There was no judgment in her tone, just an earnest curiosity, which I appreciated. Last thing I wanted to do was justify our survival methods to a tourist who hadn’t even seen therealshitshow of Midnight yet.
“It’s… kind of a long story.”
“Look around you, sinner. All we’ve got is time.”
I let out a long breath. She was right, and something told me if I didn’t spill it, she’d pester me for the rest of the hike.
“Those of us exiled to Midnight are the worst of the worst,” I began. “Most of us are portaled into the realm far away from the city, dropped into battles more often than not. Military duty isn’t exactly a volunteer thing here.”
She shivered next to me, and I resisted the urge to pull her close.
“Anyway,” I continued, “if you make it as far as Amaranth City, you stand a better chance at surviving. But surviving behind the wall requires a different set of skills.”
“Skills you obviously have,” she said. “Okay. So you, Hudson, and Elian made it to Amaranth after your arrival.”
“Well, Hudson… He was born here. And don’t ask me any more than that—it’s not my story to tell, and I don’t even know most of the details. But yes, Saint and I made it to the city. Different timelines—I’d been here a while by the time he showed up—but eventually, our paths crossed. Not long after that, we met Hudson. We all hit it off. Didn’t take us too long to put our heads together and figure out we had some… complementary talents.”
She flashed a wicked grin, her eyes sparkling with new mischief. “Oh, Ibet.”
The look in her eyes sent a shock of heat straight to my cock.
Bad idea, asshole. Bad, bad idea…
Dismissing the sudden onslaught of images featuring Haley on her knees and me telling her to suck harder, I said, “Saint was a smuggler and a con who could just about charm a corpse out of the ground. And Hudson—”
“Let me guess. Muscle?”
“Exactly. Also a good scout. Flying is dangerous in Midnight—you risk being shot down by a solider’s flaming arrows or attacked by a raven gryphon—but gargoyles are fast, strong, and extremely agile flyers. That worked out in our favor, especially when we had to meet up with people we didn’t know very well.”
“Okay, so Elian was the mouth, surprising no one. Hudson was the eyes and the muscle. That makes you…” She glanced up at me and narrowed her eyes, assessing. “The brains?”
“I have certain… abilities,” I hedged. “Manipulation techniques that allow me to read things about people—things they don’t always want to broadcast.”
“Such as…?”
Don’t even ask, angel.
Glaring at her, I ignored the question and started down the rise, leading us to the edge of the field.
“Okay,” she said, seemingly content to move on. “You guys hooked up behind the wall and decided to parlay your talents into a drug-smuggling operation?”
“No, we didn’t start out dealing in Dream—that came later. At first, it was just… well, whatever people needed. Saint had a way of finding things for people, or finding other people who could get the first people what they needed. Through that, he developed a reputation as the guy who could get anyone anything—weapons, booze, sex, spells, poisons and hexes, information—and he built this whole network of associates who came to trust and rely on him.”
“When does the mystical fae crack come into play?”
“Drugs were already rampant in the city, same as anywhere else—people want their medicine. Something to take away the pain, you know?”
She nodded.
“But Saint… He was always one step ahead of the game. By the time some new designer drug hit the streets, he was already looking for the next big thing. Eventually, we found it. One of the trading caravans came through Amaranth selling corpsevine flower as a cure-all. Total bullshit, but we started experimenting with it. And we figured out if you dried the flowers under the full triple moon—it only happens once every two months or so—you could activate the hallucinogenic properties with dark fae magick. From there, you could process it into pills.”
“Wow. Not only do you sell it, but youinventedthe crack? It’s like I’m standing in the presence of drug-dealer royalty.”
“I wouldn’t go that far. But yes, we discovered it.”
“Devil’s Dream,” she said. “Interesting name.”
“D2, Black, Dark Delight. There are a lot of names for it, but the end result is the same: it takes you right out of your mind and into another place entirely. Swallow enough, and eventually, you’ll no longer be able to tell fantasy from reality.”
