A Strange Hymn (The Bargainer Book 2)

by Laura Thalassa

  The dagger is no more than a foot and a half long, from hilt to tip. The handle is made from labradorite stone, and carved into the blade itself are the phases of the moon.

  For a weapon, it’s awfully pretty.

  “A wise choice,” the seller comments. “The blade is made from the mines closest to the Kingdom of Death, and its metal is infused with the blood of titans. The hilt is crafted with the Stone of Many Faces. A powerful weapon made for a worthy individual.”

  Cool beans. I’m just glad my hand didn’t land on the huge battle axe on the other end of the table.

  “We’ll take the set and a belted holster,” Des says, stepping up to my side.

  From behind the counter, the seller pulls out another blade—the twin of the one I picked out—as well as the holster.

  I hesitate. “I don’t have money for this.”

  Des looks at me like I’m precious before handing over coins to the woman. “It’s a gift.”

  I’m used to gifts from Des. Back when I was a teenager, he’d buy me all sorts of trinkets. But I’m no longer a teenager, and these blades are no trinkets.

  Still, I accept them.

  I take the daggers and holster from the woman, running my hands over them.

  “Put it on,” he urges.

  I don’t need much more encouragement. I may still have my reservations about owning a weapon, but I’m not going to lie, securing the belted holster to my waist and arranging those daggers onto either side of my hips makes me feel powerful, dangerous. For the first time since I arrived in the Otherworld, I feel like myself again.

  All it took were a couple of weapons.

  Chapter 12

  Des hasn’t talked much about Arestys by the time we leave Barbos for the smallest of the Night Kingdom’s floating islands, so I don’t have any expectations.

  I fly next to Des, heedless of his mood. The night air ruffles my hair like a lover, the warm air current carrying me and Des across his realm.

  Flying is still just as thrilling as the first time I took to the sky, and I briefly wonder how I’ll ever return to earth. Before Des taught me to fly, all I wanted was for my animalistic features to disappear. Now I don’t know whether I’ll ever be willing to give them up to be normal. Sure, the wings make things like getting through narrow doors and sleeping on my back nearly impossible, but they’ve also introduced me to a whole other side of myself, one that’s wilder and freer than Callypso Lillis, the lonely PI.

  It’s a fairly long flight to Arestys, and when I finally do see the island, I’m surprised by how dark it is. Most of the places we’ve visited so far have been brightly lit. Only Memnos, the Land of Nightmares, was anywhere near this dark, and that sends a wave of trepidation through me.

  I catch a brief glimpse of the underside of the island, where hundreds, if not thousands, of caves dot the rocky surface. A few minutes later, Arestys is beneath us, and I get my first good look at the Night Kingdom’s smallest and poorest island.

  I see a series of homely cottages clustered along a shallow stream, the water sparkling under the starlight. Strange plants grow in and around the edges of the riverbed, but outside of that, the place is a desert.

  Des is quiet as the two of us land in the shimmery sand that covers much of what I can see. The island is small, probably only ten miles across or so. Some of the other floating islands seemed massive, but this place … this place feels like an afterthought, forgotten by most of the Otherworld.

  Maybe that’s why I like it. There’s something about how lonely and overlooked it is that appeals to me. And out here, so far away from any city light, it feels like it’s just me and Des and an endless ocean of stars.

  “This is where I grew up,” he says, so softly I almost miss it.

  My attention snaps from the barren landscape to him.

  “You did?”

  It seems impossible that someone as beautifully complex as Des came from this strained, desolate place.

  His eyes have a faraway look to them, like he’s lost in a memory. “My mother worked as the town scribe.” He points to a cluster of buildings in the distance. “She used to come home smelling of parchment, her fingers stained with ink.”

  I barely breathe, afraid that anything I say will halt this story in its tracks.

  “We were so poor that we didn’t live in a proper house.” Des looks both pained and happy as he recalls it. “We lived in the caves of Arestys.”

