He seats himself beside me, our knees touching, and then he dips his fingers into the fountain. “Do you remember Cian? The unseelie prince I met in the wyldwoods near Valerian last winter?”
I have more recall of my most recent stint as his prisoner in the north—before we broke the curse—than of earlier years. “How can I forget? I thought you were working with Angharad and he was her spy.”
“He’s my foster brother,” he says, “and he’s my spy, not hers.”
“Your foster brother?”
Thiago looks down at the waters. “We were both raised by Old Mother Hibbert. Cian was shunned by the other children, and I made them uncomfortable, so we bonded together. When it came time to leave—when I was forced out—he came with me.”
“Why were you…?”
His smile twists. “My father came looking for me. My kind live alone, but they can sense another from miles away. We were never born to interact; we were born to kill each other and claim their souls. It gives us power and strength, but it also increases the… the killing urge. And my father sensed me.
“Old Mother Hibbert kept us on the move for months, and we were always one step ahead of him, but I knew he was out there. I knew he would kill all the younger children, simply because he could. If I stayed, I was sentencing them to death, and when she looked at me one day, I knew she knew it too.
“She does her best, Vi. But she was no match for my father, and so it wasn’t a choice. She gave me an old sword she had wrapped in the bottom of a trunk, a warm cloak, and as much bread and cheese as she could spare. And when I left, Cian came with me.
“We were on the run for years. I could always sense my father over my shoulder, but if I kept moving, sometimes he would lose me for a few months. And that’s when I went to the Morai for the first time. I needed to know if I could shield myself from him. I needed to know how to escape him. I needed to know how to control the creatures inside me.”
And they’d cast him out, prophesizing ruin if he ever returned.
“The Morai live in the south of Unseelie. Further south than I’d ever been. And for the first time, I felt another sort of pull.” Our eyes meet. “I thought it was you at first. Or the woman who would one day be my wife. It was always an itch I couldn’t escape, but it meant crossing the borders into Seelie, and my kind are hunted down and killed the second they pass the northern wall. But one summer, the itch grew too strong, and I left Cian behind and rode south.” He shrugs, but his face darkens. “I knew I couldn’t ride into Seelie wearing my Unseelie visage, so I vanished my wings and claws. I locked the darker half of myself away, and then I followed the call on the wind.
“The first time I saw her….” He closes his eyes. “I was walking through the markets of Ceres when the royal family rode past. My mother rode at the head of the party on a white palfrey, and the second I laid eyes upon her, I knew she was the one I was drawn to. Perhaps she felt it too, for our eyes met and…. The next thing I knew, her guards had me surrounded. I was going to fight my way free, but she insisted upon an audience.”
“And?”
He glances down, trailing those fingers through the water again. “She cried once she realized who I was. And I….” His hand stills. “I was angry with her for abandoning me. I stormed out of the castle and got blind roaring drunk. But she came for me the next morning, wanting to explain. She knew what I was. She knew the dark urges that rode through my veins, and she’d hoped to spare me from my father’s attentions. If he learned I’d been born, then he would have either killed me or chained me, she said.”
My heart aches for his mother. “And so she gave you away.”
“And so she gave me away.”
A shadow lashes against his throat. I’ve always wondered what they mean—what they are.
“Look at them,” he whispers, and so I slowly unbutton his shirt.
I place a hand against his chest, watching as those tattoos swirl and writhe across his skin. Sometimes they look like hungry wolves. Sometimes they look like monsters hidden in a dark forest. And sometimes they’re simply faces, watching me as I lie in his arms at night.
“The word you’re looking for is darkyn,” he says softly.
“What?”
Our gazes meet, and I feel the kick of his heart beneath my palm.
“In the ancient tongue, it meant dark kind. Over the centuries, that was shortened to darkyn.”
“What are they?” I whisper.
He holds his arm out, and as I watch, those tattoos crawl beneath his skin, little eyes forming and a hungry mouth gaping—
I jerk my hand back as teeth clash shut.
It was instinct, and even though the tattoo creature is contained within his skin, I see the look Thiago gives me.
“Darkness,” he whispers before tugging his shirt closed again. “Pure, utter darkness, and let me assure you, Vi. You don’t want me to lose control of them. Not even for a moment.” And then he leans forward and presses a kiss to my temples. “Is that enough for the night?”
It’s enough.
But I capture his face in my hands and steal a proper kiss from his mouth. “Thank you for sharing your truth with me.”
Thiago lowers his forehead to mine, our fingertips touching. “Thank you, for loving me, despite the shadows on my soul.”
Chapter Twenty
A bound queen can make the lands yield to her whims. A bound queen can heal her people. A bound queen can shatter an invading army with a single click of her
