Chapter 12 #2
I sit, pour myself a glass, and start drinking, the wine bitter on my tongue, stronger than the usual Fae wine I’m used to. It’s exactly what I want.
The darkest of the darkness stands before me—wings and all.
“Do you truly know why everyone’s here?” All their wishes?
My wish?
Kieran sighs, rolls up his sleeves, then pours himself a glass and settles beside me. “Why? Was I not meant to know you’re doing all this for your dead boyfriend?”
I swallow.
“Is that all you know?” I lick my lips. A test.
Kieran grins. “You’re going to have to be more specific than that.”
What’s the point?
His sentence already says enough.
I exhale, shaking my head. “I don’t understand you people. First you feed us, give us jobs, then toss us into a deadly trial, and throw a funeral when we die—what the hell is this place trying to be?”
Kieran hums, low and amused. “You might hate me even more if I told you what this is really for.”
“Oh, I’m far from hating you.” And I’m pretty sure he already knows that.
I don’t hate him.
I hate myself for not hating him.
I thought I would when I saw him at the funeral.
But I didn’t.
I still don’t.
He bursts out laughing this time. “Sorry, I forget—my charm is irresistible, even with the dead boyfriend.”
I roll my eyes. “Says the one who keeps vanishing me from place to place and clearly wants sex.”
“I know.” His grin deepens, shameless. “How fitting. We could fall in love and doom each other to death.”
“What a brilliant idea.” I smirk. “Then what do we do when I grow old and cranky, but you’re still young and pretty?”
“If the sex is that good, I might even curse myself human for you.”
“Go to hell, Kieran.”
And another laugh, loud, echoing, bright as the stars, coming from the darkness himself.
Once again, I find myself smiling.
He turns to me, eyes flaring in the dark. I blink as Kieran twirls the end of my hair between his fingers. He really likes doing that.
Gods, he’s so beautiful.
“My dear,” he whispers, “I’m already in hell.”
Those words hit me, hard.
I suppose this gilded cage is a version of it.
“Why can’t you ever leave?”
He lets out a breath, not meeting my eyes. “Let’s just say my family and I … we don’t get along.”
“Tell me,” I say. “All of it.”
The storm-lit eyes meet mine again—golden, dark, like lightning at midnight.
Kieran hesitates. Our invisible tattoos shimmer faintly in the moonlight—a promise of our shared secret, binding and unspoken.
“All right,” he says at last, sipping his wine like he needs it. “When a human is born, a Fae is bound to them. We don’t interfere directly and can only influence your life choices—like a whisper in your ear. A nudge.”
I gasp. “What—like a guardian angel?”
“Something like that.” Kieran nods. “As humans grow, some turn bad. They break promises. Again and again … until there’s no going back. That’s when their Fae fall from the stars.”
I blink.
Once.
Twice.
We are the reason they fall?
No wonder they hate us.
“For thousands of years, those fallen Fae scattered the earth. The thing is—we don’t last long down there without magic. And I—” Kieran pauses, like the words seem to weigh something in him. “You could say I was born with a gift. Powerful enough to create all this—a shelter for the Fallen.”
I bury my face in one hand.
This—
Gods. This is so fucked up.
“My family’s something like royalty. They were furious. So, they cursed me.”
And that’s why he’s trapped.
Kieran built a home for the fallen—Fae cast down, punished, purely because of the failures of the humans they were bound to, through no fault of their own.
And he was cursed for it.
Mother of the stars.
“That’s …” I start but shut my mouth again. I’m utterly speechless.
“I know,” he murmurs. “I know.”
I drink.
It’s the only thing I can do.
And Kieran drinks beside me.
After a long silence, I say, quietly, “I’m sorry.”
“Why?” he asks, brow raised. “Your Fae hasn’t fallen yet.”
Well, isn’t that a surprise?
With everything I have done, you would have thought that Fae would be kissing the dust on the street in front of my house by now.
“How come we never know about this? Humans, I mean.”
“Because we don’t want you to,” Kieran simply says. “But if you look hard enough, our library’s full of it. Though, no one ever does, especially when they’re busy chasing a wish.”
“So it’s not exactly a secret.”
“Oh, it is.” He smirks. “You just won’t remember any of it when you leave.”
“If I leave,” I correct, crossing my arm. “Will I remember you?”
Kieran pauses as he lifts the glass to his lips, a smile blooming from him. “That depends entirely on whether I want you to or not.”
“Hm.”
“But why would you?” he asks, settling down his glass. “If you manage to leave, you’d be leaving with your boyfriend. No need to remember whatever fling you had trying to bring him back—although I do imagine sex with me would be … unforgettable.”
I snort my wine.
Unbelievable.
“Fling? You seem awfully confident we’ll end up in bed.”
Kieran licks his wine-stained lips, his smile wicked. “Won’t we?”
I meet his gaze, heart thudding like a warning in my chest.
“Doesn’t seem worth it,” I mutter, eyeing him. “You won’t help me with the trials, anyway.”
Kieran laughs, low and dangerous, and then he leans in. His breath brushes mine, smiling against my ear as he whispers—
“Wouldn’t be so sure about that, Little Star.”
I hold my breath, daring to glance up to meet those magnificent eyes up close. I know Kieran can hear my racing heart, but I don’t bother hiding it. I want him to know how much he affects me.
Whether it’s grief, lust, or just pure insanity we both share—
Who the fuck cares?
He’s a great distraction. A dangerous, beautiful, and most likely addictive one.
His shapeshifters killed my friend, and I still want to be near him.
Kieran might be fucked up.
But so am I.
So am I.
“You know,” I murmur, painting him the picture, “you could make it easy. Tell me something about the trials … and we could fuck—right here. Right now.”
For someone who’s aware he’s being used, Kieran seems far too amused.
His lips graze the shell of my ear, trailing slowly—painfully—down the line of my cheek.
“Or,” he whispers, “you could stop wasting time, because we’re going to do it eventually—then we can fuck. Right here. Right now.”
I purr, sweetly, right into his ear—giving him another vivid taste of the noises I’d make with him between my legs.
Kieran growls. “You absolute evil.”
And I burst out laughing.
This is fun.
For a moment, I forget the sadness. Forget that my friend just died. That Kieran might even be the cause of it. Even the reason I’m even here at all.
There’s something about Kieran.
I always thought that if I ever survived Declan’s death and fell in love again, it’d be with someone who could pull me from the dark.
But Kieran is the darkness.
And somehow, I like staying in it.
For a moment—just a moment—I tuck that enormous, aching guilt into a locked room.
And then it’s just us.
Us, and the stars.