Tithe

by Chani Lynn Feener

  Arden kept to the fringes of the party, not comfortable joining in just yet. For over a year she’d been protected by their kind, cared for. But she still was not one of them. She had to keep reminding herself that these were the creatures that had inspired nightmares and horror stories among the townsfolk, long before she ever came into existence.

  They were ancient and dark, and she’d seen firsthand that they could be bloodthirsty as well. So as she moved by them, she ignored the stares, the sighs, the mumbles, the murmurings. She ignored them and kept her eyes wandering, always searching.

  Then she spotted him, and the rest of the world drifted into the background.

  Of course the music was coming from him, she should have known. He held the violin high on his shoulder, arm moving back and forth with a fervor she felt all the way to her bones. He stood just in front of the fire, close enough that with every gust of wind she feared he’d be licked by the flames. Even they wanted him.

  Mavek wore a black velvet vest fastened down the front with a silver zipper. His pants were leather, embossed with a crisscross pattern, and tucked into shin-high, dark boots laced with X-shaped straps.

  Roses ran down the entire length of his right arm, tattooed across his collar bones and over his shoulders, then trailed partially down both arms. They were of various sizes, too many to count. Twelve of them were colored a vibrant red, while the rest remained mere outlines.

  Her gaze trailed back up to his face and she realized with a start that he was watching her beneath the curve of his sooty lashes. His hair was the color of midnight, an inky shade that shifted between a deep, calming blue-black to a solid, unrelenting charcoal. A few dark blue tendrils fell over his forehead and into his eyes, adding to his devil-don’t-care demeanor.

  She could see the first glimmering sign of humor, the slight curl at the corner of his red mouth. Before he could finish the song, she was in motion, effortlessly slinking through the crowd toward him. Those in her way stepped aside the moment they noticed her coming. Some bowed their heads, others merely smiled wickedly.

  She paid them no heed.

  The last trailing note drifted away as he lowered the instrument, just as she got close enough to make out the dark brown-green of his eyes.

  “Arden,” he sounded like the crashing of waves against the shore. That intensity could lull innocents into its dark depths and drown them. “I was wondering when you’d finally make it.”

  “I was at work,” she said, blushing when his smile grew. “Thank you for the cupcake.”

  Mavek angled his head in an almost nod and then motioned toward two large black chairs that she hadn’t noticed before. “Shall we?”

  Once they were seated he strummed at the violin in his lap, studying her curiously. “You appear well. I was concerned. We’ve been away longer than I’d hoped.”

  She shrugged, secretly wanting to believe him.

  “You didn’t miss me then?” he asked, seeing right through her, like he always did.

  “Not at all.” She returned his grin, unable to hold back any longer, and he laughed.

  “You wound me on purpose. It’s cruel.”

  “Did you miss me?” she countered, propping an arm against the chair so she could better face him.

  “Always,” he whispered so softly she almost didn’t catch it. Then his voice lifted once more and he said, “Tell me about the past three months. What have you been up to?”

  Even though the answer to that was a very plain and simple nothing, they somehow managed to stretch the conversation all through the night, until the morning sun gleamed down on them.

  Time moved differently when They were around. It was a truth Arden had known since she was eleven, yet last night she’d somehow forgotten.

  Now, ten minutes late for her lit. class, she rushed through Carver hall, nearly slipping past the correct door. Class was already deep in session and as she entered, twenty-one heads swiveled her way.

  “Miss Archer,” Professor Darling—who had not been aptly named—motioned her inside with a quick flick of her wrist, “how kind of you to join us. Please, take a seat so that we may continue. Unless, of course, you’re volunteering to read the next chapter of Wuthering Heights aloud?”

  On a regular day, Arden would have taken the bait and done the reading. However, the pounding of her head from complete lack of sleep had her groggily turning down the offer as she slipped into the only empty desk available, placing her on the outskirts of the room.

  Like last night when she’d first arrived.

  She bit her bottom lip to keep herself from smiling at the memory, wary of Professor Darling’s keen eye still steered her way.

  As quietly as she could, Arden unzipped her faux leather backpack and reached inside, cursing under her breath when she realized she didn’t have her copy of the classic. In her haste this morning, she’d left Rose Manor without considering that she didn’t have the proper tools for class.

  Damn.

  She tugged a random notebook out of her bag and flipped to a blank page in the center to keep anyone from noticing the math notations on the first ten pages. This would just have to do for now.

  The sudden sound of metal chair legs scraping the floor to her left had her turning, and she blinked, surprised to find the blond boy from last night seated next to her. He angled his body and his copy of Wuthering Heights so that she could easily see it. When he caught her eyes, he smiled softly.

  With the book in front of her, taking notes was a lot easier as Arden jotted down the correct page numbers and followed along without a hitch. As soon as the clock ticked down to the final minute, the rest of class, including the blond boy, hurriedly gathered their things.

  “Thank you,” she said, extending her hand, hoping to slow him down. “I’m Arden.”

  “I’m curious,” he folded his notebook and stuffed it into his backpack, “how a girl who works at the bookstore could forget her own books?”

