Dark Harmony by Laura Thalassa

Chapter 9

I stare up at the stars, my body stretched out along the thin pallet resting on the dry earth. The night here in the Banished Lands is so clear the heavens sparkle above us.

Next to me, Des leans against a boulder, one of his knees bent in front of him, ruminating. He’s not angry or surprised, just … lost in his own mind.

In front of me, our fire crackles. Its flames flicker from rosy pink to pale green to lilac then buttery yellow, and the smoke that rises into the night sky is cast in dusty pastels. The whole thing is a kaleidoscope of color captured in heat and light, and it’s putting out a shit-ton of magic.

Why it looks like that is a secret Des hasn’t divulged—yet.

“How long do you think your father’s body has been missing?” I ask.

Des shakes his head. “No more than a decade or so.”

I raise my eyebrows.

“I’ve checked many times over the two centuries since his death,” he explains. “I’ve been perversely curious whether the earth would one day accept him. I should’ve known some other sort of fuckery was afoot.”

Resurrected kings, possessed soldiers, and a body-snatching Thief. It sounds nonsensical.

Perhaps if I wrote it out I would understand it all better.

“Do you have a notebook and a pen?” I ask the Bargainer.

In response, he snaps his fingers, and from the ether he produces a pen and a pad of paper.

I take both from him, and smooth the paper on the ground. Uncapping the pen, I begin to write.

Des peers over at what I’m scrawling down.

When I don’t say anything, he asks, “What are you writing?”

I pause, my eyes moving to his.

“A timeline.”

“Here is what we know: your father and the Thief are somehow connected,” I say. “If we start from the beginning, your father was once simply a king with a lot of consorts and kids; he probably wasn’t the best dude out there, but he wasn’t always murdering his young.”

I pause, just to make sure I have the story straight so far.

Des gives me a nod, looking vaguely entertained.

“Then at some point,” I say, moving my pen down my timeline, “he heard a prophecy about losing his throne, and he murdered his children as a result.” I scribble the note in.

“You, his one remaining son, then overthrew him,” I pause to write in the facts, “and shortly thereafter you discovered his body wouldn’t decay, so you put him in a tomb.” I draw a long line to show the time elapsed. “Over a decade ago, his body was still entombed.” I fill that out on my sheet. “Now his body is gone, and he is very much alive.”

Once I’ve written it all out, I stare at the sheet.

And … I’m not sure this exercise produced a single answer. Except that—

The Thief of Souls began kidnapping soldiers roughly a decade ago, essentially during that shadowy period of time where Galleghar Nyx might or might not have been entombed.

There could be something to that.

My gaze moves back to the beginning of the timeline, around when Galleghar Nyx heard a prophecy and began killing his kids. That was the first domino flicked, the one that set in motion everything that led to us sitting here in the Banished Lands, an empty tomb only a stone’s throw away.

“Have you heard the prophecy yourself?” I ask.

The corners of Des’s lips pull down. “It’s been … lost to time.”

Well, there goes that potential lead.

A flask materializes in the Bargainer’s hand. He takes a deep swig of it, then wordlessly passes it to me.

Des is not usually this open to sharing alcohol with me. Before he can reconsider the offer, I take the flask from him and bring it to my mouth. I wince as soon as the spicy spirits hit my tongue. There’s magic in the drink, magic that strokes my throat and tickles my stomach.

I pass the flask back.

“It’s too quiet here,” he admits, his gaze skimming our surroundings. “Something is amiss.”

Something is more than a little amiss. A man came back from the dead.

“Des, why are we still here?” I ask softly. I haven’t pressed the issue up until now because I wanted to give my mate time to work through whatever emotional turmoil is running through his head.

And yeah, I get that an empty tomb is not a huge surprise, given that Des fought his dad back in Flora’s forest, but between keeping me alive and then defending his kingdom from an army of possessed soldiers, the King of Night has probably been a little too preoccupied to actually process that fact.

That being said, this was supposed to be a quick adventure—see Galleghar Nyx’s resting place, then go. But now we’re lingering, and maybe that wouldn’t be a problem except that, despite the drink, I can feel this place sapping away my strength bit by bit. And Des has a distant, troubled look on his face like each second he’s moving farther out of my reach.

