Chapter 37
THIRTY-SEVEN
ALLERIA
A truth for a truth.
When I was a child, my nursemaid used to tell me stories about the fae.
How they’d trick humans into bargains that seemed fair on the surface, but always cost more than expected.
How they couldn’t lie, but could twist words until the truth wasn’t how it sounded.
How a clever princess once bargained with a fae lord and lost her voice, her shadow, or her firstborn child—depending on which version you heard.
I loved those stories. I’d beg for them at bedtime, pull the covers up to my chin, and shiver at the delicious danger of it all. The fae in those tales were beautiful and terrible, with honeyed words and cruel smiles.
Then I got older, and learned that fae were nothing but animals.
Dangerous ones, yes. Magical ones that needed to be controlled, but animals all the same.
The stories were just stories, told to amuse and delight.
The fae in the real world don’t bargain or seduce.
They run when you hunt them, and die when you catch them.
But now I’m the captive of a fae who speaks and schemes, and embodies all the things from the stories. And I’m beginning to think that my nursemaid knew more than anyone gave her credit for.
Cairn is sitting across from me, one ankle crossed over his knee, the goblet of wine held loosely in his fingers. The black marks trace up his throat and disappear beneath his collar. He looks perfectly relaxed. Like he has all night to pick me apart.
“Ask your first question.” His voice is low.
I think for a second. “Why did you drink my blood?”
He reaches for the wine bottle and refills his glass. “Breaking the collar only required contact. Drinking it created a connection.” He takes a slow sip. “One that allows me to see through your eyes.”
I guessed this. But hearing him confirm it so casually, that he’s been inside my head, seeing what I see. And I had no way of stopping it from happening …
He sets his glass down and leans back in his chair. His eyes travel over my face.
“My turn. “Did you like it?”
“Like what?”
“When I drank your blood.” His voice drops lower, turns softer. He’s watching my face with focused, predatory attention. “When I held your palm to my mouth and swallowed. Did you like it?”
“I …” I lick my lips. “I didn’t want to. My body reacted, but I was terrified. Confused. I shouldn’t have felt anything except violation. I couldn’t control it.” The words keep coming, spilling from me in a stream I can’t stop. “My body betrayed me. I still don’t understand why I—”
“So … yes, then.”
“Yes.” I hate hearing the word come out of my mouth. “But I didn’t want—”
“You answered.” His voice cuts through my protest. “Ask your next question.”
“How can you speak in my mind?”
“The blood bond I created makes a channel.” He watches me over the rim of his glass. “Strong emotion opens it wider.”
Strong emotion. I think about the times I’ve felt him slip into my thoughts, when terror and fury overwhelmed me. He felt that?
“Do you fear me?” The question is silky.
The bargain’s magic pulls at me, dragging the answer out of me whether I want to give it or not.
“Yes. But it’s different now than it was at first. At the Dell, it was pure terror.
I was certain I was going to die.” No matter how I try to stop myself from speaking, my mouth keeps moving.
“I thought you would kill me. Now I’m still afraid of what you could do.
Your strength and anger. The violence I’ve seen.
But it’s mixed up with other things. I don’t know when it changed.
I don’t know when you stopped being just a monster, and became—”
I really don’t want to finish that sentence. He says nothing, eyes gleaming in the firelight, and the silence builds until I can’t bear it any longer.
“More than that. You became more than that.” I don’t give him a chance to say anything, and ask my next question. “Why did I feel the summons on the hill? When you called your warriors, I felt it too. Like hooks dragging me toward you. What was that?”
“That’s two questions. Pick one.”
I glare at him. He responds by taking a sip of wine, utterly unbothered.
“Fine. Why did I feel it?”
“Your proximity to me.”
I wait for more. He remains silent.
“That’s not really an answer.”
“It’s the answer I’m giving you.” His lips curve slightly. “The bargain accepted it.”
He’s right. The bargain hasn’t forced him to elaborate. I want to reach across the space between us and shake him, but the bargain has moved on. That means it’s his turn.
“Are you attracted to me?”
I choke on air. “That’s … I don’t …” I try to deflect, but the bargain won’t let me.
“It’s complicated. My body responds to you, but I don’t want it to.
Attraction implies wanting, and I don’t want this.
I don’t want any of this.” The words tumble out faster now, beyond my control.
“Except … when you’re close, I can’t think straight.
My pulse races. I think about you at night when I should be planning how to escape, and instead I’m—” Heat floods my face.
“Yes. I don’t want to be attracted to you, but I am. ”
His eyes narrow slightly. I catch something in his expression—satisfaction, maybe—but his voice is smooth when he speaks.
“Your turn.”
“Therin and Vel reacted to your call as well. Why would I feel the same thing they did?”
He shrugs. “That’s how the magic works.”
Another non-answer the bargain is happy to accept.
His head tilts, and when he speaks again, his voice is deeper, lower, a murmur meant for bedrooms and darkness.
“Did you like what you saw when I bathed in the stream?”
The memory fills my mind immediately. Water streaming down his back, the marks appearing on his skin as the dirt washed away. The way he’d looked over his shoulder at me, knowing I was watching. The way my mouth had gone dry.
“I didn’t mean to stare. I looked away at first. But I kept looking back.
I couldn’t help it.” My voice drops to a whisper.
“I’ve never seen anyone who looks like you.
Never seen a man’s body like yours … the scars, the markings, the way you move.
And I knew you knew I was watching and that made it worse. ”
I bite my lip and force myself to meet his eyes.
“Yes. I liked what I saw.”
His expression doesn’t change, but the quality of his stillness does. His eyes sharpen, turning focused, and my heartbeat picks up speed.
