Des is silent as we leave the throne room, his footfalls echoing in the cavernous halls. The two of us are cloaked in his shadows. With every step he takes, the candles nearby him snuff out, and Mara’s precious plants wither away.

“What happened.” He doesn’t ask it.

I can feel him shaking with anger, fighting some impulse to rip and render and destroy. His body practically hums with the need.

“They were going to punish that human woman. She’d been raped.” I have to steady myself for several seconds through the pain in my back before I continue. “I couldn’t let that happen.”

His eyes, his stormy, tormented eyes move down to me, and I see that a big part of him is fighting to stay mad. That if he doesn’t keep his anger right where he can see it, then he’ll have to let in all those other pesky emotions.

“So you took the punishment instead.” His words have no intonation, so I have no idea what he’s thinking.

I nod, and his mood continues to blacken.

Des carries me out of the castle, crossing the palace gardens as he heads towards our guest suite. The darkness he’s been dragging along with him now shadows the palace grounds, dimming the sky and choking the life out of the plants it touches.

Fairies stop what they’re doing to watch us, the wrathful Night King and his mate, the latter who is dripping blood along the stone pathways.

My sight’s becoming a little unfocused, spurred on by either pain or blood loss, and damn but my wings hurt.

As soon as I near the giant cedar that houses our rooms, we catch the attention of several Night soldiers who man its perimeter. Once they see us, they come running.

“Get a healer,” the Bargainer orders them.

As quickly as they arrive, they dash off.

Des storms up the staircase that winds around the tree. When he reaches our rooms, he kicks open our guest house’s front door, splintering the wood frame. Inside, he heads to the bed, laying me out on my stomach, his touch gentle.

“We’re going to heal you, love,” he promises me, moving some of my hair away from my face.

I nod to him, swallowing down my emotions. I feel shattered and vulnerable, and I’m so unused to being taken care of. I’d forgotten how nice it was to matter to someone, and how tender the ferocious Bargainer could be.

He straightens, and a moment later I hear him curse under his breath, presumably after getting a peek at the damage to my wings. And then his hands are on me, smoothing down my skin. I feel his magic soak into me, dulling the sharp bite of my injuries.

I sigh out my relief, the churning in my stomach settling now that the throbbing of my wounds has been dulled. 

“This will numb the pain, cherub,” he says, “but I do not have an affinity for healing.” He crouches next to me, taking my hand. “What you did …” He searches my face, “no one will forget it. Not that woman you protected, not the room full of fairies, not the Flora Queen and her consort—and not me. Mara might wear a crown, but everyone in that room saw who the true queen was today.”

My throat tightens. He’s going to make me cry.

“I couldn’t just stand by while—”

He silences me with a kiss.

“I know.”

Just then, someone knocks on the remnants of our door. A moment later I hear several footfalls as soldiers file into our suite, bringing with them a fae healer.

Des slides away from me to speak with the group. For a minute, all I hear is low murmuring, then the Bargainer and the healer come back over to me.

“But she’s a human,” the healer protests when she sees me.

The shadows in the room deepen. “She is.” Des says it like a challenge.

“Surely you know our magic doesn’t work on—”

“Heal her, or consider your life forfeit,” he orders the woman.

The room is quiet for several seconds, then I hear a shaky exhalation of breath. “I’ll do my best, Your Majesty.”

Des comes to my side a moment later.

“Stop picking on innocent fairies,” I breathe.

“No one here is innocent,” he says darkly.

I shiver a little, my skin chilled. I don’t know if it’s heavy blood loss I’m experiencing or just shock. Des rubs my arm, and his magic is at work once again, trying to warm me up.

“Do you want to know a secret?” he whispers, threading his fingers through mine.

“Always,” I whisper back. I don’t mention the fact that we’re in a room full of fairies. Knowing my mate, what he’s about to tell me is either no great secret, or else he’s muted the world to our conversation.

“Before my mother was a scribe, before she was even a concubine, she was a spy,” Des admits, smoothing my hair back as he talks.

I know he’s only trying to distract me, but it works. I settle in for the story as the fae healer begins to lightly run her hands down my wings. I can tell she’s straightening the bones out, but Des’s magic is so potent that what should be agonizing is merely uncomfortable. And I can ignore that discomfort while Des holds my attention captive.

“How did she go from a spy to a concubine?” I ask, my voice soft.

“She thwarted a conspiracy against the king.” He stares at our entwined hands.

I can still feel his ungodly anger in his trembling grasp and I see it in the dimness of the room, but I don’t say anything. The King of the Night might be frightening to the rest of the world, but he isn’t to me.

“I sometimes wonder just how badly she later regretted doing her job that particular day,” he says.

“My father called her into his throne room to personally thank her for saving his life. Whatever words were exchanged is a mystery, but he must’ve been quite taken with her because by the end of the encounter, he had her removed from her post and placed in his royal harem.”

That has me raising my eyebrows. “And she was okay with that?”

Des lets out a breathy chuckle. “No. Not in the least. She was what you’d call an unwilling concubine. But at that time in my kingdom, things were different, and my father … he was a very different ruler than me.”

The more I learn about my mate’s mother, the more I wish I knew her. And the more I learn about his father, the more I dislike the man.

