Chapter 18
Phoebe
Second Shore—The Tidal Lands, Nightfall
I can’t believe my eyes.
Kael talked about brothers—offhand, like he was remarking about the weather—but I never pictured literal, living, breathing men who could make a place rearrange itself just by walking in.
Dagan, Lord of Earth I’m told, is solid, all soil and blunt lines.
Alaric, Lord of Air, has eyes for his mate only. But he seems full of mischief and somehow his Dragon’s eyes appear older and younger at the same time.
They don’t look related in any normal sense, but the way they move around Kael—like different currents circling the same tide—makes the word brother make sense.
Meeting Jules is the thing that knocks me sideways.
She’s like me.
Not the perfect haired, impossibly sculpted type I half expected, but curvy and warm and very, very human.
Hearing her say, “Another Jersey girl?” is like hearing someone call my name in a foreign tongue.
Her dark hair is piled in an artful twist that somehow looks effortless, and her clothes are familiar—a soft blouse, practical pants—only mine seem shinier, touched with what Amber told me was sea-silk.
The way she smiles at Alaric makes the rest of the world dissolve.
How he looks at her is the kind of obsessed passion tempered by true affection I didn’t know I wanted.
It almost hurts to watch.
That little stab of jealousy makes me feel like a child, and I hate myself for it because Jules is kind.
She is radiant and real, and yes, obviously loved.
She hugs me every time we see each other, which over the past twenty-four hours is almost constant.
But it’s like she’s been saving that exact gesture for me—sunlight and lavender, the sort of hug that settles you.
I breathe her in, and the smell alone quiets the frantic part of me.
For the first time since the whirlpool, I feel less like an exhibit and more like a person.
I’m eager to talk to another woman from Earth, to ask the small, stupid things.
Did you keep your phone?
Are there bagels where you come from?
Is pregnancy as weird as TV makes it?
But the festival swallows talk like that, and the men around us dim the space with their hushed conversation.
We move to a circle of giant cushions around a bonfire that smells of kelp and cedar.
The men cluster like gears, talking sentries and wards and lines of defense in words I mostly only half-follow.
Maps and strategy and a kind of language that feels designed to keep ordinary people safe but somehow also keep them small.
Jules catches my eye, and the laugh lines at the corners of her mouth make something inside me unclench.
“It’s a lot, isn’t it?” she says, voice soft, eyes crinkling with understanding.
“When I first came here, I thought I’d drown under the weight of it all.
I mean, a new world where dreams and nightmares are made?
The threat of it all unwinding at the hands of monsters called SoulTakers?
Not to mention a Demon Lord who basically makes the wearing of underwear completely optional,” she adds the last with a conspiratorial wink.
“Well, it is a lot, but you make it look easy,” I hear myself say, before the part of me that catalogues risk can file the confession away.
The words come out steadier than I feel, and when she smiles like she already knows that’s not true—well, it feels like the first small mercy of Nightfall.
She laughs, a tiny, secretive sound.
“It’s not easy. Phoebe. None of it is. But it’s worth it.”
I frown and nod because I get what she is saying.
I mean, Kael? The looks, the sex, the way he seems to mean it when he says I’m his—it’s like nothing I have ever experienced.
But wait—what did she just say?
“Did you say Nightfall is where dreams and nightmares are made?”
“Oh yeah, didn’t Kael tell—” she stops and heat makes her cheeks turn pink.
“We haven’t had a lot of time together yet,” I reply, explaining my lack of knowledge about this place and wanting to kick myself for feeling the need.
“Look, you don’t need to stick up for Kael.
He’s a grown ass Demon Lord, and if he failed to tell you all that, then yeah, kick his ass later.
But more importantly, Phoebe, you don’t need to explain yourself to anyone.
Not me or anyone else. You are the Lady of Castletide. Remember that,” Jules says with a nod.
“Thanks,” I whisper.
“You’ll find the rhythm. And Kael,” she says, leaning in. “Don’t let his brooding fool you. He’s deeper than the others, true, but he’ll hold you steady if you let him.”
I want to tell her I don’t know if I can ever be steady.
I want to tell her that my hands still shake when I remember passion mixed with teeth, and suddenly, that the place where he bit me hums with warmth and a hunger I didn’t have before.
Instead I nod, because some local children are tugging at my skirts and somebody has pressed a carved driftwood necklace into my hands and I am—absurdly, fiercely—thrilled.
“For you, Lady Phoebe!” they shout and giggle.
The children claim me like I am a new kind of holiday.
“Aren’t you all so sweet,” Jules says, and starts a conversation with a pretty blonde girl.
The smaller ones press shells into my palms, demand that I taste sugared seaweed cakes, teach me a clumsy little dance that makes my feet ache and my belly laugh.
One towheaded boy tugs my sleeve and points at my throat where my claiming mark blooms.
He whispers, solemnly, “You’re marked by our Lord.”
I flush—embarrassed, elated, terrified all at once—because the mark feels like proof of something. And maybe I don’t understand what exactly, but it happened. It’s real. This is all real.
Suddenly, I don’t feel so lost. I feel like maybe this is all just a beginning.
“You good, Telya,” Kael checks on me and I offer him a real smile.
“Come, there is much to show you,” he says, and pulls me with him.
I turn to see Alaric lead Jules to the shore right beside us, and Dagan flanks his other side.
And then there are animals.
Wow, the animals.
Sleek, sea-lion creatures slip up onto the sand as though drawn by some invisible current.
I crouch down to the sand, and Kael whispers something foreign sounding, like a blow horn and a sea chime mixed, with his hand raised, and his runes glowing against his skin.
Then, one small one sidles up to me and flops right into my lap.
“Oh wow! Look at you,” I murmur, sitting on the sand and petting the animal.
He feels heavy and warm, and he nudges my hand with his whiskered nose until I give it the belly rub it demands.
“They are called sea tigers. See, he longs for your touch, Telya,” Kael murmurs and crouches beside me.
“Yeah? Is he the only one?” I ask boldly.
“Hardly,” he says, and I feel my body respond.
But the creature in my lap objects,
It makes a sound like a seal laughing and then looks up at Kael as if to ask, Who is she?
He answers only with a look—soft, possessive, like the way he watches the tide—and my chest squeezes so hard I can barely breathe.
There’s hunger in that look, yes, but there’s something else too.
Awe maybe?
And promise.
That’s what really moves me.
“Thank you,” I tell him sincerely.
“For what?”
“For this. The animals. I love them.”
“You are a softhearted thing, aren’t you, Telya?”
“I never thought so, but maybe.”
“You’ll have to be carful here. Nightfall is never what it seems,” he warns me, and I receive it like something tragic.
“Will Nightfall hurt me, Kael?”
The will you? goes unasked.
“I’ll keep you safe, Telya. No one touches you. No one.”
And for some reason, I think he means it.
He watches me after that, and I know without a doubt I’m getting in over my head.
The hunger inside me is constant and stupid and beautiful.
It’s a low ache that lives in the soft place between my legs and a lighter, more dangerous hunger that wants nothing more than to press my face into the small hollow of his throat and breathe him in.
Kael walks beside me back to the bonfire. He is polite to the people, Lordly in his measured generosity, and yet every time he thinks I’m not watching he slides his hand to my back, to my waist, to the place where his tail loops and squeezes as if to remind me I belong to him.
The squeeze sends hot bright pinpricks through me—reminders that undo me all over again.