He takes another swig from his flask, passing it back to me. “Someone here must’ve seen what happened to the body,” he replies. “I’m going to have a little chat with them.”

A little chat. Right. That’s a Bargainer euphemism if I’ve ever heard one.

I swallow a shot’s worth of Otherworld spirits—oh, that sits well in the stomach—before handing the flask to Des and glancing around us.

There’s not a single spark of life anywhere within eyesight. Not an animal, not a plant, and certainly not a fairy. Besides us, there’s no one here right now, just as there likely was no one here the day Galleghar’s body disappeared from its tomb.

But even if there was …

“Shouldn’t we then be looking for them?”

“They will come to us.”

I’m seriously not following.

Des, smirks at me, no longer looking so distant. “Have you been feeling a little parched?”

“Yes …” I say slowly. What does that have to do with anything?

“There’s a reason we banish fae here. This place is devoid of magic. A long ago battle reaped every last drop from the land. And magic, cherub, is a fairy’s lifeblood.”

With his flask, the Bargainer points to the bonfire, which is doing such an excellent job of shoving off the cold that I have to scoot away from it. “That right there is putting out magic in spades—magic that fae will be drawn to.”

The smoke gives off a perfumed scent—like burning rose petals—and I suddenly get it. The fire was literally sending out a smoke signal, carrying magic off along the wind, coaxing magic-starved fae towards us.

“So we’re bait,” I say. “You decided to make us bait.”

The Bargainer’s gaze sharpens on me, his pale eyes changing color as the flames dance in them. “You’re not bait, love. The fire is the bait. You’re an iron-manacled trap set to crush willful fairies.”

Yessss, my siren says. He understands.

Des’s eyes move to the fire and his gaze unfocuses. I think that maybe he’s going to add something else, but the seconds tick by, and soon it becomes obvious that his thoughts have returned inwards.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen the big bad Bargainer fall into himself. In my mind he’s the deal-making, door-busting, tatted thug I met eight years ago.

Not this.

“Des.”

We all have roles we play. I’m used to being the vulnerable one, the lonely one, and the Bargainer is used to being the tough, secretive one. The problem is, we aren’t actors and this isn’t a play. We’re flesh and blood and even a fairy as strong and capable and old (and I mean old) as Des sometimes needs to be weak.

And it’s okay to be weak and upset. I’ve stared down those emotions at the bottom of many a-bottle.

I think that’s where the Bargainer is, even though his stoic expression gives away nothing. His kingdom is compromised and his father is alive and maybe all sorts of old emotions he thought he buried are now resurfacing. I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong, but in case I’m not—

I get up and close what little distance there is between me and Des. I sink down on his lap, my thighs on either side of his hips. His gaze sharpens, and he stares at me with those intense, pale eyes of his. He’s hard to look at because even after all this time he’s still so ridiculously pretty.

He closes his eyes, and when he opens them, there’s so much turbulence in them. So much. An immortal’s worth. I touch the corner of his eye.

“I’ve got you,” I say. And then I kiss one of his cheeks, and then the other.

Wordlessly he pulls me to him.

“Cherub,” he brushes my hair back and cups my face, “I’m not sad. I’m so very, very angry.”

Now that he says it, I can feel the emotion like it’s some sort of magic unto itself. It vibrates beneath his skin and along our connection. It makes his hands shake.

“This is the one part of me I don’t want you to see,” he says softly.

His wrathful side.

“I really hate to break it to you, Des, but I’ve already seen you angry.”

Several times. He’s always fearsome to behold.

“Not like this.” He shakes his head. “Not like this.”

His hands glide up my waist, and that’s all it takes for me to realize that even when he’s angry—maybe especially then—I want him.

His rage and his touch are stirring the siren within me. I denied her earlier. I’m not sure she’ll be denied again.

I roll my hips against his. Beneath me, I feel him harden.

Des’s hands tighten on my flesh. “Careful,” he says, in a tone that should set my teeth on edge.

I lean forward, my breath against his lips. “Or else what?” I challenge.

Des’s eyes narrow even as his mouth begins to curl into a smile. He hooks one of his arms around me and flips us so that my back is now on the ground and his hips are nestled tightly between my thighs.

