Page 75 of Let Slip the Dogs of War

I hum and wrap my arms around him a little more tightly. Lark relaxes into the touch. “What did you do after that? After you found me?”

“I went to the witch. I gave her my magic, and I didn’t care about her terms because I did not fathom a situation where I would willingly return here. That was the important part. I had to be willing.”

“But you don’t want to be here.”

“Wanting something and being willing to do it are two entirely different things.” Lark sighs. “Anyway, it matters little. I fled. My mother tried to drag me back, but when she realised I had truly forfeited my magic, she gave up. I think she turned her attention to Iagan for a while, but he had spent too long evading her grasp, and his power is what feeds the part of the veil that keeps high fae precisely where they are.”

“It does?”

“Hm. And now, here I am. I think… Oisin is not entirely wrong. He wants to make radical changes, but I think he will settle for less.”

“Probably.”

Lark smiles at me. It’s a smile that makes me think of when Felix and Ophelia and I used to sneak out of our dorm in the middle of the night, either to raid the kitchen or to escape out into the trees.

“We won’t settle for less,” Lark murmurs. “If they want me as a ruler, they may have me, but I will give them nothing else they want.”

I run my fingers through his hair. “Ophelia says the Seelie took her.”

“I can understand desperation. Oisin says they have been dealt with, and I believe him. Why blame the rest of them when I can help them instead?”

I swallow down what I want to say. I’m not going to be here to see it. Even if I come here, if we can’t strengthen our bond, then I’m going to live a normal life, with a normal lifespan. Another sixty years, if I do everything right. Lark drops a kiss to my shoulder again and then rests his chin on my chest. It’s a little pointy. I shiver and he huffs a laugh.

“Come,” he says, and I shiver again for an entirely different reason. Lark’s eyes sharpen, but he shakes his head. “We should at least clean up if you don’t plan to rest.”

“I’ll rest,” I reply. Lark climbs off me and the sudden loss of his body heat is unpleasant. What’s more pleasant is the way he takes my hand and, when I’m standing, pulls me close.

“Clean first,” he murmurs, eyes sliding over me. “I would not like to wear you out too much before tomorrow.”

I snort and kiss him, revelling again in the fact that he simply lets me. Wear me out… I want that. If it’s the last time we’ll have this, I want all of it.

Chapter Twenty-One

Lark

Dante and I nap for an hour before I gently shake him awake. He stirs with a pained moan and curls into me, and the content feeling that spreads in my chest is not at all tempered by the fact that I know I need to let him go.

He would stay willingly, I think, so long as I assured him that Grant and Ophelia would return unharmed. But his pack would not appreciate that, and I doubt his parents would either. I kiss his forehead and breathe in the warm scent of him.

“Wake up,” I murmur. “We have an hour before sunrise.”

Dante makes another sound and blinks slowly. His vision focuses, softening when he realises I am lying next to him. My heart stutters. No lover has ever looked at me like this before. It was difficult enough to endure his looks before, when I thought it better to keep my distance until he could truly understand what bonding with a fae meant, but now…

I kiss him before I can stop myself. His lips are soft and slack from sleeping, but he opens for me with a gentle sigh, shifting his body towards mine.

“Not much time,” he murmurs when we part, voice rough and gravelly. I kiss him again, harder, but he eventually pulls back with a rueful chuckle.

“Will the others be ready?” I ask.

“I’m sure Ophelia won’t have slept a wink,” Dante says, and when I frown, he shakes his head. “She hates waking up early. Like, before ten in the morning being early. She won’t have slept, just to make sure.”

That and I know she wants to get home. She and Oisin have a nascent bond—weak even for that—but that cannot mean more to her than her pack.

I kiss Dante’s forehead. “Come. I will see you all off.”

Dante looks as though he wants to say something, sadness pinching his features for a moment, but then he nods. “Yeah, okay.”

We dress in silence. The clothes Dante was wearing when he came here have been cleaned—something I could have done with my own magic, I suppose, and it is a strange realisation to come to that so few years without my magic means that I did not think of that at all. I have been using washing machines and microwaves and living in a city full of metal that often drags at me, but that I have never regretted. Not for a moment.