He snatches it from midair, studying the tarnished image. “Trying your hand at painting?” he asks raising an eyebrow.

“You were painting me,” I accuse.

Had I hoped to make him feel guilty? If so, I’m barking up the wrong tree.

He sets the painting down. “Censorship, you know, is the death of creativity.”

“I don’t care.”

Des levels his face close to mine. “Oh, but if your moans last night were anything to go by, then I think you do care about creativity—in all its forms.”

I feel myself flush.

I glance at the pile of books again. “When are we leaving for Solstice?” I ask.

“Tomorrow.”

I nearly fall out of my seat. “Tomorrow?”

Now Malaki’s insistence really makes sense. Talk about coming down to the wire with a decision.

Des pulls up a chair next to me, sliding into it and kicking his heels up on the table.

He folds his arms over his chest, his war bands catching the light. “If you had read the books, you wouldn’t be so surprised.”

“I don’t even know what day it is,” I say. It’s not like the Night Kingdom had calendars posted throughout the palace. “Or, for that matter,” I continue, “how many days are in an Otherworld year.”

“The exact same number as yours.”

I let out an exasperated sigh. “That’s not the point.”

“It’s June seventeenth,” Des says.

“That’s also not the point.”

He gives me an indulgent look. Flicking his wrist, one of the books slides off the stack, drifting through the air and settling into Des’s waiting hands.

I look at him quizzically. “What are you doing?”

“Storytime, cherub,” he says. “You want answers, and I’m feeling particularly indulgent, so for today, I’ll spoon-feed them into that sinful little mouth of yours.”

I purse lips, which only causes Des to grab my jaw and kiss me returning his attention to the book.

He opens the first cover, and the pages begin to rapidly flip. “Ah, yes,” he says when the pages settle, “‘A Brief History of the Four Kingdoms,’” he reads.

He begins to narrate the chapter to me, his voice taking on a cockney accent just for the hell of it as he explains the old rivalries between Flora and Fauna, Night and Day. I stare at him, utterly mesmerized by his voice and charisma.

“‘… each fights for the borderland they believe is theirs, even though the Great Mother and Father spoke of the earth, sea, and sky belonging to all fae creatures. Greed was seeded at the dawn of time, and with the cycle of the seasons, it has grown in fairy hearts.’”

What should’ve been a dull read is enlivened by Des’s narration. One by one, he moves through the remaining books, taking on various accents as he does so—sometimes it’s an Irish or Russian accent, other times it’s German or French, and once (to my utter delight) he impersonates a Valley girl.

Des was right; some of the later books he reads to me don’t need fanciful narration at all; they are quite a bit more engaging than the earlier reads.

From these later tomes I learn that the Day King’s father had a harem full of men; that it was considered a miracle at all that he fathered Janus, the current King of Day, and his now deceased twin brother, Julios.

Or that Mara Verdana, Queen of Flora, wasn’t heir apparent, her older sister, Thalia, was. However, before she ascended to the throne, Thalia fell in love with a traveling enchanter posing as a minstrel. He bewitched Thalia into believing the two were mates, and she gladly gave him most of her power. It nearly tore the kingdom apart. Eventually, the enchanter was put to death, and Thalia, never recovering from the heartache, fell on her own sword.

I stiffen when the text moves onto tales from the Kingdom of Fauna, and more specifically, Karnon. Apparently, according to the author of the text, he was a “soft-hearted” youth.

“‘Fear stirred in the kingdom’s breast. Kind souls make for poor rulers, especially in a realm of beasts,’” Des reads.

Absently, my thumb moves over the scales of my forearms.

“But Karnon grew to be both soft and strong, the way a bear might be tender with her young, but vicious to outsiders. Under his rule, he brought true harmony to a realm that had waged many civil wars throughout the long centuries.”

Des closes the book. My eyes flick between it and my mate. “Wait, that’s it?” I say. “That’s all it says about him? Nothing about his madness?”

“His madness is too recent to be included in such an old book.”

“How could they say he was a gentle ruler?” I ask. He raped and imprisoned women.

“Callie,” Des says softly, “you and I both know monsters aren’t born, they’re nurtured into existence.”

I know that’s true, but right now there’s a bitter taste at the back of my throat. “History should remember him how he was.” I pick at one of my scales, the book’s words getting under my skin.

“It will.”

The heat of my anger dies down a little at Des’s words, but I can’t get the image of Karnon’s mad eyes out of my head.

Pretty, pretty bird, his voice echoes in my memory.

Now that I think about him, the mystery I’m supposed to be solving comes bubbling back up.

Karnon isn’t solely to blame; there’s someone else out there doing who knows what to the missing men.

And as for the King of Fauna, what of him and his blackened heart? Where had his death gotten anyone?

The women still slept, and their children still terrorized other fairies. Whatever dark spell Karnon had cast, his death hadn’t broken it.

“Death undoes enchantments?” I ask Des.

He searches my face, probably trying to figure out just where my mind is at. Only seconds ago I might as well have been carrying a torch and a pitchfork.

“It does,” he finally says.

“Karnon’s death hasn’t undone the enchantment.”

“It hasn’t,” he agrees.

We’re back to where we were over a week ago, when I stared into those casket children’s eyes and saw no evidence of Karnon’s paternity in them.

Only now, knowing there’s more than one perpetrator out there, and hearing about the Fauna King’s gentle disposition …

What if Karnon wasn’t behind the dark spell?

Just the thought of lifting any of the blame from Karnon’s shoulders has me nauseous.

I push past all my hatred and all my twisted memories of my time as captive, and I try to see it through a clearer lens.

When I visited the Fauna King, there seemed to always be two Karnons, one who was wild and strangely gentle, and another who was calculating and sinister. The former liked to pet my skin and whisper promises about wings and scales, the latter would force dark magic down my throat. Karnon could slip from one version of himself to the other in an instant, like putting on or taking off a coat.

I might’ve been disturbed by the wild Karnon, the oddly tender ruler who was still very much insane, but I feared the sinister Karnon; he was both cruel and lucid.

I’d always assumed these sides of him were two aspects of the same man, but perhaps … perhaps there was something more going on here. Could it be possible that Karnon wasn’t two different personalities residing within the same flesh, but two different beings taking up space within one body? Maybe Des killed the primal, wild man who gave me scales and claws, but not the man who was trying to subdue me with his dark magic …