I wake to the rustle of oak trees and the cold chill of dew on my skin. My hipbone hurts from sleeping on a hard surface, and the scent of moist earth fills my nostrils.

Where am I?

Blinking sleep away, I sit up, running my hands through my hair and pulling out several leaves and twigs. My dress still glows softly, and at my back is the tree Des and I thoroughly sullied earlier.

Des.

I glance around, but he’s nowhere in sight. I rub my temples, trying to remember through the beginnings of a hangover just how the night ended, and why I’m now alone.

Off in the distance, a branch snaps.

I go still.

What are the chances that that’s my Night King?

Zero, my mind whispers.

I rise to my feet, trying to be as silent as possible. Not that I’m doing a great job being innocuous. Kind of hard to go unnoticed when you’re in a dark wood wearing a glowing dress.

I begin retracing my steps. I think I can figure out a way back to my suite; I just have to get out of this forest.

Another branch snaps, and I jump at the sound.

Is someone following me?

And where’s Des?

Just when I’m sure I’m heading in the right direction, the forest seems to deepen rather than give way to the Sacred Gardens.

I massage my forehead. Did I really get it all backwards? The smoky remnants of the bonfires seem to be stronger here than where I woke up … but there’s no music, no laughter, no sounds of any revelers.

I’m utterly alone.

Behind me, leaves crunch.

I tense.

Maybe I’m not alone …

Slowly, I swivel around.

Off in the distance is a broad shouldered man with a shock of white hair.

“Des!” I feel myself instantly relax.

I begin heading to him, first walking, and then, when he doesn’t come any closer, I begin to run. “Des!”

Before I can get to him, he disappears.

That stops me in my tracks.

He’s coming for you … the trees whisper.

“Des?”

I feel the press of metal against my throat, and from the edge of my vision I can just make out Des’s white blond hair.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

If this is his idea of training …

But it’s not training. It’s not. I can sense the malicious intent in the rough grip he has on me and the way the blade digs into my flesh, like it wants my skin to split.

The Bargainer’s supple lips skim over my cheekbone. “Fear me, mortal,” he whispers, “for I will be your undoing.”

Des brushes a kiss against my skin, and then drags his knife across my throat.

I wake with a choked cry, holding my neck.

Not dead. Just a dream. Just a dream.

Des has my body cradled in his arms.

“Callie,” he says when he sees I’m awake, relief coating his words. He pulls my head in close. “Callie, Callie, Callie,” he murmurs—more, it appears, to reassure himself than to actually get through to me.

The Bargainer and I are tangled up in soft sheets, our bodies naked.

I pull away from him long enough to look into his eyes. He has no idea that right now I’m coaching my mind to not see him as a threat. The bite of that blade felt so real.

I swallow.

A nightmare is all it was.

I draw in a shuddering breath, the last of the dream sloughing away.

“I’m okay—it’s okay.”

Early morning light filters through the window of our room, the sun making the scent of flowers come alive around our suite. At some point last night the two of us had slipped away to our rooms, finishing here what we’d started in the forest.

I stretch myself back out along the bed, dragging Des down with me. Reluctantly, he lets me pull him to the mattress, tucking me against his side.

I’m not ready to wake up, but I’m not sure I can fall back asleep either.

“Tell me a secret,” I murmur.

He plays with a strand of my hair, not saying anything for a long time.

Finally, “My mother’s hair was exactly this color.”

“It was?” I ask, tilting my head to peer up at him.

He smooths the lock of hair back down. “Sometimes,” he says, lost in his own thoughts, “when I’m feeling particularly superstitious, I think that’s no coincidence.”

I don’t know what he means by that, but the confession raises the gooseflesh along my arms. This was the woman who raised Des, the scribe whose death he blames on his father.

“Tell me about her—your mother.”

He holds me close. “What do you want to know, cherub?”

I draw circles into his chest. “Anything—everything.”

“Demanding thing,” he says fondly. His tone sobers when he speaks again. “Her name was Larissa, and she was someone I loved deeply …” 

I feel something thick rise in my throat. It’s not so much what he says as it is how he says it, like his mother fashioned all the stars in his sky.

His chest rises and falls as he swallows. “It was always my mother and me, ever since my earliest memory.”

I notice he conveniently skirts any mention of his father.

“She was my guardian, my teacher, and my closest confidante. Perhaps it shouldn’t have been that way—I’m sure she didn’t want it to be that way—but in Arestys … my mother and I were seen as oddities.”

My finger pauses on his chest.

Des, an oddity? And in the Otherworld of all places?

“Even by Arestys’ standards, we were poor,” he says. “We couldn’t afford lodgings, so we lived in the caves I showed you. And under my mother’s roof, I had to live by two hard and fast rules: one, I must never use my magic, and two, I must control my temper.”

I don’t know where Des is taking this story, but his eyes are far away. For once, he isn’t mincing his words.

“Naturally, I worked my way around both rules.”

The Bargainer bent someone’s words to fit his needs? How shocking.

“I couldn’t wield magic, so I learned to bargain with magical creatures for bits of theirs.”

So that’s where Des came by his affinity for deals. I never stood a chance against him.

“There are few things that will get you ostracized in the Otherworld as quickly as being poor and being weak. And growing up, that’s what people thought of me and my mother—that she was a scribe because she could only wield weak amounts of magic, and her son couldn’t wield any at all.”

My heart is beginning to hurt. I didn’t expect this when I asked about his mother.

“Being seen as poor and weak made us targets,” he continues. “For my mother, it came in the shape of bad men. There were several fairies who went missing on our island after they encountered my mother. She never breathed a word about what happened, and I didn’t know better at the time, but … I don’t doubt that my mother did something to them.”

“And what about you?” I ask.

“What about me?” Des responds.

“How did you get around being a target?”

Des smiles, but it’s a little malicious.

“I didn’t, cherub. I just got around my mother’s second rule.”

Rule number two: Des must control his temper.

“Fairy children love nothing more than picking on the vulnerable,” he says. “My mother couldn’t stop the bullying and she couldn’t prevent me from defending myself, so she coached me on how to fight and how to separate my emotions from a battle.”

Who was this woman who was once a part of the royal harem before she became a lowly scribe? Who made her son control his magic and his temper, but still taught him to fight?

“I don’t understand,” I say, “why hide your power in the first place?”

Des strokes a hand down my back. “That is a question for another time. But for now, I will tell you this: Ill-fated mothers, cruel fathers, and friendless childhoods. You and I, cherub, really do share similar tragedies.”