  She laughed, shaking her head, but regretted it when her headache increased tenfold. There was no way she was attending her next class in this state. She’d just have to use up one of her absences.

  “Speaking of,” as she followed him to the door, “you weren’t here last class.”

  “I know enough about haunted manors and garish love connections to catch up,” he said. “And don’t worry about it,” he waved his copy of Wuthering Heights, “I owed you for the pizza suggestion last night.”

  “Good, right?”

  “Might be the best I’ve ever had,” he admitted.

  They were going down opposite ends of the hall, and she hesitated when she saw him stepping away. Like when she’d first spotted him at the bookstore, she felt an odd curiosity that she couldn’t quite satiate. Something about him drew her interest, and in her experience, that tended to be a bad thing.

  Still, she couldn’t help but point out, “I didn’t get your name.”

  “You’re a local, right?” With a frown, she nodded and he continued. “Then you should know better than to give your name out to complete strangers, Arden Archer.”

  He turned the corner and was gone before she could fully process what he’d said. It had to be a joke, a play on this town’s history. He had bought that book about the ghost stories of Thornbrooke, and the Unseen were referenced many times within its pages. She should know; she knew the author personally.

  Everyone who knew the Unseen for what they truly were—Unseelie fae—knew that names had power to them. He’d been smart not giving her his, but not smart enough in covering his tracks.

  With a slight kick in her step, she swiveled on her heels and headed out the building. There was no point in stopping by Rose Manor right now, it was too early, and so she decided to go home to make up for the lack of sleep the night before. But first, a quick stop at Howl Books.

  Last night, blondie had paid with credit card.

  Arden’s house was small, much smaller than the old one she’d grown up in and had been
forced to move out of. With only two bedrooms and one bath, she and her sister had shared a room back when they’d both lived here. Ainsley had been sent away immediately after their mother’s funeral, making the place a tad more spacious.

  They still talked on the phone once a month, checked in through text messages now and again, but Arden knew how her younger sister really felt. As if she’d been abandoned. Betrayed. Arden had gotten to stay here, finish out her senior year, while Ainsley had been moved halfway across the country to Nevada. That had been the only way to keep her safe, even if Ainsley didn’t know it herself.

  Because she lived alone, Arden was used to the house being empty, to the quiet and the still. So when she woke up six hours later, groggy and still half asleep, she thought she was imagining the music.

  It was soft, light, an almost mournful tone coming from a violin, and it filtered through the small house and into her bedroom from beneath the crack at the bottom of the door. The hallway light was on—she’d left it off—and a golden stripe illuminated the floor.

  When she was a child, she’d often hear music playing in the middle of the night coming from the woods behind her house. The music had stopped when they’d moved here, too deep into town with all the constant parties to be heard. Then her mother had gotten sick, and it had started up again.

  Slipping from her bed, she eased the door open, staring out into the empty hall for a moment, allowing her senses to adjust. A sweet smell perfumed the air with an almost earthy undertone, like rose, mahogany, and teakwood. After a year it was a familiar scent, one that had her toes curling and her heart quickening.

  She remained just within the doorway, waiting until she got hold of herself. She hated her reaction, how it always came so swiftly, catching her off guard every time. At first, she’d been afraid of it, worried that it would cloud her judgment.

  Her father had been a drunk who’d run off. Her mother had been too sick, at first with grief and later with disease, to take care of their children. Arden had never relied on anyone but herself, resulting in an issue with trust, one that had only been intensified after she’d been told of the faeries and her family curse.

  When she was little, Arden assumed everyone could see the things she and Ainsley could. She’d lost more than one friend before her mother finally explained the truth.

  Once she was certain she was composed, she entered the hall and headed toward the kitchen, following the smell as if it was a creature she could see. Even knowing who it was, she still stopped and leaned against the open doorframe, eyes scanning over him as he moved about the kitchen as if it were his own.

  In a way she supposed it was, considering that he was the one who gave her the money to keep the house. What she made working at the school bookstore only stretched so far, and it was hard for her to cover the electricity and water bills each month.

  She’d been terrified the first time they’d met, both awed by his beauty and suspicious of it. He’d cultivated the first, slowly diminished the latter, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t constantly reminding herself of what he was. Who he was.

  “You were sleeping like the dead,” his voice was low and welcoming, easing the remaining tension in her shoulders. Mavek had that effect on people, whether they liked it or not. “Did you dream of anything good?”

  The kitchen was rectangular, with a breakfast bar that opened up to the living room. Lights from passing cars on the street outside kept flickering through the closed blinds, momentarily lighting up the vacant space. The fridge had been practically empty when she’d checked it earlier for something, and her laptop on the coffee table was her only form of television.

  A wave of embarrassment threatened to well up, and she forced it down, crossing her arms and straightening away from the wall. There was nothing to be embarrassed about; she was providing for herself as best she could and that was all anyone could ask of her.

  “I don’t think I dreamed at all,” she finally answered, trying to peek over his shoulder when he bent to open the creaky door of the ancient oven.

  He’d yet to look at her, too busy fiddling with whatever he was making. The tang of spicy tomato sauce and rich meat wafted from the oven and she salivated with an unexpected hunger.

