Dark Harmony by Laura Thalassa

Chapter 30

“This is not how I expected to spend the day after my wedding.” The two of us walk through the castle’s halls. I assume we’re heading back to Des’s chambers to, you know, finish business, but the Bargainer leads me past the halls that wind towards his suite.

“I think that’s the point,” Des says. “I doubt the Thief wants us to enjoy our time together.”

Was that the Thief’s entire reason behind that show at the gates? He’d told me in a dream before that he wanted me to enjoy my time with Des. So it doesn’t make sense.

“Where were you this morning?” I ask.

“About.”

Ugh, why can’t fairies ever be straightforward?

“Your guards couldn’t find you. Were you even in the palace?”

Des disappears, only to reappear a few feet away at the end of the hallway. He hooks his hands on the archway above him and leans forward, blocking my way.

“Cherub, it’s precious that you should be peeved at me when you were the one daring the Thief to break my wards and snatch you away.”

Even as he speaks, shadows begin to thicken and coil at his feet. He sounds casual enough, but obviously this is a sore spot.

“Nuh-uh. That’s not how this works. You don’t get to be mad at me for how I handled the situation when you left me to do it alone,” I say.

Not entirely true—he was there to witness me playing chicken with a psychopathic monster—but he wasn’t there when the news reached me and Malaki.

He drops his hands and vanishes again, reappearing directly in front of me. Stepping in close, he says, “You’re right.” The shadows around him clear. “You were a queen this morning. I saw it, my people saw it, and the Thief saw it.”

Of course he’d bring this back to me being a queen.

“I also heard you outfoxed Malaki.” Des’s eyes practically dance at the thought.

“He wanted to hide me away like some fainting maiden.”

“The audacity,” he says.

Des takes my hand and, backing up, begins to lead me forward again. “I forgive you for your reckless endangerment this morning—”

I raise my eyebrows. “You are unbelievable.”

“—just as I’m sure you forgive me for abandoning you during such a situation.”

I guffaw.

Abruptly, Des stops us in front of a bronze door, the top of it coming to a curved point.

I’ve been so invested in our conversation that I haven’t been paying attention to where the Bargainer has been leading us.

“Where are we?” I ask, eyeing the door in front of me.

Des is giving me a look, his eyes sparking. I’d say he’s either particularly dangerous right now or particularly lusty—he tends to wear the same expression for both emotions. “Open the door.”

I stare at him for several seconds, my brows furrowing, then I grab the handle and swing the door open.

Inside, warm lamps hang from the ceiling. A series of columns hold up the arching ceilings, their surfaces inlaid with blue tile. The far wall is nothing more than open archways. Resting half inside and half outside the columned archway is an infinity pool, filled to the brim with Lephys’s glowing water. It snakes through the low lit chambers before curving out of sight. I’m not entirely sure, but I think it might bisect every one of this suite’s rooms.

Beyond the pool, Somnia is laid out before me, the lights of the city glittering amber and blue and pale green in the night.

I don’t think I breathe as I take it all in. I’m used to the beauty of the Otherworld, but this truly feels magical.

“You’ve been holding out on me, Flynn,” I say, walking deeper into the room, my gaze moving back to the pool.

I had no idea there even was a place like this in his palace.

“Do you like your wedding gift?” he asks from behind me.

“Wedding gift?” I turn to face him.

Des’s silver eyes gleam.

I glance around again. “Wait, are these … ?”

“Our new rooms.”

He slides his hands into his pockets, stepping up next to me to survey the chambers. “It’s no ocean—I’m afraid there are limits on even what I can do—but I figured my wife needed a place for her siren to unwind.”

Our new rooms. I’m still stuck on that. He did this all for me—for us.

The gauzy curtains blow in from the windows, the wind carrying in the evening scents. I run my hand over a column.

“I love it,” I breathe.

“I’m glad.”

When I glance back at Des, he wears a small smile on his face, his eyes soft.

Genuine happiness looks good on him.

I wander through the suite, taking in the opulent bathroom, with its iridescent turquoise tile and bronze fastenings—each detail harkening to the sea in some way. Around me, the walls of the bathroom are covered in slate grey rock, and the sunken tub is made of the same dark stone.

“I couldn’t help myself,” Des admits, following my gaze. “After all this time, I miss the caves I grew up in.”

Now that I look for it, I see it—the bathroom is some fusion between the ocean that I love and the caverns Des misses.

“It’s perfect.”