  “Can I see where you lived?” I ask.

  All expression wipes clean from Des’s face.

  “It no longer exists.” His eyes meet mine. “But I can show you the caves.”

  I duck my head as I move through the caverns beneath Arestys’ surface. The rock here has formed into a maze of honeycomb-like structures. There’s a sad beauty to this place, like a rainbow in an oil slick.

  The tunnels are cold and drafty, claustrophobic and wet.

  Des lived here.

  My mate, the King of the Night, spent days—years—in these caves. It seems an unusually cruel existence in a place as magical as the Otherworld.

  “So your mother raised you here?” I ask.

  His mother, the scribe. The same woman Des claimed would’ve liked me. The same woman who must’ve once been part of the royal harem.

  Des nods, his jaw hard as we wind our way through the tunnels.

  I glance around at the gloomy caverns. There’s a dark sort of magic here, deep within the rock. It’s made of desperation and wishes, of unfulfilled desires and dreams that are kept locked away.

  How is it that a son born into a royal harem ends up here? And how is it that a boy who grew up here becomes king?

  “What about your father?” I press, side-stepping a puddle.

  “Funny you should ask that …” The way he says this makes me think it’s not funny at all.

  He lets his words fade into nothingness, and I don’t press him for more.

  Ahead of us, the tunnel opens up into a crater the size of a football field. Up until now we’ve been belowground, but here the stars twinkle overhead, shining down into the bowl-shaped depression.

  Des steps ahead of me, his huge boots kicking up dust as he heads across it.

  Near the center of the crater, he kneels.

  It’s all I can do not to stare at him. His white hair, his broad, muscular back, his tattoos, and those wings that he stubbornly refuses to hide all look so very appealing—so very appealing and so very tragic.

  He’s my own personal brand of salvation, yet right now I get the impression he’s the one who needs saving.

  I come up behind him, placing my hand on his shoulder.

  “This is where my mother died,” he says quietly.

  I feel my stomach drop at his confession.

  There are no words.

  Des’s eyes move to mine. It’s rare for him to wear his thoughts on his face, but right now he doesn’t bother keeping me out, and I get an acute glimpse of all that pain bottled up inside him. “I watched her die.”

  My throat closes up.

  I can’t begin to imagine. It’s one thing to witness your monster of a stepfather bleed out on your kitchen floor, another to watch someone you love die.

  I circle around to the front of Des, and his arms come around my waist. He lifts the hem of my shirt to press a kiss against the soft skin of my stomach, his thumbs rubbing back and forth over my skin.

  I run my hands through his hair, loosening the locks from the leather band holding them back.

  This tragedy might’ve happened years and years ago, but right now it looks like it’s all playing out in my mate’s memory as though the events were fresh.

  “What happened?” I ask softly.

  I almost don’t ask at all. God knows there are so many memories that I hate sharing.

  He looks up at me, his white hair loose. “My father happened.”

  Chapter 13

  My father happened.

  If that’s not foreboding, I don
’t know what is.

  Des stands, his wings expanding behind him. He clears his throat. “Enough of this.” He takes my hand. “There’s one more place I want to take you before we return to Somnia.”

  I’m still burning to ask Des about his parents, but it’s clear from his body language that he’s done sharing secrets for the night. Perhaps for many nights.

  Reluctantly I take to the sky alongside him. I have no idea where he’s taking me, but when Arestys falls away beneath us, I realize that’ll be the extent of our visit. There will be no tour of the island’s remaining highlights, no further exploration of its topography, no more discussion about Des’s life here.

  It’s that last one that I want to know about most. I keep gleaning pieces of Des’s past from various sources, but it has raised more questions than it has answered.

  What I know: Des was born into the Night Kingdom’s royal harem but raised on Arestys. He moved to Barbos and joined a “brotherhood,” and at some point he became medaled soldier and a king. He watched his mother die, and he blames his father.

  Oh, and during all this time he was building a career for himself on earth as the Bargainer.

