture. The ground beneath me was a tangle of roots as I shuffled a tiny step, uneven footing threatening to trip me to my knees. I wasn’t prepared to bargain with Dain in such an undignified position, so I leaned back on the tree and held still.
“Where are we?” I whispered. This wasn’t the bright woods of the Light kingdom I had transversed with Loren and Kheelan.
“Where you wanted to go when you left our protection and wandered into Faerie on a feckless quest,” Dain replied. He backed up a few steps to improve my view of the dark, quiet woods.
If there was such a thing as a haunted forest, Dain had taken me into it. I swallowed back my trepidation and made myself look around, my hands clenching the rough bark of the tree I kept to my back.
“Do you have a map or a compass?” I finally said. If Dain windowed out of here and left me alone, my odds of survival were unfavourable. “Or is stranding me part of your bargaining strategy?” I accused.
“Afraid? My reckless huntress doesn’t want to explore the Wild Woods for elves?” Dain said.
My eyes snapped up to his golden gaze and this time I probed his face for answers. “This is where the Dark Elves live?”
“Allegedly, once they left the caves. Elves need woods like that Siren that attacked you
needs to dip her tail into the ocean before her skin turns dry and shrivelled to reveal the truth of her age hidden with stolen youth.”
“I want to meet my Dark Elf father,” I said.
Chapter 17:
I waited for a snappy comeback but Dain broke his gaze away, looking around the woods himself. Fear trickled down my spine.
“Your sire never wanted you here,” he finally said. “The glamour had smoothed all of your Faerie traits under a cloak of plain humanity. I doubt any father that protected his daughter so thoroughly would risk her beauty shining in a Dark wood like a beacon to other unsavoury creatures.”
“I found the unwanted attention before I was windowed here,” I said, though it didn’t have much bite. My brothers were going to be safe in part because of Dain’s timely rescue.
He turned back to me and smiled. “I would give any father nightmares but you already broke your sire’s rules when you came to Faerie on your own.”
“I can’t break rules if I’ve never heard them,” I said. “He didn’t teach me anything. He didn’t even stick around long enough to see my mother sicken.”
“He would have known, minx. Do not beg a Dark Elf for mercy,” Dain said. “You will not bargain your soul for a cure.”
He knew I would consider it. “Is that why you brought me here? To scare me off finding my sire and asking for his aid?”
“I did bring you here to teach you a lesson,” Dain replied, closing in on me again.
“Kheelan failed to impress me with his switch. What makes you think you’ll have better luck?” I taunted, knuckling the tree. My claws had dug their way into the bark for courage.
Dain looked like an avenging, dark angel. His wings flared out around him, cutting off my view of the scary woods and focusing my gaze on him instead. His golden eyes were a bright, sharp yellow with power lighting up his irises. He tightly clenched his jaw, his high cheekbones cutting his frightening visage like blades as he breathed deeply through his nose. I felt like he was scenting me and it was such a predatory thing. He loomed just inches from where my body was bound to the tree at my back by my own grip and will.
Falling Into Faerie After Page 30