I’m the prey. I’ve been the prey this whole time, and I walked right into this bargain thinking I was the only one hunting for answers.
“It’s my …” My voice shakes, and I stop to clear my throat. “It’s my turn. What does Moirthalen mean?”
One corner of his mouth tips up. “It means ‘spoiled princess,’ or ‘pampered one.’”
Of course it does. I’ve heard the edge beneath the word every time he says it. The mockery and dismissal. I shouldn’t care what he calls me. He’s my captor. His opinion shouldn’t matter.
It shouldn’t.
“Do you think about it?”
I swallow. “Think about what?”
“Me.” The word hangs between us. He lets the silence stretch for a heartbeat before continuing. “What happened in the inn, back at the camp.” His eyes hold mine, and I can’t look away. “Do you think about it, Moirthalen?”
The way he says it—that word that means spoiled princess—shouldn’t make heat curl low in my stomach. But it does.
“Sometimes.” The bargain’s magic won’t let me stop there.
“More than I should. It comes back at odd moments. When I’m trying to sleep, when you’re standing too close.
I think about the water on your skin, the way you looked at me when you caught me staring.
” I close my eyes, mortification making my cheeks burn.
“What it would feel like to touch the marks on your skin.”
I try to stop speaking. I can’t.
“At night, when I can’t sleep … when you’re close and I can feel the heat coming off you.
When I’m supposed to be thinking about escape, and instead I’m thinking about your hands.
Your mouth. What you did to me at the inn.
What you did in the tent.” My voice turns hoarse. “Wanting things I shouldn’t want.”
I clamp my mouth shut, but it’s too late. The silence that follows is thick.
“What do you want from me?” I force the question out, desperate to turn this back on him, to make him give me something real instead of the scraps he’s throwing at me.
“I haven’t decided yet.”
My eyes pop open. “What does that mean?”
“Not your turn.” His voice doesn’t change, but his eyes do, turning sharper, more focused. “Did you enjoy watching me kill those men on the road?”
I freeze in my chair. His eyes track my reaction. I don’t want to answer, but I have no choice.
“It was horrible. People dying. Blood everywhere. Bodies falling. I should have only felt horror. I did feel horror.” The magic presses harder, and the rest comes spilling out.
“But I was inside your head, and watching you move like that, the way you flowed through them … the grace of it.” My throat closes.
“I watched you kill, and part of me liked it.”
I can’t look at him.
“I felt sick about it then. I feel sick about it now. What kind of person feels that? What kind of person watches men die and feels—” I swallow hard.
“Finish the sentence.”
“I can’t.”
“There are consequences for breaking a bargain.” His voice is soft. The softness is worse than if he’d snapped at me. “Answer the question.”
I squeeze my eyes closed again. “Part of me was aroused by the violence of it, by your violence.”
The silence that follows is unbearable. I’ve just confessed to enjoying watching him kill. I want to take it back. I want to be anywhere but here, stripped bare by his questions while he sits there watching me unravel.
“Time to ask your question.” He breaks the silence.
“Why … why haven’t you decided? What you want from me. Why haven’t you decided?”
“Because you keep surprising me.”
I don’t even know how to respond to that. I don’t know what it means. He’s watching me out of those gold eyes, and I can’t read a single thing in them.
His next question comes soft and unhurried, his voice almost lazy. “Has anyone kissed you before me?”
“Once.” The word comes out before I’m ready.
“A lord’s son. I let him because I was curious.
It was wet and clumsy, his tongue pushing past my teeth without any skill.
He grabbed at me and seemed to think that was seduction.
” I wrinkle my nose, and he laughs quietly—a low sound that does strange things to my pulse.
“I wiped my mouth afterward. It was disappointing. I thought that’s what kissing was …
underwhelming, and slightly unpleasant. I couldn’t understand why the serving girls giggled about it. ”
The magic nudges me to continue.
“Then you kissed me in the inn, and I realized I was wrong … about kissing. About what it could feel like when someone knew what they were doing … when someone wanted to make me feel it.”
His eyes flicker.
“Why does it matter? If anyone has kissed me before.”
“I was curious.”
Of course he was.
“Have you had lovers?”
“Wait … it’s my turn.”
“You already asked why it matters. That counts as your question. So … have you?” The question is almost gentle.
“I’ve never … no one has ever …” I stumble over the words.
“The lord’s son and his terrible kiss is the extent of it.
I’ve thought about it, obviously. Wondered what it would be like.
Imagined it, even. But there was never anyone I wanted enough to risk it.
I’m a princess. I can’t take lovers without consequences.
There would be whispers and scandals.” I stare at my hands.
“As the king’s youngest daughter, I thought I’d eventually be married off to someone my father chose.
Some noble who wanted closer ties to the throne.
Someone appropriate and utterly uninteresting.
But until then …” I sigh. “No, I’ve never had a lover. ”
He goes very still, and it isn’t the subtle stillness of before. This is different. His eyes have turned darker, and I realize with a lurch what I’ve just admitted.
I look away, watching a log shift and collapse in the fire, acutely aware of his eyes on me, while he waits for me to ask another question.
I could keep pushing. There is so much I still don’t understand, but I’m scared of what else he might ask me, what else he might drag out of me if I give him the chance.
“I have no more questions to ask you.”
“Then our bargain is fulfilled.”
The pressure releases, and I slump back in my chair. My skin is clammy, my pulse still too fast. I want to crawl under the covers and hide away until morning.
But he’s not done with me.
“I have another bargain to offer you.”
My eyes snap to him.
“What?”
“Agree to let me do whatever I wish with you until sunrise.” His voice is calm, conversational. “And then I’ll let you go free.”