“After she died, I never imagined I’d come across another woman like her,” Des says. “Someone who’d lived through much and still inherently knew right from wrong. Someone strong and brave.”

His hand squeezes mine. “And then I met you.”

I blink my eyes several times, my throat thick.

Des sobers up, his grip on my hand tightening. “When I saw you laying there, your wings broken …” he shakes his head, “it brought back memories from that night in Karnon’s throne room, and that night … that night brought back memories of my mother’s death.”

I had … no idea.

No wonder he’s so fierce about punishing those that prey on women; he’s been sculpted by his experiences.

Story time ends shortly after that, and by a half hour later, Des has left my side, his heavy footfalls pacing up and down the opposite end of the room.

His boots come to a halt. “Well?” he finally demands.

The healer hovering over me straightens, throwing yet another bloody rag into a washbasin.

“That’s the best I can do,” she says. She’s managed to fuse my wing bones back together and partly seal up the split skin of my wing, but it’s obvious that the injury isn’t close to being healed.

The shadows in the room shift and thicken. Today is really taking Des’s mood to task.

I don’t know how empty Des’s earlier threat was when he ordered the fairy to heal me earlier, but she’s done her best. It’s not her fault that fae and human magic aren’t terribly compatible.

“Temper,” I murmur.

Des comes over to me. “What was that, cherub?”

“Get Temper. She can help.”

You wouldn’t believe that a sorceress as inclined to evil as Temper is would be good at healing, but she is. Proof that the Fates are ironic bitches.

As it turns out, we don’t have to tell Temper at all; the already broken door to our guest house blows off its hinges before Des has so much as left my side.

“Callie.” Power rides Temper’s voice.

Gingerly, I raise one of my hands and wave it weakly.

She storms inside the room, her eyes wild. “Who do I got to kill?”

Des folds his arms. “You’re going to have to get in line for that.”

She comes to my side, her eyes landing on my back.

She inhales sharply. “Girl, what happened?” Her voice changes from anger to panic. It’s never a good sign when Temper goes soft on you. I must look worse than I think I do for Temper to have that kind of reaction.

Des comes up behind her. “I need you to heal her.” And now he, too, has an edge of panic in his voice.

“No shit,” she says, laying her hands on my wings. She closes her eyes, humming low under her breath.

Almost immediately I feel Temper’s magic at work. Where Des’s magic is sultry darkness and coiling shadows, hers is like heat from a furnace.

When she opens her eyes again, they glow. She continues to hum, the low bars of her voice sounding eerie.

“Bargainer,” she says, “tell me what happened.”

He and I share a look. The last time Temper was pissed off on my behalf, she blew up a portal.

“What do you already know?” Des asks.

“Only what Malaki told me—”

Malaki told Temper about this? That fairy is officially whipped.

“—that Callie was injured and we might be leaving soon.”

“Whoa,” I say, beginning to sit up. “We might be leaving soon?”

Temper pushes me firmly back down. “What else did I miss?” she asks.

Before Des can explain, I cut in. “They wanted to whip a human who’d been raped,” I begin.

I proceed to tell Temper the rest of the story, from the moment Des first exited the throne room to the moment he carried me out of it.

By the time I finish, Temper’s mended my broken wings completely. They itch where the new skin and bone growth has occurred, but, itchiness aside, they might as well be brand new.

“Where is that fucking thundercunt?” she demands, referring to Mara. “I will kill her.”

Her words have Des smiling nefariously, and oh my God, the only thing worse than these two being enemies is them being friends.

A knock on the now door-less doorframe interrupts Temper’s rant.

Outside, a human servant waits, his head bowed. In his hands is a bouquet of wildflowers.

“Yes,” Des says, moving to the doorway.

“I have a gift for the Night King’s mate,” he says, lifting the flowers a little as he speaks.

I push myself off the bed. “Callie,” I say, crossing the room. I take the bouquet from him. “And thank you for the flowers.”

His head hesitantly lifts, and I stare into his cool, green eyes. “Thank you, for what you did,” he says softly. “None of us will forget.”

He doesn’t need to clarify who us is.

He dips his head again, and then he leaves, heading down the steps.

“Wait!” I call out, stepping onto the walkway beyond the suite.

He swivels back to me.

“You don’t have to live like this,” I say. “None of you have to. There are places for all of you on earth.”

He smiles. “We appreciate you and your strange ways. Perhaps one day we will leave. Until then …” He tips his head then resumes walking once more.

I feel my shoulders deflate. Rome wasn’t built in a day and all, but still, it’s a hard pill to swallow, knowing that these humans will continue to live here, where they have precious few rights.

“So,” Temper says when I re-enter my rooms, “I propose we blow some shit up, then leave.”

Des doesn’t look completely opposed.

I feel all my despair and all my pain filling me up, choking the life out of me. Suddenly, I can’t take it.

Lightning heats my veins. Maybe, if you boil away all my suffering, all my petty insecurities, all my frustration and toil, you’ll hit an indestructible core. Something that cannot be broken by greed or lust or violence. Something that isn’t quite magic but is still power nonetheless.

“No,” I say, facing Temper. “I’m not running from this place.”

The beginnings of a smile tug at my mate’s lips when I meet his eyes.

“It’s time the Otherworld understands just how strong a slave can be.”