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And this man who was leading me on a leash, gagged and cloaked in darkness, was not the man I had conjured up in my own mind. He was so much more, and it thrilled me. A thrill I neither wished to acknowledge nor accept as truth.

We walked up the spiral of stairs that wound up into the light above us in perfect silence. It was not until we stopped at the door that had led me into this horror that he turned to me. I had been told to keep my head down, but I was looking directly at him when he did. The smile that curled across his face was so complex I couldn’t peg it, first adoring, then devilish, then desirous, then sweet. It cycled so many emotions I could not track all of them. And then it twisted to doting adoration as he stroked the small bit of my cheek that was exposed between the straps with his thumb.

“I thought you looked beautiful coming undone on my fingers. This is the peak of your beauty,” he whispered before pressing an adoring kiss to the top of my cloaked head. “Be a good girl for me, Cricket.”

I didn’t want the twist of a knot within me drawing tight with the excitement that statement bore. I fought it, and it laughed at me.

And then he was leading me out of the door. I wanted to spit on him. I wanted to claw his eyes out. I wanted to stomp on his balls until they exploded. I didn’t want to feel the ooze of honey that dripped down my core to sweeten the aching burn of need he had planted there. I wanted to hate him with every fiber of my treacherous body. But I was all alone in that desire. Everything in me leaned into him, longed to be touched and tasted by him.

I hated it.

I watched the bare stonework of this section of the palace give way to the intricate woodwork of the palace proper, then to the simple polished wood floors of the courtier’s wing and then into a section of the castle I hadn’t explored. These floors were tiled with pale, white-grey marble inlaid with warm orange, brown, and yellow leaves. They scattered along the tile work like confetti after a party with seemingly no pattern at all to them.

We traversed hallway after hallway as The Raven led me. There was no point in trying to memorize the path. It was a simple impossibility. Not only could I not raise my head, but even if I could, The Raven’s broad back was directly in front of me, and he had not afforded me enough leash to move beyond him to see around his hulking frame.

“Slow. And stop,” he whispered as we drew up to where a crest was laid into the marble.

Two greyhounds on their back legs facing each other with a black bolt of lightning between them on a background of muted ochre. It was beautiful in a way, outlined in shining brass and surrounded by a flurry of the leaves. I had noted the occasional crest here and there, but I hadn’t yet connected what each of them meant. Who belonged to which crest seemed to be a maze in and of itself.

The Raven gathered the leash and drew me around him to tilt my chin up with a curl of his finger. His beautiful forest eyes met mine and held me in the palm of his hand as his glove stroked my cheek. He watched me for a long moment, as if memorizing every single feature of my face, like it would be the last time he saw it.

“You asked me in the Maw why I didn’t touch you, Cricket.” His voice was a soft whisper of thunder. “I ache to touch you. Since the first moment I saw you, I have wanted nothing more than to touch you in every way a Fae can touch a woman and some that have not even been thought of yet. I have been tormented by it, dreamed of it, needed it like the very air we breathe. You are my drug, Cricket. I do not touch you because I know if I do, I would never be able to stop. I cannot touch you yet, but . . .” He broke eye contact but kept a firm hold on my chin. His attention was gone but for a short moment before returning to my eyes. “The time will come . . . eventually. For now, I will do as I can.”

I wanted to run naked through the tall redwoods of his eyes. I wanted to roll headlong down the mossy rolling hills and let the soft bed of them caress my skin. His words meant little to me if he was looking in my eyes, and I into his. That moment of connection had a sliver of golden thread working through me to tie knots around my heart. I needed more. I needed everything.

He worked the hood of my cloak back down over my head and pushed open a door behind me, taking me with him. The marble floor fell away to rich carpets woven to look like the most lavish of nature’s display of turning leaves, cut through with raised pile shaped and trimmed to resemble roots to a great oak tree.

“Captain,” a man’s voice I had not heard before called from some distance away.

“Ard Tiarna Brittle Spear,” The Raven replied in a flat tone.

I was noticing more and more the way his voice became guarded with others. My time in the dark had heightened my attention to the small changes in his demeanor. Once, it was a child’s book of rhymes but now was a lavish epic tale with nuances and textures I had not noticed before.

“And who do you bring calling with you, Captain?”

The sound of a thick book closing and being set aside proceeded the soft creak of a wooden chair and the crunch of leather boots easing into the weight of a man standing. Muffled boot falls took an unhurried journey toward us, as if the speaker, Ard Tiarna Brittle Spear, was in no hurry at all to join the two of us on the oak and leaf strewn carpets.

The Raven closed the door behind us, the sound a deep hollow thud that rolled through my muscles with a sense of unease as its partner. “The Golden Pearl of The Warrens.”

“Truly?” That had piqued the interest of the Ard Tiarna, and his steps held a little more urgency. Well-oiled, buffed black leather riding boots came into my view of the carpet as he came to stop before me. “I had thought we were friends, Captain, but I hadn’t imagined we were this endeared to each other. May I touch her?”

The Raven grunted. “She’s declawed for the moment.”

That brought a good-natured chuckle from the Ard Tiarna. “My lady Pearl, I am going to push back your hood and look upon you. I haven’t yet had the pleasure, but I have heard so many tales throughout the court of your beauty and viciousness.”

I held still as the weight of the cloak hood was pushed back from my head and then the soft silken skinned finger of the Ard Tiarna found my cheek, where it delicately and furtively danced across it. “Lift your head for me, beautiful Pearl?”

His voice wasn’t unpleasant. It was gentle, tender, like one might speak to a cherished cat.

I raised my head and took him in as he took me in.

He was as beautiful as all the other Fae in the court. His hair was a deep russet that danced with the light of a fireplace across the room, casting copper and bronze highlights throughout its length and sparkling off the various rings, cuffs, stones, and charms that adorned it. Most of it was pulled back, out of his way, but the rest draped over his chest and drew the eye to the elegant bead work that was at the collar of his linen shirt. His eyes were shocking, though. Unlike The Raven’s or the King’s, or even the Bandrui’s eyes, his were a night sky from corner to corner. Dark navy melted in with midnight purples and twinkled with a thousand glittering stars. They were haunting. They were dreadful. And yet they were everything the night sky truly was, all its nightmares, all its dreamscapes cast behind deep-red lashes.

We watched each other for a long time, taking each other’s measure. It was different than with The Raven, though. Where The Raven’s gaze drew me in and made me feel like I was falling, Ard Tiarna Brittle Spear’s eyes were just another beautiful painting in a gallery of other beautiful paintings. It made you stop and want to look, but it did not make me feel dizzy.

“Even with this punishment upon your face, you are still stunning,” he whispered with awe in his voice. “I have never seen a Fae or a human so gifted. She positively radiates with strength and power. Do you not feel it when you are near her, Captain?”

He looked away from me. The movement drew my attention to the notched tips of his ears that were being hidden by an ornate ear cap. A brass oak tree whose roots wound down the shell of his ear, its branches disappearing into his hair. He could hide them with his adornments, but this man was once a soldier or a warrior of some sort. Only those Fae that had seen battle had ears that were notched like that.