He exhales slowly, tired and edged. “I might work the Aurevault twenty hours a day, but my head isn’t full of rocks, and I’m not blind.”
I step into his space before I can stop myself, startling him as I force him back against the wall. “Do you have any idea how dangerous it is to even imply something like that?”
He laughs then, short and humorless, and the sound makes my skin prickle.
“Do you know why I’m here, Neve?” he asks, a bite to his tone. “Why I’ll spend the rest of my life in those mines? Why I’ll die hauling Elarium out of those cursed tunnels?”
My throat tightens. It’s a question I’ve wondered about, but never dared to ask. Faced with the answer written in the intensity of his dark eyes, the tremor in his voice, I’m suddenly not sure I want to know.
“I know the danger. I’ve lived it.” His jaw tightens. “I fell in love. Madly. Hopelessly. Foolishly. With a Fae female.”
My breath catches.
“I was her secret. Just like you’re his. But secrets are never meant to last.” He swallows. “She was mine for barely a year before her husband found out. Before the female who swore she loved me stood before a jury of Fae and claimed I forced her. That I took her against her will while she begged me to stop.”
The blood drains from my face.
I stumble back, but he catches my wrist.
“You will listen,” he says. “The Fae are cruel, Neve, and when they punish, they do not stop at one life. My family paid for my love. Our home was burned to the ground. My brother and his wife were sold into service to House Maledannan. My mother was put on a ship and sent across the Untold Sea where humans do not survive.”
His mouth trembles.
“And my father. You would have met him if you’d arrived a few months earlier. He died of pneumonia. We could barely break the frozen earth to lay him deep enough.”
Anger bleeds through him now, raw and uncontained.
“All because I loved the one person I shouldn’t have. Because I trusted her, and she betrayed me.”
He leans close, his breath hot against my ear, and I turn my face away, eyes burning.
“You will meet the same fate,” he says. “Fae cannot be trusted.”
The ballroom doors suddenly fly open.
A male and female tumble out into the hall, shameless hands roaming over each other’s flawless bodies as their mouths devour one another without restraint. They pause only briefly when they spot Pax and me nearby, and we immediately step apart, chins dipping, eyes lowering in practiced submission.
“Excellent. More wine!” the female exclaims, rattling her empty goblet. “Come in!”
She throws the doors wide again. Her companion doesn’t even glance at us, far too occupied with his hand buried beneath her skirt and his mouth lavishing kisses along the swell of her breast above her strapless gown.
Pax and I pretend we see nothing.
We step into the ballroom with our arms full of wine. Each Fae we pass lights up at the sight of us. No, not us. The bottles. We are ushered forward eagerly, herded toward a long table where we set them down. Slender fingers snatch at the glass, wine sloshing into goblets, spilling onto marble, poured straight into waiting mouths.
“Come on,” Pax murmurs beside me. “Let’s get out of here before things get out of hand.”
I don’t argue.
The air is thick, hot, humid, cloying. Something sticky and unsettling clings to my skin. The careful etiquette of the banquet has dissolved entirely, replaced by a tangle of bodies, and a rising chorus of breathless sounds soars above the string music.
The mirrored walls only intensify it, reflecting the excess back upon itself until the scene feels dizzying and endless.
Then a blur of movement in the mirror catches my eye as Pax and I near the doors. Stark ivory hair bound neatly at the nape of a Fae male’s neck. A midnight-blue suit cut to perfection.
Luceran.
He stands apart even here, even among his own kind, with silver dust circling his stunning eyes and a glossy shimmer upon his full, pale lips. In his arms is a woman with lush waves of auburn hair tumbling over bare shoulders, her low-backed gown a whisper of silk against perfect skin.