  What I don’t know: pretty much everything else.

  The wind ruffles his hair and clothes as we fly. Out here in the middle of the night sky, he looks completely at ease. I can’t tell if it’s a carefully crafted mask, or if he really did leave his agony back on Arestys. I can, however, finally see that the enigmatic Bargainer has demons of his own.

  This flight is quite a bit longer than the others, and by the time we descend, my body is exhausted.

  The floating island we come upon seems to be made up of glowing pools and moonlit meadows. Scattered here and there are elaborate villas and a few temples, each some distance away from one another.

  Off in the distance is a shimmering city, its white walls lit up with lights. Des heads straight for it.

  As we close in on it, the scattered homes begin to cluster closer and closer together, gradually changing from rural to urban. The city itself sits on the edge of the island, the white buildings built along its cliffside.

  Winding through the island is a glowing river, its waters a luminescent aquamarine color. When it reaches the edge of the island, it spills over the side, the waterfall turning to mist hundreds of feet below.

  We circle past the city center and follow the river upstream, doubling back towards the interior of the island.

  We soar over hills, the river a glowing ribbon far below us. Soon the hills become mountains, their sides covered in dense, flowering foliage.

  We only begin to descend when we come to a particularly large mountain peak. Here a palatial white stone home sits, adorned with all the Moroccan accoutrements that Des’s palace has.

  Des and I circle around it, landing in its front courtyard. The only sounds around us are the soft calls of cicadas and the hiss of rushing water.

  I spin around, taking in the impressive building and the mountain beyond it.

  “Welcome to Lephys,” Des says, “the City of Lovers.”

  He takes my hand, leading me through the home with its cathedral ceilings and tiled floors, the only light coming from the dozens of brightly colored lanterns that hang from the ceiling above us.

  The edges of arched doorways are inlaid with more painted tiles, the colors emerald, indigo, and persimmon. Thick, painted columns hold the sweeping ceilings up, making the place feel even vaster than it already is.

  Much as I want to drink in this place, we don’t linger inside for long. The two of us exit out the back of the home.

  Out here a huge gazebo rests, its gauzy curtains blowing in the night air. Beyond the gazebo, the river we followed here glows a pale blue green.

  The luminescent river cascades into the shallow pool in front of us. On the opposite end of it, the water pours off, slipping farther down the mountain.

  Des releases my hand, reaching behind him to pull the back of his shirt over his head. His magic parts the material as it passes around his wing joints, reforming once more once it’s above them.

  He shucks the shirt off, cutting across the gazebo and towards the water. He lifts a foot, tugging off one of those huge boots of his, and then the other.

  Des looks over his shoulder. “Need any help, cherub?” he asks.

  Before I can respond, I feel my own clothes loosen, magically peeling away from my body like the skin of a banana.

  I let out a little yelp as they slip from my flesh, falling into a pile of rags at my feet, leaving me exquisitely bare.

  Des strides over to me, the last of his clothes sliding off of him. Am I ever going to get over the sight of him in all his glory, or the way he looks at me?

  He pauses when he gets to me. Then, taking my face in his hands, he kisses me deeply.

  “I’ve imagined taking you here for years,” he admits when he breaks away.

  “You have?” I ask.

  He takes my hand, walking backwards through the gazebo and towards the river. “Many times.”

  I take in the scenery with new eyes. It’s dizzying to think he imagined taking me here when I could not have imagined a place like this even existed.

  His voice drops low. “Over our time apart, I’ve gotten very imaginative when it comes to you.”

  Jesus. Just him saying that sends a bolt of heat through me. The way he’s looking at me doesn’t help either. He stares at me like I’m his starlight, and he’s the darkness preparing to devour me.

  “Perhaps,” he backs up the water’s edge, his first foot dipping into the water, “if you play your cards right tonight, I’ll even share a few of my more creative ideas—for a price, of course.”

  I’m pretty sure whatever price he asks for, I’ll be more than willing to pay.