I leave the bathroom and walk into our bedroom. The chamber sits under the light of dozens of lamps, their flames sparking like fireworks. The headboard of the bed is the same worked bronze as in Des’s other chambers, but someone’s gone to the trouble of hammering out an image of crashing waves under a star-strewn sky.

There are a thousand other details to this suite that will surely take me days to fully notice and appreciate.

I turn to face Des. “You planned all this?”

He doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t need to, it’s all in his eyes. Des must’ve spent ages putting this chamber together. I rub my chest. My heart hurts so damn much.

I shake my head. “Thank you.”

Des disappears, manifesting at my side. He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “It’s nothing,” he says, his voice a little rough.

I lean into his touch, giving him a small smile. My gaze sweeps over the rooms again, and again, my eyes catch on that pool.

Really want to get in.

Before I can so much as voice those words, my clothes slip off, leaving behind a strappy bathing suit.

I touch the soft material. “How do you do that?” But it’s not really a question and I don’t expect an answer. Des has always had his ways.

“Magic, love,” he says, answering me anyway.

I back up from him. The Night King watches me with his gleaming eyes, and I feel that gaze everywhere.

“If I get in the pool, will you join me?” I ask.

“Do I have a choice?”

“Do you really want one?”

His eyes narrow, even as delight touches his features. “Answering questions with questions. You are shaping up to be an excellent fairy, Callie.”

I turn to the pool to hide my grin, and slowly lower myself in. The water is cool against my skin and my siren beckons for more.

I sink farther and farther into the glowing liquid until I’m fully submerged.

Des is right—it’s not the tumultuous ocean. There are no sailors to call down to their deaths, no promise of violence. But there’s peace here, beneath the surface. And what’s more, I think as I feel the water shift and Des joins me, there’s sex.

I rise slowly from the lapping waves, my eyes meeting the Bargainer’s. He stands among the water, the glow of it illuminating all the hard planes of his bare torso. His sleeve of tattoos is on display and his hair is tied back in a bun.

He is, in a word, overwhelming.

Slowly I move over to him. As I do so, I slip one of my swimsuit straps over my shoulder and down my arm, then the other. The rest of it is quick to go. The swimsuit was a nice thought, but right now it’s useless to me.

Des watches me with those silver eyes of his. When I reach him, I pause, staring up in his eyes.

“I could never imagine this,” I say. “Not in my wildest dreams could I imagine what life with you would be like.”

He cups the side of his face, his gaze moving to my lips. “It gets to be like this; for the rest of our lives we get to have this—the sweet moments, the confessions, the laughter, the magic—we get to have it all.” His thumb strokes my cheek. “Cherub, you’re every wish of mine.”

Lowering my eyelids, I rise to my tiptoes and kiss him deeply, fiercely. Reaching for his bun, I loosen his hair, letting it fall around his face in waves. This is where I make some comment about his silly man bun, and he has some quip that keeps me on my toes.

But for once, my humor’s abandoned me. All I want is Des, and I’m pretty sure all he wants is me.

His arms come around my waist, and then he’s wrapping my legs around his hips. If Des was wearing a swimsuit, it’s long gone now. I can feel every glorious inch of him bare against me.

I run my palms over his biceps, his tattoos catching my attention. There’s that somber angel and the rose. I touch them with my fingertips. That’s when I notice for the first time the ribbon of inked black beads coiling up his arm.

My fingers pause. “Is this new?”

His eyes seem to be smiling. “I wanted to wear a piece of you on me always.”

I trace the string of beads to his wrist, then back up his arm to his shoulder … where they morph into inked scales. Those, in turn, transition into black feathers. The tiny inked feathers drip down from his shoulder and onto his pec, a few of them breaking away to flutter right over his heart.

I pull my head back. “When—?”

“Last night, when I was supposed to be defending my kingdom.”

So that’s what he was doing away from the castle. My heart hurts with all that I feel.

I study the tattoo again. The beads, the scales, the feathers, those things were once burdens to me.

I wanted to wear a piece of you on me always.

My throat closes up. These rooms were already too much. To hear that he inked these parts of me onto himself …

He must see my throat working, he must know I literally don’t have the words to convey this unimaginable tangle of emotions I feel.

I’m just so unbearably, unspeakably happy.

“I love you, cherub,” he says. “Till darkness dies I will.”

I rise up a little, my body skimming over his hard torso. Between us our bond throbs like a single united heartbeat. I cup his cheeks and press my mouth to his.

