“I have a secret to share,” Des murmurs, his mouth pressed close to my hair.

I still.

He’s shared secrets in the past, but only after prodding. For him to offer one up … When he did it earlier in the day, while I was getting healed, I thought it was a one-off event meant to distract me from the situation. But now, it’s possible he’s simply opening up to me more, trusting me more.

I angle my head to look up at him.

Where minutes ago he was carefree and content, now he looks somber.

“When I close my eyes, all I see is the shape of your face and the brightness of your smile. You are the stars in my dark sky, cherub.”

That isn’t at all what I expected to come out of his mouth. My heart, I’m finding, is simply not big enough to hold everything I feel for this man.

Des swallows gently. “You and I share many tragedies. Mothers who died too soon. Terrible fathers …”

He said something similar days ago.

He takes a deep breath. “My father was killing off all his heirs when my mother discovered she was pregnant,” Des begins. “She fled the palace before anyone else could discover this particular fact.

“The kingdom simply thought she’d deserted her king—a grave enough offense. And the slight didn’t go unnoticed. From everything I’ve learned, my mother had been my father’s favorite concubine. It must’ve bruised his ego.

“He spent years searching for her, but she’d made a career for herself as a spy; she knew how to hide.

“She raised me in Arestys, shielding the truth of our identities and the extent of our power from the world.

“She did a good job hiding us, but … I exposed us.” He says this with such guilt.

“As soon as he discovered our existence, my father came for us, and—he killed her.”

I feel horror closing up my throat.

Des’s eyes are far away, as though he’s seeing the memory unfold all over again. He runs a hand over his face. “I was fifteen when I watched my mother die.”

I can’t even fathom …

“Des, I’m so sorry.”

Has a sorry ever, in the history of the world, made a situation like this better? And yet I can’t not say it.

He blinks several times, pulling himself out of the past. “I killed my father.”

My eyes snap to his. For several seconds I don’t breathe.

Des … killed his father?

So many emotions bubble up. Surprise, horror, fear … kinship.

You and I share many tragedies.

Now I understand. His father and mine both died by our hands. It makes me wonder anew what he saw that first day he met me. I always assumed my depravity had to have shocked him a bit. I hadn’t imagined this.

“Was it an accident?” I ask.

He laughs. “No,” he says, his voice bitter, “it was quite deliberate.”

My skin prickles. “Why are you telling me this?”

His hand slides around my waist, locking me to his side. “Sometimes I see you, and the past is alive. It overlays who you are and what you do.” He squeezes me closer, almost to the point of pain. “I’m reminded of my own old wounds, and I feel … I feel my vengeance rising.

“I cannot change my past, and I cannot change yours. I cannot even stop you from getting hurt … but I can make others atone for your pain.” He says this last part so silently, so malevolently that a shiver escapes me.

That’s foreboding.

“What are you thinking of, Des?” I ask him. Because it’s clear to me that he’s scheming.

He glances down at me, his white hair and silver eyes looking more Otherworldly than ever.

“Nothing, cherub. Nothing at all.”

Chapter 42

“Did you hear the news?” Temper asks the next morning. The two of us eat breakfast in the same large atrium I ate at my first morning here.

This morning, when I woke up alone in my bed, I headed over to Temper’s room and took her out to breakfast.

I was determined to show those here at Solstice that they hadn’t seen the last of me yesterday.

“What news?” I ask now, ripping off a piece of a strudel and shoving it into my mouth.

Dozens of other guests in the atrium keep glancing at me and my repaired wings, their voices low as they whisper into their friends’ ears.

I find I want to throttle every last one of them—even those that weren’t closed up in Mara’s throne room with me. How can anybody be okay with what’s happening to humans here?

Meanwhile, the waiters keep finding reasons to come by my table, some to whisper a quiet thanks, others to discreetly drop off an extra pastry here and another warm drink there.

“Bitch, you’re missing out on all the juiciest gossip,” Temper says, pulling me back into the conversation. It’s gossip she’s undoubtedly coerced from the humans here.

“Not if you tell me.” I kick my heels up on the table, the action earning me more whispers.

Temper leans forward. “The fairy who raped your human woman yesterday?”

The food in my mouth turns tasteless. I force myself to swallow. “What about him?”

“He disappeared sometime during the night. Apparently the only thing left of him was a finger, though some people say it wasn’t a finger at all—that it was his junk.”

I grimace. “Ugh, Temper, couldn’t you have waited for me to finish breakfast?”

Last thing I want to think about was a sexual predator’s severed man bits.

“That’s not all.”

I raise my eyebrows, picking up my cup of tea and taking a swallow.

“Apparently the queen’s harem have gone missing—supposedly they were taken right out of the queen’s bed, though no one saw it at all.”

I nearly choke on the tea.

One rapist and the queen’s entire harem all go missing on the same night?

There’s only one person with both the motive and power to do such a thing, and he wasn’t in my bed this morning when I woke up.

Temper steals a slice of bacon from my plate. “People are saying Des did it.”

Just as they blamed him for the soldiers’ disappearances. Only now … now I’m not sure where to begin and end defending him.

“Where is he anyway?” Temper asks.

I shake my head. “I don’t know.”

She sits back in her seat, a smug little grin on her face. “That cheeky bastard did it, didn’t he?” she says. “I think I like him.”

I feel Des’s magic lasso around me, tugging me and my seat backwards.

Speaking of cheeky bastards …

“Shit,” I curse under my breath, grabbing the edges of the table as my crossed ankles slide off of it. The chair I’m sitting in begins to slide away from the table in jerky fits and starts.

Temper pauses. “What is it?”

My blood quickens. “Des is back.”

Chapter 43

It’s not just that Des is back, it’s that he wants me to train yet again, hence the magical leash that’s all but dragging me out to one of the queen’s gardens. It’s only once I arrive that the Bargainer’s magic dissipates.

I catch sight of the man himself leaning against a tree. In front of him, he holds the pommel of a sword like one would a cane, his outfit today one hundred percent human, from his KISS T-shirt to his leather pants and black, steel-toed boots.

“Morning, cherub,” he says, stepping into the sunlight, looking far too chipper for his own good. He tosses me the sword.