“Tonight I have especially little control,” he warns. It’s only now that I notice the shadows at his back. They gather into the shape of his wings, then dissipate. Gather then dissipate. Again and again.

He really is on the knife’s edge of control.

“You’ve never been with me when my fae side comes out to play,” he says. There’s a note to his voice that is not human.

“I’m not scared of your fae side,” I say defiantly. I never was.

He clicks his tongue. “Callie, Callie,” he admonishes.

As he speaks, I feel my clothes melt off me, like they were made of hot wax and not fiber. It’s a nifty little trick of the Bargainer’s.

His clothes follow, and now I feel the hard length of him pressing against my pelvis.

He drops down to take a breast into his mouth. That’s all it takes for my skin to brighten and my siren to surface.

I feel a slight shudder work through him, and I’m not entirely sure if that’s because he can sense my magic through our connection, or if my siren simply has that effect on him.

“Sweet siren,” he says between kisses, “you better sharpen those claws. Tonight I don’t plan on being nice.”

He spreads my legs wide. It’s almost lewd how open I am to him. The entire time he watches me greedily.

“Aren’t you precious to think I’m worried,” I openly taunt him. “I have my own tricks,” I tap his lips with my finger, “tricks that you are no longer … immune to,” I say, glamour filling my voice.

Des’s eyes flicker and his wings manifest, spreading wide behind him. They are backlit by the flames, and the thin membranes of them glow with pale warmth.

“I dare you, siren.” The Bargainer’s features seem to sharpen.

So the little fairy has come out to play.

This is Truth or Dare all over again. Only now, I’m the one that holds all the cards.

How utterly exquisite.

“Do your worst, Desmond Flynn,” I command him.

Something dark and obsessive and distinctly fae shines in his eyes as he pins me down to the ground, his body living shackles. I wantonly grind myself against him.

I can feel through our bond this strange need to capture and cart me away. To claim and keep.

I want it all—all his twisted, dark parts.

Without another word, he lifts my hips and savagely thrusts into me. I nearly gasp as the hard girth of his cock slides through my wetness. He takes my mouth as he pulls out, only to slam back into me, again and again.

This is no sweet claiming. This is need. This is possession. It’s everything that Des so assiduously fights against.

Damn me, I love every second of it.

“Harder,” I demand.

His lips curve up as he obliges.

It feels like more than just his cock is inside me, like all of him is surging forward and laying siege. And still I could stop him if I wanted.

If I wanted.

What I want is for him to screw me senseless and then screw me some more.

He takes my hands and presses them into the ground, holding me hostage as he pounds into me, his broad chest already slick with the first beads of sweat.

“Confess,” I command. “Confess to me what you are thinking.”

He stares down at me, a lock of hair dangling between us.

“I want to fuck you until you are mindless with want. I want to feel you squeeze my dick as you come around me. I want to die buried inside you.”

“Is this all you’ve got?” I say. “I’m disappointed.”

It’s a battle of wills at this point. His fae side pitted against my siren. His magic versus my own.

He flips me over and presses me into the ground. Leaning in close to my ear, he whispers, “We can’t have that now, can we?”

Des hikes one of my legs up and shoves his cock into me from behind. My eyes flutter at the force of the intrusion. He’s rougher than I’m used to—much rougher—and yet, my God, this is everything I never knew I wanted, and I can’t seem to get enough.

The ground chafes at my knees and breasts. Couldn’t fucking care less.

“Touch yourself,” the Bargainer orders, his magic riding the words. I’m a prisoner to them.

Of its own volition, my hand slips between my thighs, right where I’m already soaking wet. And then my fingers begin to stroke my clit.

It’s almost too much.

I arch back into Des, deepening his thrusts. I feel the slick slide of his skin against mine. In and out, in and out. I’m being rubbed in all the right places.

And then one of his hands skims my ass.

This is new. Is he going to … ?

His hand stops when it finds my other opening. He touches it, circles it, puts just the slightest pressure against it until the tip of his finger teases its way in.

“Oh my God.”

Des leans in close. “Leave God out of this, cherub. He has nothing to do with it.”

Sinful, sinful man.

