Dark Harmony
Page 84

He tastes like magic and mayhem. I want to laugh; I’m sure I’m going to cry. Des is no dream, no apparition that will be swept away when the Thief has had his fun.
Somehow, he outwitted death.
When the kiss ends, I stare up at him. Those pale, silver eyes, that softness right around his mouth, all those planes of his face that are so very heartbreaking—I didn’t know I could miss anything so damn badly.
“You’re real, right?” I whisper.
“I’m real.” The Night King is giving me that gaze of his, the one that makes me feel like I’m something worthy of worship.
“I thought I lost you—” My voice breaks.
The corner of his mouth curves up, and he looks at me so tenderly. “There are many uncertainties in life, but this one thing holds true: I will always come back to you, cherub.”
Des is not just darkness. He’s moonlight and stardust; he’s wishes and adventure and a love as vast as the night sky.
And he’s here, alive.
He’s alive.
A flash of anger flares through me, and I give him a light shove. “I thought you were dead.”
He smiles, catching my wrist. “Aww, cherub,” he says. “Don’t be mad.”
“Don’t aww, cherub me, Des,” I say, yanking my wrist out of his grasp. “You can’t even know what it was like,” I say hoarsely. “You can’t.” I couldn’t dream up a nightmare worse than that. Those hours I spent lamenting him.
Des closes the last of the space between us, his face turning somber. “I can, Callie. I almost lost you once.” His eyes pinch shut and he gives his head a shake. “I’m so sorry,” he says. He opens his eyes, his gaze blazing. “For deceiving you and forcing you to experience that. There is no worse hell.”
There really isn’t.
“And I’m so sorry for making you face the Thief alone.” He takes my hand and cups it between his. “Never again,” he vows, his voice fierce.
I take a deep breath and pull myself together. Now that Des is alive and burning with his own brightness, my skin has finally started to dim, my wings and claws and scales disappearing from view.
“I want more than promises and apologies from you,” I say.
Des’s eyes brighten and a corner of his mouth lifts when he realizes exactly what I’m asking.
He brings his wrist up in front of himself. As I watch, a strand of spider silk forms around it, then a dull black bead.
“Is this fair?” he asks.
A deal. One that I get to claim.
I give him a skeptical look. “One bead? I endured my soulmate’s death and faced down a god, and all I have to show for it is one measly bead?”
“Demanding siren. Fine.”
A second bead appears next to the first.
I give Des another light shove, a laugh slipping out. The laugh turns into a sob. And the sob … the sob gives way to ugly, heaving tears.
And that’s how this fearsome siren ends up sitting on the Bargainer’s lap in the Death King’s throne room, listening to the Bargainer sing her a fae lullaby, his head pressed to hers.
It was bound to happen. The last bit of my bravery was spent killing Euribios. I’ve got nothing left.
“I love you, cherub,” Des murmurs. “More than any fairy has a right to love anything.” He sweeps away my tears with his thumbs.
I nod against him.
“I’ll add a whole row of black beads to the bracelet—several rows. Just please stop crying. I can’t bear the sight of you sad.” He punctuates the sentiment by taking my hand and kissing the base of my palm. And then he kisses each fingertip, and the whole thing is so ridiculously sweet that I choke up again.
Closing my eyes, I take a few deep breaths. It’s a physical thing, putting myself back together, but eventually I do it.
I open my eyes and cup Des’s face. “I love you.” I smile a little as I say it.
I rise to my feet, pulling the Bargainer up after me. He still wears his crown, and he looks every bit the fairy king.
He squeezes my hand, and I think that’s his way of seeing if I’m ready to leave this room, and God am I ready, but before we go, I notice a discarded shirt several feet away. It’s Euribios’s shirt—he must’ve removed it right before he entered the pool.
Walking over to it, I pick the shirt up. Des eyes it curiously as I begin to twist the cloth round and round, turning the shirt into a makeshift rope. I then slide the rope through my belt loops.
There’s a box this belongs in, a box that sits in a house with sandy floors and chipped countertops. A box that all my most prized relics go in.
“It’s a memento,” I say, tying off the Thief’s shirt.
Des’s gaze turns capricious. “You may not live in the ocean, Callie, but you are every inch the siren.”
I don’t know much about sirens, other than the few lines I’ve found in dusty school textbooks and what I’ve learned myself, but collecting macabre mementos of my victims seems about right.
The Bargainer’s gaze sweeps over the pool. The waters are still humming, the sound pricking my skin.
His eyes drop to me. “You’ve never been more fearsome than you were when you took down the Thief,” he says.
I remember my magic singing through my veins and the thrill of watching my victim bend to my will, a god whose immortal life I stole because I ordered him to die.
“You were watching?” I ask.
Des should be frightened of me, not impressed. But I guess I’m overlooking the fact that my husband is a cold-blooded killer.
“How could I not? I’m a terribly curious creature.”
So he watched me kill. I wonder if he thinks of me differently.
People like us are someone’s nightmare.
Then again, maybe he always thought of me differently; I just finally lived up to his dark imaginings.
The two of us leave the throne room, winding our way back through the palace.
Des’s eyes study our surroundings. “So this is the Palace of Death and Deep Earth,” he says. “I got to admit, I was expecting a little more.”
“A little more of what? Ghosts?”
Because I saw plenty.
Not going to get those little ghostly fuckers out of my head for a long while.
“My mother used to tell me tales of the monsters that lurked in the land of the dead.”
I’d bet money the Thief hunted them all down for sport long ago.
“Are you going to tell me how you did it?” I ask, interrupting his reverie.
Des gives me a sly look. “How I tricked the Thief of Souls?”
“No, how you learned to whistle. Of course, how you tricked the Thief.”
Like pulling teeth with this one. I’m going to need every century of my newly long life to tease out this man’s secrets.
His eyes spark with delight at my attitude; Des likes me best with my claws out.
“Now, cherub, you know these secrets are going to cost you.”
“Des!”
He laughs. “Two words: kinky sex. If you can agree to it, I’ll sing like a choir boy and tell you everything.”
We both nearly died—the whole world almost fell to the Thief—and this is what he’s thinking about right now? Kinky sex?
I narrow my eyes.
“Promise you’ll enjoy it, wife. I’m vividly imagining pressing you up against the side of our pool and licking that glowing water from between your—”