dance,” she said again. “I know you’re watching. Come out and play.”
A few moments later, he came to stand—motionless—on the dance floor.
“About time.” She spun so she was chest-to-chest with him and slid her hands up his chest slowly enough that she could feel the muscles under his shirt.
“I thought you were going to make me chase after you.” She let her hands slip over his shoulders and around the back of his neck.
He stayed immobile as she did so. “You’re a foolish one, aren’t you?
“Nope.” She tilted her head so she could stare up at him.
All around, bodies crashed into them. The music was deafening, and if he’d been anything other than faery, she’d have had to yell over the noise.
“I could be anyone.” He had his arms around her protectively in the writhing mass. “You’re vulnerable here.”
A faery she didn’t know, a faery who wasn’t being torn out of reach, had her in his arms—and the aching hunger inside her lessened. He was a strong faery, stronger perhaps than any she’d met, and bits of his energy were sinking into her skin where they touched. I could die happy right now … or he could. She tried not to think about the danger she would put him in if she fully gave in to her urges.
“You look dangerous … feel like it too,” she answered both his question and her own musings.
He moved so they were closer to the edge of the crowd, maneuvering her toward the shadows along the wall. “So tell me: why are you holding on to me?” he asked.
“Because I’m dangerous too,” she admitted.
He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t run either.
She went up onto her tiptoes and pressed her lips to his. A prism of energy flooded over her as he dropped whatever control he’d been using to hold his emotions at bay. Need. Regret. Awe. Hunger. Confusion. Ani let it all sink into her skin. She drew his breath and life into her body. She tensed like she was about to race something feral, like this was the only moment between her and starvation.
Despite the energy she took from him, he was steady as he held on to her. He slid an arm around her waist.
Her arms were still around his neck, and her fingers were clutching his hair. Her lips tingled. Her entire body pulsed with the energy she was stealing.
He broke the kiss. “You’re … what are you doing, Ani?”
“Kissing you.” She heard her voice as she said it. There wasn’t anything mortal in those sounds. She was the Daughter of the Hunt, and he was her quarry.
I shouldn’t.
She could hear every heartbeat in the room, feel the waves of sound pounding through the air, taste the breath of time itself escaping.
He stared at her. “This isn’t why I came here.”
“Is it reason to stay?”
When he didn’t reply, she put her hands behind her and clasped them together so she couldn’t touch him. “You can stop,” she whispered. “When you want … you can just stop … or … not.…”
He took one step backward. His emotions were locked up now behind a wall she couldn’t breach. Both his touch and his emotions were denied to her.
Ani bit her lip to keep her sob inside. To be so close to the energy that swirled inside him and be stopped felt criminal. She could taste blood, feel it welling up on her bottom lip.
He reached out one finger and took the drop of blood. She felt his breath warm on her face as she stared at him. He kept his hand raised between them.
Too many faeries could track with blood. She could. All Hounds could.
Can he?
She stared at her blood on his fingertip. “It’s yours,” she said, “for one more kiss.”
He could be anyone. What am I doing?
But the wall he’d built vanished, and his emotions crashed down into her. He was excited, afraid, hungry. He leaned closer.
“Step away from her,” a voice interrupted. Someone was pulling him out of reach. “Let her go.”
“Let her go?” The faery Ani had been kissing slammed his walls back into place, denying her access to his emotions, cutting her off from the banquet again.
Ani blinked, trying to focus around the rainbows clouding her vision. Kissing him had made her hungers vanish. It made everything right.
“You need to take a walk, Ani.” Her would-be rescuer had her arm in his hand and was stepping backward, propelling her away from the yummy kissable faery.
She focused her attention on the interruption. “Seth. What are you doing?”
Seth frowned at her and then directed his words at the faery. “He needs to leave. Now.”
The faery watched the two of them with a bemused expression. “As you will.”
And he vanished into the crowd.
“You are a pain in the ass, Seth.” Ani shoved him. If it wouldn’t end up causing her far more complications than she could afford, she’d give in to the urge to bloody his nose. Instead, she pursued the pale faery across the club. She pushed her way through the crowd.
He paused at the door, and watching her as he did it, he lifted his finger to his lips.
Oh shit.
Ani froze—and he left.
With the taste of my blood.
Devlin stood shivering in the alley outside the Crow’s Nest. Much like his mother-sisters, he required blood, and none but his mother-sisters’ blood had ever been truly sustaining.
Until now.
With one taste, he knew: Ani’s blood was different. She was different.
He’d bled every species of fey there was; he’d bled mortals and halflings. Eternity had given him more than enough time to do so. He hated his need for blood, but he was made, not birthed, and that was the cost. His life wasn’t natural, and being made of the twins had brought an unpleasant side effect: without absorbing blood, he would weaken. He took what he could in the violence that was his role in Faerie; it wasn’t truly sustaining. Only the combination of the blood of both Order and Discord kept him strong—and getting their blood always had costs and complications.
As if bleeding Ani wouldn’t present complications? How did one start that conversation? Hello, I almost murdered you once, but I noticed that your blood—just a bit here or there—would be really useful. Devlin shook his head. The shock of the cold rain that had begun while he was in the club helped him feel more alert, but his thoughts still felt muddled.
He tried to focus on the logical details: perhaps sparing Ani was going to change his life in positive ways—instead of the disastrous way he’d expected should his treachery be exposed to the High Queen. Until tonight, he’d thought Ani’s was a brief mortal life. Considering the time difference between the mortal and faery worlds, such a span was easy enough to hide. As a mortal, Ani—the living proof of Devlin’s disobedience to his queen—would exist for only a blink: Sorcha would not know he’d failed her.
Now, however, Devlin knew that the girl he’d not-killed was only barely mortal and becoming less so by the moment. He could taste it in the single droplet of blood she’d shed. Ani was something new, something unlike any other faery he’d met in all of eternity.