He keeps thrusting, I keep touching myself, and he keeps probing. It’s that last one that’s driving me mad.

“Deeper,” I say, breathlessly. It’s more the siren who demands it than me.

I’ve never done this before. Not with any of the men I’ve been with. Not that they hadn’t tried; I just hadn’t wanted it then.

I want it now. Oh, how I want it now.

I let out a wanton moan at the sensation of having Des in me twice over.

His finger continues to press in, and I get exactly why Des rules over sex and the night and all that taboo shit that comes with it. Because this is so wrong, but it—feels—amazing.

More, more, more.

“Tell me, siren, are you disappointed now?”

“God, no,” I gasp out.

“There’s that word again.” His finger presses in deeper.

Is that touch supposed to be punishing? It’s not. Another husky moan slips out of me as my body thrums with pleasure.

“Perhaps you’d better find a synonym,” he says.

Des’s magic winds around my windpipe, and I’m prisoner to it.

“Des—” I give a strangled cry.

“Much better,” he says, the devil in his voice.

All this stimulation, all this sensation of being pressed and prodded and filled to the brim, it’s nearly too much.

And still I hold out. The sensation is too intense, too exquisite, too enticing, and I can’t bear the thought of it ending.

So I hide from my release.

I don’t know how long the two of us stay locked in our strange, taboo love-making. Only that at some point, Des’s white hair brushes against the skin of my shoulder and his lips are in my ear.

“Am I not servicing my queen well enough?”

My siren merely purrs.

He shifts against me, and I shamelessly gasp at the exquisite feel of him.

“Surely you should’ve come by now—or am I losing my … touch?” He tweaks his finger, and I let out a choked cry, nearly climaxing then and there. “But perhaps you need a little more persuading.”

Never want this to end.

He breathes against my cheek. “Come for me, siren.”

I can feel magic and darkness in those words. They settle into me and through my haze of pleasure I register that this is all going to come to a swift end.

I manage to squeeze one final order out. “Give me … everything.”

He does. Des drives into me as I shatter, his flesh pounding against mine harder and harder and deeper and deeper. The pleasure is so extreme, so acute, I can barely hold onto it. It washes over me, blinding, unnatural, addicting.

His body was meant for this—screwing and claiming and twisting my will into his own. Just as mine was meant to allure him and seduce him, and ultimately bend his desires to fit my own.

With a groan, he comes, his hips slamming into mine as he fills me up. Each stroke of Des’s hips sends another wave of pleasure through me.

We come down slowly, our bodies sweaty and dusty.

Des collapses next to me before dragging me onto his chest. He holds me captive in his arms, stroking my flesh softly, his lips trailing over my shoulder. He playfully bites the skin there. “Stay in my arms, cherub. Stay here and never leave.”

“Alright,” I say, settling in against him, blissfully uncaring about the chill creeping in with the evening.

For a little while, we lay there in silence. Then, slowly, a laugh bubbles low in my belly. “I can’t believe I let you stick a finger up my butt,” I finally say.

I’m such a smooth pillow talker.

I sense rather than see him smirk. “Says the girl who once got me to come in my pants.”

Now it’s my turn to smirk. Then my thoughts circle back. “I can’t believe I liked it.”

“My saucy little siren? I can. I have the feeling that by the time the sun sets on our lives, you’ll be the naughty one to my virginal, saintly soul.”

I outright guffaw at that. “As if.”

A grin spreads across his face. “You’re probably right.” His hand smooths down my spine, making my skin pucker. “I have more tricks in my bag. All you have to do is say the word. Or challenge me again. I rather enjoyed pitting my magic against yours.”

I can’t contain the excited shiver that courses through me. I don’t think I’d realized just what being mated to Des means. He rules over sex; everything that we’ve done together so far—that’s all just the tip of a very large iceberg.

And I probably still won’t fully understand what being mated to him means until I’ve seen and savored every last one of his perversions and witnessed every last one of his horrors. Only then will I fully be able to grasp this force of nature I’m mated to.

We’re quiet for a time.

“It’s not enough,” Des eventually says, his hand rubbing up and down my arm. “Having you. I always assumed that once you warmed my bed, it would be.” He cups my pussy as he speaks, and I swear to God, I am this close to jumping him all over again.

