Chapter Twenty-Six
Alaya
I pry my eyes open, my head fuzzy and out of focus.
The soft embrace of blankets cocoons me, warm and safe. I snuggle deeper, reluctant to leave this nest. No sounds disturb the quiet—just my low breaths as I try to work out where I am.
My peace shatters when my mind starts to clear, recollections flooding back in a wave so overwhelming I whimper.
Domanikk’s silence after our trip to the pond. That tether to Reth that felt so unnatural and wrong. His powerful fist slamming into my head. Nothing after that, just a void of black so dark it devoured everything.
I peek my head out of the blankets, expecting to find Domanikk sleeping beside me, but he’s not. He’s sitting on the chair pulled up to the side of the bed, staring down at me.
“Thank fuck,” he breathes, running his hand through his hair. The usually long, silky strands are now a tangled mess. Dark shadows sit under his yellow eyes, their usual radiance dull and bloodshot.
“What happened?” My voice comes out croaky, my throat dry and parched, burning.
Domanikk gets up and pours a glass of water from a pitcher on the table. He brings it back and helps me drink. I gulp it down greedily, cooling the fire to a low throb.
“You’ve been unconscious since last night. It’s afternoon now.” He scrubs a hand over his face. “I didn’t think you were going to wake up. Not many get up after a punch like that from Reth.”
“I don’t understand why. He didn’t even demand information.” The words he whispered keep echoing in my mind, cryptic and unsettling, but I can’t bring myself to repeat them out loud.
“Because he can.” Domanikk’s jaw tightens. “Stay around him long enough and you’ll understand. I need to keep you away from him as much as I can. Something’s going on, and he won’t open up to me.”
I sit up, wincing as my body aches in protest. Between being blacked out for hours and the abuse my body has taken while here, I’m surprised it’s still functioning.
“Did you speak to him?”
“He left with Ceira straight after and ignored me when I called after him. I’ve been here with you since.”
“Playing nursemaid?” I grin at him.
“I’d look delightful in just a frilly apron.” He laughs, and some of the tension leaves his shoulders.
A memory surfaces—a time when I played healer to Kiernan after his father beat him. The first time we gave in to our passions. The first time I got to feel his smooth skin below my palms, when he sank to his knees and showed me what I had been missing.
Something in my expression must shift, because Domanikk’s gaze softens.
“What’s in that pretty little head, my love?”
My love.
Oh Gods, those feelings I had for Domanikk yesterday at the pond flood over me, heat rising to my face, mixing with painful guilt until my head spins with emotions.
“Just thinking of my life at the castle,” I reply.
“Do you miss it?”
“Some of it,” I admit. “I miss visiting the Western Pasture and … Heller.”
Another stab of guilt. I haven’t thought of him since that day I watched him die.
“The kid Reth killed? Your boyfriend?”
“He wasn’t a boyfriend. He was the only friend I had.” The words come out sharper than I intend.
Domanikk lowers himself next to me.
“Sorry, Alaya,” he says, pulling the blanket off. The air chills me after the warmth of my cocoon.
He leans over and kisses me so gently, a mere caress of his lips upon mine. No pressure to meet his desire.
But I do—my hand cups his face and I kiss him back.
He grins. “You need to relax. We are going to play my favourite game.”
He kisses down to my breasts, his hands roaming to play with my nipples on the way, hardening them at his touch. His kisses on my belly have me writhing, his lips tickling.
His mouth and hands explore me, my skin tingling under his touch.
When his face comes back to mine, the heat has already started to rise within me.
I let out a small laugh, soft and involuntary.
Just the thought of him is enough to make my body yearn for him in ways I can’t fully control or understand.
This feeling, this pull towards him—it has no logical reason to exist. And yet it does.
His hand slips between my thighs and pushes, spreading both my legs wide.
“I need you wide and waiting.” He grins. “I’m going to help you remember the good things in your life, one step at a time.”
His hand comes up between my legs and trace a finger along my lips, already slick.
“Every step, you are going to tell me one thing about your life there that made you happy.”