  “So like a human, unappreciative of the gifts that are given them,” he stated, clucking his tongue. Faeries didn’t have the ability to dream, and so he was always eager to hear about hers. He’d kept her up for hours once, picking over every last detail about a dream she’d had involving flying pigs and dancing broccoli.

  Arden bristled. “I’m not a Bloodheart.”

  He paused briefly in the process of pulling a pan from the oven before silently placing it onto the stovetop. When he turned, it was slowly, with an ease she knew he was faking, and a careful look she recognized as well. He’d come here tonight, uninvited—not that he ever needed an invitation—because he was worried about something.

  About what?

  “No,” he whispered, so softly that it almost didn’t reach her through the light violin music still playing. “You aren’t, you’re a Heartless.”

  She was paralyzed as he walked toward her, caught in the depths of his dark hazel eyes. When he reached out, gently tucking a strand of her hair behind an ear, she almost rubbed her cheek against his hand. Almost. She caught herself, thank god.

  “My little Heartless,” he cooed, still in that hauntingly low tone, the one he used on weary travelers. The one she’d heard him use a million times before. “Living in this tiny box, all alone. Let me help you, dear heart, brave heart. Let me take you away. This is no place for the likes of you.”

  Arden found her head nodding almost imperceptibly, her eyelids starting to lower. A dreamy sensation stole over her body, and her head felt light and carefree. The fingers in her hair moved again, brushing so that they trailed across the back of her skull.

  She snapped out of it with a force that had her yanking back and into the wall. Her breathing was only a little labored, an improvement compared to when he tried that trick six months ago. She glared at him.

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “You shouldn’t have let me get so close,” he grinned. “But it’s nice to see that three months away hasn’t weakened your resolve. You haven’t forgotten what I taught you.”

  The truth was, she couldn’t. The things she’d learned since meeting him had haunted her.

  Like how the Unseelie were capable of manipulating humans, swaying them. Getting them to do things they didn’t want. Forcing them to like it while they did. He’d just tried it on her.

  “I meant it though.” He twisted on his heels, grabbing a plate from the cupboard before moving back to the stove. “I want you out of this place, Arden. It isn’t suitable for one of my knights. You could come back to Rose Manor with me—”

  “No.” As always, this offer was the hardest to turn down.

  A part of her, the part affected by Mavek just as every other human was, yearned to accept and move in with him. The other, the sane and rational part, knew it wouldn’t be the fairytale she imagined. She understood that it would only devastate her in the end, drive home what she already knew but didn’t want to admit.

  They needed each other, but Mavek didn’t need Arden the way she wanted him to. The way she needed him.

  “Always so stubborn.” He turned and motioned with his chin for her to sit at the breakfast bar. Once seated, he set the plate in front of her, eyes alighting when she smiled down at the meatball grinder. “I know all your secrets, heart.”

  “Hardly,” she countered, lifting half the sub and sighing when the melted cheese pulled. “You know all my favorite foods. That isn’t the same.”

  “Isn’t it?” He reached down and brought up another plate, this one smaller and holding a red velvet cupcake identical to the one he’d left her at the store last night. When she reached for it, he slid it away from her, the corner of his mouth turning up wickedly. “A trade. The treat for a secret.”

>   “I’m not a dog.” She scrunched her nose and took a hearty bite of the grinder, pointedly stalling. Trading with the Unseelie was dangerous, even for something as small and meaningless as a cupcake. But they both knew she’d do it.

  “A poor choice of words on my part,” he agreed, canting his head. Then he waited.

  “Maybe my new favorite flavor is carrot,” she said after another three bites.

  He lifted a single inky brow. “Carrot cake? No. It isn’t. But I’ll bring you one next time, if you’d like.”

  “One of us has a vast wealth of secrets to share,” she wiped at her mouth with a napkin, “and it isn’t me.”

  Mavek only told her the things he felt she needed to know; she wasn’t stupid. Then again, he came from a completely different world, and learning everything would probably take her three lifetimes.

  “A secret for a secret?” he surprised her by offering. “Then what shall we do about the cupcake?”

  “You could always just give it to me,” she suggested, more excited about the possibility of the other trade now than any sugary dessert.

  “No fun in that,” he tsked. “You’ll owe me two. Two secrets in exchange for one of mine… and this sweet. But the offer expires in thirty seconds.… One, two…”

  Despite her insistence, she suspected there wasn’t anything about her that he didn’t already know. At least, not anything that he’d be interested in knowing. After all, there’d been facts that he’d had to tell her about her own lineage.

  She thought about telling him about the blond boy, but trying to make him jealous would be an epic waste of time, not to mention stupid. Being what she was, having relations with a human was strictly forbidden, and the last thing she needed was to draw attention to yet another innocent bystander in her life.

  “When I was six, a local boy dared me to eat a live grasshopper, and I did.” It had been disgusting. “I also kept a diary until I was ten. Your turn.”

  “I spent the last three months searching for something,” he said.

  “Did you find it?” she asked halfheartedly, not really expecting him to answer her.