  First my toes dip into the water, then the tips of my wings. Inch by inch my naked body submerges itself into the water.

  There’s something about this place, with the heavy scent of jasmine and moist earth in the air, and the intoxicating sensation of Des’s full attention on me, that has my breath hitching and my eyelids lowering. My breasts feel heavy and my core aches. Perhaps it’s this island—the City of Lovers—or perhaps it’s just the strange magic between us, but he has me fully under his thrall.

  I want him to drown me in the madness of this. Us.

  Des watches me the entire time, the glow of the water reflected in his eyes. It’s a strange sensation, letting someone you trust see you bare. It’s frightening and exhilarating all at once.

  My eyelids flutter. The siren is calling out for me to dive deep into the pool and soak in its waters. My eyes briefly flick to the moon above us. Here, in this small glowing pool, both of our primordial natures are satisfied. I’m guessing that was no mistake on his part.

  I step up to Des, our damp chests brushing. Idly, I trace the tattoos that cover his arm, the action sending a small shiver through him.

  “Keep doing that, love, and I’m not going to be able to draw this evening out like I want to,” he says, his voice rough.

  One glance at his face and I know he’s serious. I also know that it’s not helping my own willpower. Maybe I don’t want this drawn out. Maybe I want the King of the Night to be fast and fierce rather than slow and cruel.

  Des wraps an arm around my waist and pulls me to his chest. He leans in and gives each side of my neck a kiss, his deliciously damp hair dripping against my skin.

  “I could get lost in you,” he murmurs.

  He wraps my legs around his narrow waist, and I feel the brush of his cock, already hard and ready. The sensation of it makes my face flush.

  “What’s this?” he whispers, kissing my reddening cheeks. “Is my siren … bashful?”

  I let out a husky laugh. He’s such a scoundrel, even when he’s being endearing.

  He nuzzles the side of my face. “I would steal the stars from the sky for you,” he whispers into my ear. “Anything to hear you laugh like that.”
<
br />   “You wouldn’t have to steal them Des,” I say. “I bet you could strike a deal with them and they’d come down for you.”

  His eyes crinkle with amusement. “You give me far too much credit.”

  Rather than answering, my mouth finds his, taking it roughly, my hand splayed along his cheek. Let that be answer enough.

  His hold tightens on me, pulling my pelvis closer, even as his lips match my passion. He groans into my mouth, his arms tightening around my back. I move against him, my body impatient for his, my skin beginning to illuminate.

  It’s been so long. Far too long. Suddenly, I don’t have a decent reason why that is. Our bodies have a lot of catching up to do.

  He breaks away from the kiss long enough to lean his forehead against mine. His eyes search mine, looking for permission. I move against him once more, silently encouraging him on.

  He shifts my body ever so slightly, lining us up, and then he slides into me, his head resting against mine, his eyes devouring my expression.

  It’s all I can do not to moan as I feel him enter me. And yet this is so much more than just sex. It’s him and me and this place.

  If I could drink him up, I would. He’s my guilty conscience, my nightmare, my mate. The man that drinks espresso out of tiny cups and sometimes wears his hair in ridiculous manbuns. The same man who likes the wild, wicked parts of me that even I’m not always comfortable with.

  I roll my head back, staring up at the stars. There are thousands upon thousands of them, and their light kisses my skin. Between each one of them is unfathomable darkness. It’s all around me, inside me, making love to me.

  Des pistons in and out of my core, his cock stretching me in the most exquisite way. I wrap my arms around him, pressing myself in close.

  It’s no longer just the water that’s glowing. My skin is lit up, the siren thoroughly enjoying the water around us and the man inside us.

  Right in the middle of the act, he moves us near the waterfall, where the rocky mountainside creates a wall of sorts. Pressing my back against it, the Bargainer takes my wrists and forces them against the rocky surface.

  “Truth or dare?” he rasps, still thrusting in and out of me.