My brow furrows. His finger swirls my clit, and my breath catches—pleasure rising, but my mind still trying to piece together what he means.
“One.” He growls out, his finger sliding inside me, hooking back to touch that sensitive spot. I clench around it, the force sudden and sublime.
I realise what he means by ‘game,’ and my body shudders with anticipation.
“The—” A breathless sound escapes me, half-gasp, half-giggle. “The food.”
His finger curls inside me, and his mouth quirks. “My fingers inside you deserve a little more information than that.” The words rumble low in his chest, warm with amusement.
“Two.” Another finger slides in beside the first, and I wiggle my hips, heightening the feel of him inside me.
“The horses.” I breathe out. “I had always thought them magnificent, even more so now.” I moan as he slides those fingers almost out, tantalizing me with the delay, and then pushes them back in deeper.
“Three.” A third finger stretches me, the fullness making my body tremble around his touch, clenching greedily around him.
He leans down, his tongue tracing the seam of my lips. They part for him, and my tongue meets his halfway—just the tips at first, tasting each other in that electric space between us.
“Him,” I admit tentatively, starting to lose myself to the perfect feel of his fingers sliding in a slow, rhythmic tempo, to my pleasure that is swelling hot below my belly.
He pulls away from our kiss, his gaze guarded.
A smirk lifts the corner of his mouth.
“Now, what were you thinking about earlier, really?” His voice is low and coaxing.
I pause for a second, and then his thumb comes up to massage my clit, that sweet sensation eliciting a moan from my lips, a tremble in my legs and almost my undoing.
“What had your eyes glaze with such evident lust?” He purrs, his lips vibrating on my skin where he has bent down to run his nose along my neck, his tongue darting out to taste me.
“Tell me, darling … Four.”
I whimper as I am stretched close to pain, that fourth finger filling me so completely I imagine that it is that thick cock of his, my pleasure pulsing now, a sensation I lose myself to.
“Kiernan.” I breathe out raggedly, barely containing the burning heat threatening to escape. I’ve learnt the longer I hold it, the more I get of him. “After his father beat him, and he showed me how to—” My whole body jolts and my back arches from the blanket at the memory ”—give in to my passion.”
“Good girl,” he says, his voice husky.
He holds my gaze for a long moment, something unreadable flickering in those yellow eyes.
“I win the game.” He kisses the tip of my nose and rises, adjusting his growing erection in his tight leather trousers, staring down into my puzzled expression.
He turns away, the motion so sharp it feels like dismissal. “I have someone you need to meet. Dress, and we will leave.”
His spine goes rigid as he strides to the table. He grips the edge of the bowl, knuckles whitening, and splashes water onto his face. Water droplets drip back into the bowl as his shoulders hunch forwards, palms bracing his weight against the table, head bowed.
We stroll through Heartwood, hand in hand, the late afternoon sun as warm as the blankets were against my skin. I tip my head back, eyes fluttering shut, basking in it.
When we arrive at the small clearing where I’d first met Viveen and Rawson’s brother Samwell, the fire is already lit. A figure sits alone on one of the thick log benches.
We both sit. Domanikk drops my hand.
“I knew we would find him here. Alaya, meet Quinn.” Domanikk nods towards the figure.
The Fae is smiling at me, wide and welcoming. Piercing blue eyes crinkle at the edges, framed by short, slightly wavy hair of deep chocolate brown. He wears brown chest leathers and trousers, but no Enchantra adorns his chest.
My breath catches. I stare at his bare chest, then back to his face.
“You’re Earthbound Fae!” Not a question. A fact.
“I am.” His smile doesn’t waver.
I turn to Domanikk, my mouth falling open.
“How?”
“Quinn here has been with us since he was a baby. What is it now, Quinn, your twenty-second year?”
“Twenty-third.” He grins, sitting a little straighter.
“I don’t understand. How are you still here? Still alive?”
“They can’t get rid of me.” He chuckles. “Though Domanikk has tried a few times. Kicked my arse more times than I can count.”
Domanikk leans over and kisses my cheek. “I need to go find Reth, see if he’ll talk to me. You all right here with Quinn? He’ll walk you back in time for the Gathering.”