“But I’m a greedy bastard, and I want more. Always more.”

My fingers glide over his arm; his tattoos seem to leap and dance in the firelight. I lift my head and rest it on his chest.

“Tell me a secret,” I whisper.

He traces the curve of my cheek. “Secrets are meant for one soul to keep.”

I feel myself tense at his words.

“My mother used to say that all the time,” he explains. “It’s one of those formative lessons of hers I’ve carried with me since childhood.”

My brows furrow. Some of my sex-induced haze is slipping away. “And now the sleeping soldiers say it.”

“Up until now, I hadn’t been able to figure out how exactly they knew it.” Des’s finger traces my lips. “And then I fought my father, who is in league with the Thief of Souls.”

His finger drops from my mouth. “You wanted to know a secret, here’s one, Callie: some time, long ago, my mother whispered those same words to Galleghar Nyx. She, a spy set on escaping him, said them as a taunt. And now he’s taunting us both with them.

“I need to understand the nature of his undeath to understand the rest of this mystery.”

Undeath. There should be simply life and then death, but in the land of supernaturals, both earthly and Otherworldly, there are a whole range of beings that somehow fall outside this dichotomy.

“Perhaps then I can understand how he learned that phrase. And so we wait.”

Des pulls me to him and kisses me deeply, tasting like salt and sex and the night in all its secretive goodness—and then our clothes peel themselves off the ground and slide back onto us.

The two of us break apart, and whatever moment we were having, it’s over.

I sit up and gather my legs to my chest, wrapping my arms around them.

“Tell me about him,” I say softly.

Des has already told me the short version of Daddy Dearest’s life, but there’s so much I still don’t know.

Those silvery eyes are on me in an instant.

“He’s not worth wasting any more breath on.”

“We’re already wasting breath searching for him,” I say. “Tell me something about him—something I don’t already know.”

The Bargainer beckons his discarded flask with his fingers, calling it back to him like a wayward soldier. It’s not until he’s caught the thing and taken a sip from it that he speaks again.

“He had hundreds of concubines,” Des finally says. “Hundreds. Just take a moment to imagine that.”

Hundreds? That’s like having a wife for every day of the year.

“I don’t know how many of them he fathered children with, but the number is large—large enough for the killing to get a name in our histories. It became known as the Royal Purge—the Purge, for short.

“And when Galleghar died and I first walked the halls of his former castle, I saw firsthand the women he’d taken in.

“They had this look about them.” Des gestures to his eyes. “Soldiers get that look when they’ve lived through too much. Many of them had it. And yet … and yet dozens of those women cried for him when he died.” Des scoffs to himself. “He killed babies—their babies—and they still cried for him.”

I don’t say anything. There aren’t words for this kinds of atrocity.

“That’s not to say that everyone in his harem loved him. In the years after his death, I started to uncover the details of their lives. In the ledgers, we found evidence that some of his wives died untimely deaths—usually after they openly mourned their dead children or objected to the Purge.

“Someone had also diligently recorded the dozens of suicide notes from Galleghar’s various concubines. I later discovered that those who survived their suicide attempts were then brutalized by the king. He took it as a personal slight that they dared to leave him.

“And of course, there were other escape attempts by other wives, and those too were violently punished. Hell was a kinder place than my father’s court. To think my mother dared to escape under these circumstances …”

Brave, brave woman.

The fire snaps and pops between us. Des is still lost in the past.

“Did you know that when I executed my father, I was expected to inherit the harem he left behind?” He gives a humorless laugh. “Doesn’t that make your skin crawl? To inherit a lover like some sort of heirloom?”

It’s sickening. But then, this entire story has turned my stomach.

“I broke with tradition went I sent them all away.” His eyes move to me. “I knew about you even then,” he admits, a soft smile spreading across his face. But then it disappears. “As did my father,” he adds.

A chill slides over my skin. In front of me the iridescent fire dims as the Bargainer’s shadows close in on it.

“To answer your question, cherub, I never knew much about Galleghar Nyx. Only that he was a mean sonuvabitch, that he tyrannically ruled over the Night Kingdom, and he killed my mother in cold blood. And now, somehow, he is alive.”