Page 169 of Flirting with Darkness

When the sapphire-eyed woman nodded, nine fae rose from the front row. Three men, three women, and three that I couldn’t determine. Each wore white robes that flowed behind them as they approached the naked people.

Our host raised her chin and stood over the altar. “The nights grow long.” With a smile gentler than her previous ones, she caressed the prone woman. At the touch, the woman’s back arched, and a pang of jealousy lanced through me. “The nights grow dark.” The host smoothed hair from her partner’s face.

I let out a grunt, pulling against Faolán’s hold, even though part of me knew I didn’t want to be down on that stage. Why, I couldn’t say, but just as the air hummed with tension, with anticipation, it trembled with something else…

The same thing I’d felt in the forest with the werewolves. The same thing I’d felt the night the mob had swarmed the streets of Briarbridge. The same thing I felt hurrying home before dark on the night of the new moon, knowing the Wild Hunt would ride abroad as soon as the sun set.

Danger.

Our host bent over the altar, and I could tell by the way her partner lifted her chin that she could feel the caress of her breath.

Sapphire eyes flicked up to the audience. “The nights are ours.” With that, she bent over her prone partner and claimed her lips in a deep kiss that had my hips thrusting back into Faolán’s.

He growled, and I absorbed the sound, biting my lip harder to keep from whimpering in return as his body stirred against me.

Down on the stage, our host’s hand trailed down over the woman, between her breasts, over her solar plexus, down to her belly button…

I held my breath, waiting for her fingers to trail lower—her clawed fingers, I noticed—but they stopped at her belly and gripped and…

I blinked. I choked on a gasp or a shout or something that was trying to claw its way in or out of me, because her fingerssank in.

Faolán went rigid beneath me. I think he stopped breathing.

Blood welled from the spot, across pale skin—the host’s and the prone woman’s—and onto the altar.

It had to be some trick. Some stagecraft. Mummers had visited Briarbridge who did strange performances that seemed to defy reality and logic when taken at face value. After, Ari and I would pore over the details as we drank in the tavern, and sometimes we’d work out how it was done with smoke and mirrors, pulleys and misdirection, or a hidden vial of red ink.

This had to be the same, because the woman lying on the altar—the victim as that caged part of me wanted to call her—didn’t cry out in pain. Her body arched into the host’s touch, and she kissed her back with writhing fervour.

But the host’s hand had disappeared, and by the angle of her elbow, I could tell she was reaching up into the woman’s rib cage.

At my back, Faolán’s chest expanded, and his long inhalation tickled my ear.

Our host cupped her victim’s head, lifting it from the altar, holding her closer, taking her mouth in an ever-deepening kiss.

“Shit.” Faolán’s voice was less than a whisper.

A moment later, she straightened and her sapphire eyes flashed as she withdrew her hand from her victim’s body.

With a triumphant yet hungry smile, she raised it.

Crimson and dripping, still throbbing, she held aloft the woman’s heart.

Faolán murmured something else, but I couldn’t fathom anything because my brain was stuttering on what I was watching.

No. It couldn’t be. This was a show, a performance, a…

The sapphire-eyed woman lifted her victim’s head, smile gentling.

This was the moment she’d kiss her again and invite her to sit up and they’d wipe off the blood to reveal the woman had no wound. It was a pig’s heart and pig’s blood and this had all been a ritual for show and symbol.

Not real.

Not real.

The heart in her hand was still beating when she held it in front of her victim’s face, showing her what she’d done. The woman’s eyes widened, her mouth dropped open and blood trickled out.

“The night is ours.” Our host nodded towards the nearest aisle, and it was only then I saw that the fae in white were now spattered in blood where they’d done the same to their nine naked victims.

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