“Sure,” Quinn and I say in unison, then laugh together.
“Look after her, Quinn, or I’ll kick that arse again.” Domanikk’s already walking away, his voice carrying back between the tents.
I wait until he’s gone, then turn back to Quinn. “So how? How are you alive?”
“I’m useful to them. My Gift.” He shrugs.
I lean forwards slightly. “Your Gift?”
“I’m a Horse Whisperer” The words come out reverent, proud.
My brow furrows. “A what? I’ve never heard of it.”
“They say it’s a piece of Terra’s heart, forged to bind the Fae races together. My Gift answers to the Equitae alone—a natural affinity woven into my very blood. Everything it grants me exists for their benefit, and theirs only.”
“What do you mean, everything?”
“Enhanced healing, emotional manipulation, telepathy.” He ticks them off on his fingers. “Plus more, though I’m still learning those. All of it only works on the Equitae.”
My mind catches on the last word. “Hold on—telepathy? So, you can hear their thoughts. That must be overwhelming with so many Equitae here?”
Quinn chuckles, such an easy, open sound. “No, not quite. I can communicate with them through thoughts alone, and they can do the same with me.”
He pauses, seeming to consider how to explain it. “Though like all of the Gifts’ abilities, it has to be mutual. It can’t be forced from either side unless the Gift is incredibly powerful, which my Gift isn’t.”
My fingers drum against my knee. “How have I never heard of this?”
“It’s quite rare, or so Reth tells me.” Quinn’s expression darkens slightly. “Also dangerous to the Equitae—in the wrong hands.”
“That’s what I don’t understand.” I shake my head. “Why would Reth keep you alive, let alone let you grow up here, live within Heartwood as one of them? I get the impression he hates us Earthbound Fae.”
Quinn barks out a laugh—genuine, unguarded. “Oh, he does. He bloody hates us. As long as I make myself useful and generally stay out of his way, I’m tolerated.” He pauses, his smile fading. “As for why I wasn’t killed as a baby, I can’t answer that. Or how I even got here. You’d need to ask Reth.”
“How have I not met you before?” The words come out sharper than I intend. “Being here would have been easier knowing I wasn’t alone.”
“I’m not a prisoner here, Alaya.” His voice is gentle but firm. “I choose to be here. It’s all I’ve ever known. They are my family.”
Family.
The word settles over me like a weight.
Hadn’t I started to feel something similar? That ease, that sense of belonging, despite being their captive? Wasn’t it something I had always craved?
“Sorry.” I look down at my hands. “I didn’t mean to offend you. It just would have been nice to talk to another Earthbound. One who doesn’t treat me with disgust for being Desolate.”
“Desolate?” His head tilts, blue eyes searching my face.
“Without a Gift. Even living amongst the Earthbound Fae, I was isolated. Alone.”
Quinn’s smile returns, but there’s something behind it now—something knowing. “You are far more than Desolate, Alaya.”
I’m about to ask what he means when he stands, holding his hand out to me.
“The Gathering awaits. I won’t be able to come right in with you—I’m not allowed. But I’ll make sure you get there safely, or Domanikk will have my balls.”
I reach up and take his hand.
Static arcs between our palms the instant we touch—sharp and bright, crackling up my arm like lightning trapped beneath skin. We both jerk back slightly, but our hands remain locked together, neither of us able—or willing—to let go.
Quinn’s eyes meet mine, wide with surprise and something else I can’t name. His lips part as if to speak, but no words come out.
What was that?
His thumb brushes across my knuckles, tentative, testing. The spark doesn’t return, but I can still feel the echo of it singing through my veins, a warmth that shouldn’t be there.
“Did you—” I start.
“Yes,” he breathes.
Neither of us knows what to say after that. The moment stretches, fragile and strange, filled with unspoken questions neither of us can answer.
After a long pause, he helps me to my feet, his grip careful now, almost reverent. We make our way through Heartwood in silence, but I’m acutely aware of every place our skin still touches, wondering if it will happen again—what it means that it happened at all.