This lilac wine is sounding better and better the more I hear about it.

“Remind me again why you don’t want me to drink the wine?” I ask.

Des gives me a small smile. “It doesn’t matter what I want. I waited eight years for you, cherub, and now you’re here, warming my bed and weaseling my secrets out of me. This is more than enough.”

“Why would Mara give lilac wine to me?” I ask, now curious about the Flora Queen’s motives. It’s obvious enough that she’s no fan of mine, so why give me such a gift?

Des tilts his head. “Let’s strike a deal: I’ll answer your question if you’ll answer one of mine.”

Everything just has to come down to a deal with the Bargainer.

“Fine,” I say. It’s not like he can’t just take a bead and force the truth out of me anyway.

I feel a subtle shift of magic in the air as Des binds me to the agreement.

His smile spreads before he tucks it away. “To answer your question: Mara probably had several motives when she gave you the lilac wine. She’d want the room to see her being generous to a human and accepting of our bond—that’s just good for politics. She was also making a point that you’d be more accepted if you were made to be more like us. And finally, she was probing our relationship for weaknesses.”

“Why would she do that?” I ask.

“Leverage,” Des responds. “It’s quite easily to control people once you understand them.”

It’s dizzying, the layers of schemes that fairies are pursuing at any given moment. Just when I think I might understand such creatures, I hear something like this. I could’ve even keep such intrigue straight in my mind.

“Now,” Des says, “I believe it’s my turn.”

Ah, yes, my turn to answer a question.

“What were you talking about with the Green Man earlier this evening?” he asks.

I feel my face pale.

He noticed that conversation?

The man is way too perceptive.

My throat works. I really don’t want to have this talk.

The longer I hesitate, the stronger the pull I feel from his magic. It wraps around my windpipe, forcing me to speak.

“We’ve been having unprotected sex,” I finally say.

The magic doesn’t release me.

Ugh.

Des waits for me to finish.

I take a deep breath. “I could be pregnant,” I whisper.

His eyes widen at my confession.

I rub my neck and watch him warily as his magic dissipates.

He studies me, and for the life of me I can’t tell what he’s thinking. Finally, he says, “What is this about, cherub?”

Huh?

“It’s about that, Des. Having a baby.” Just saying it is making it that much more real. I need a pregnancy test, stat.

“I thought you wanted to have my child?” Des says in his dangerous voice.

I do want to have his child; this isn’t a matter of “if,” it’s a matter of “when.”

“This whole thing is just moving too fast,” I say.

“Moving too fast?”

Those are clearly the wrong three words to say. I see it in his eyes. That foreign flicker of something alien, something fae.

“Haven’t you had enough moving slow?” His hand presses gently against my stomach, cradling it.

I stare at him, well aware that I’m facing down fae Des, dark Des, Des who craves things I can’t understand.

What was it Phaedron had mentioned?

No fairy would let his mate get away just because she put up a little protest.

Hasn’t that been the theme of the evening? The possibility that I want things that will take me away from Des rather than bring me closer to him?

“Perhaps I want you to have my child,” he says, moving his hand from my stomach to my bracelet. “Perhaps I want us to begin right now …”

I swallow, my mouth dry.

All at once, he releases my wrist and backs away, running his hands through his hair. That dangerous spark extinguishes from his eyes.

Des sits down heavily on a nearby chair, and now that edgy Des has retreated I feel my own knees weaken with—what? Relief? Disappointment? Des’s feral side is nearly as appealing as it is frightening. And that might make me sick, but screw it, I’ve known I was twisted for a long time.

“Forgive me,” he says into his hands. “This bond comes with its own set of barbaric instincts.”

I smooth down my dress, stepping away from the wall.

“I shouldn’t have reacted that way.” He rubs his mouth and chin. “It’s just … it’s particularly difficult for women to conceive fae children. We don’t see them as burdens. I wouldn’t see it as a burden.”

I feel hot and cold and confused, like someone’s pulled the rug out from under me.

“And I’d hoped,” he continues, “that you wouldn’t see it that way either.”

“Is that part of the reason you won’t give me the lilac wine?” I ask.

I assume my fertility would decrease the moment I drank the wine, if it in fact made me more like other fae women.

He laughs. “Gods, no. I already stated my reasons for not giving you the wine. And if I was determined to get you pregnant, cherub, I don’t think a little thing like immortality would get in the way.”

The way he’s looking at me has my core heating up.

I let out a breath. “But you do want children?” I ask.

Those shocking, silver eyes meet mine. They remind me of light and darkness and everything in between.

“With you?” he says. “Of course.”

I don’t know why that gets to me, why what he says and how he says it tightens my throat, but it does.

Sometimes I forget that I really do get to have this life, with all its horror and beauty. With all its messy entanglements. I can reach out and take it whenever I want. More than that, Des wants me to reach out and take it.

I head towards Des as I face down all my raw, raging emotions.

“I don’t think you’re pregnant,” he says, tilting his head up from his seat as I approach him, “though if you are, we’ll deal with that cherub, just like everything else—”

I take his face in my hands and silence him with a kiss.

This love between us is bigger than him, bigger than me.

“From flame to ashes, dawn to dusk, for the rest of our lives, be mine always, Desmond Flynn,” I whisper against his lips, reciting the same words that first took him away from me.

They still hold the same wonderful, fearful power they did when I first spoke them, even after paying my tithe for them.

Des draws me closer, pulls me in tighter.

I keep forgetting that beyond his cockiness and power, there’s a part of him that’s vulnerable, unsure. I said those words to him seven years ago, but seven years is a long time to go without hearing them—an eternity for two soulmates.

I feel him shudder against me as he responds, “Till darkness dies.”