Like moonbeams and shadows. That’s how he tastes, how he feels. As though the dark universe itself came together and decided one day to form a man. He still doesn’t seem real. I hope he never does. He’s my magic.

Des lowers me, or maybe I’m the one to sink back down. My skin brightens as the tip of his cock presses against my opening for a moment, feeling thick, much too thick. And then it’s sliding into me, and that exquisite thickness is stretching me, filling me.

I stare into Des’s eyes, and I see an eternity stretched out into them. Years and years of nights like this, love like this.

He pulls his hips back, and I feel the loss everywhere. But in the next instant, he’s sliding back into me, his cock throbbing.

“Love you so much, Callie,” he breathes. “Would’ve waited an eternity if it meant finding you.”

I lean my head against him, feeling him wedged deeply in me.

“I would’ve walked through hell to find you,” I whisper back.

He shudders out a breath. “You did, cherub, you did.”

I don’t know which experience he’s referring to, and I don’t really care. None of that horror gets to be a part of this moment.

I run my fingers through his white hair, the strands seeming to glow thanks to the water wetting it.

The two of us move up and down, in and out, pulling away and rushing in like the tides. We’re balanced on the edge of Somnia, with the stars above, and the world below.

Sometimes sex is dirty and carnal, and sometimes, like now, it’s love at its most intimate.

My breasts slide over his chest as I rise and fall, the glowing water making our skin slick.

My breath hitches as Des’s pace picks up and his strokes deepen. The whole time the two of us stare at each other. I don’t know about Des, but I have the most breathtaking view. Planets have spun and stars have aligned to bring us together.

“Every wish …” Des rasps out, taking my mouth.

The taste of him and the feel of him—those are the triggers that send me over the edge. I cry out into his mouth, my grip tightening on Des as my orgasm crashes through me.

The kiss ends as I lap up the last of my climax. Des stares up at me, his silver eyes devouring my expression. His thrusts become frantic, almost punishing.

“My wife,” he says, his voice low. His gaze drops to my lips and his grip tightens.

With a groan, I feel him come. The water splashes around us as he slams into me, again and again. His gaze crawls back up, and he drinks me in as he rides out the last of his orgasm.

Even after we’re finished, we stay locked together. I brush back his wet hair, trying to memorize every feature of his.

“I really love my wedding gift,” I say.

He lets out a low, satisfied laugh. “So do I.”

I don’t know what time it is, only that my body feels boneless and my siren is, for once in her life, fully sated. Des sleeps next to me, his leg thrown over mine, and a heavy arm draped across my body.

I envy the King of the Night his ability to sleep. I’m sure the moment I give into it, the Thief of Souls will be on the other side waiting for me.

Do the dead ever really die? The Thief’s voice echoes through my head. I frown. I can’t escape him, even now.

This is our little game—and trust me, enchantress, it’s far from over.

I roll the words over and over in my mind.

He tricked Des into giving me the lilac wine the night he said that, thus making my magic compatible with his.

All so that what? Why would being magically compatible even matter to him?

I will never leave you alone, enchantress. Never. Banish the hope if you have it. You cannot ever escape my clutches. Not even in death.

Goosebumps bloom across my arms.

Not even in death.

The sleeping soldiers, Galleghar’s incorruptible body, the Thief of Soul’s ability to outlive even death …

I nearly gasp when it comes to me.

Of course. Ofcourse.

All those stupid riddles, and it had been right in front of me the entire time.

Not terribly long ago, Des had explained the four kingdoms of the Otherworld—Night, Day, Flora, and Fauna.

But there were two others.

The Kingdom of Mar … and the Kingdom of Death and Deep Earth.

The Kingdom of Death and Deep Earth.

In a world at war, who would truly win?

Death would, that’s who.

Do the dead ever really die?

Jesus.

This is why the Thief can wear the bodies of the dead, and this is how he can send soldiers into a sleep from which they cannot wake. All of the Thief’s strange, mysterious powers that the Otherworld has never seen, they are powers that belonged to the Kingdom of Death.

The throne the Thief sat on, the staggering reach of his magic … He’s not just any fae from the land of the dead—he must be their king.

This, of course, is all assuming I’m right.

I am right. I feel it in my bones.

I shake the King of Night’s shoulder.

Des wakes with a smile, already reaching for me. “Insatiable wife. Want another go?”

If only.

“Des,” I whisper, “I think I know who the Thief is.”