Page 208 of Flirting with Darkness

The world around me blurred. My eyes burned.

And then I realised that she’d said servants. Plural.

Two more shambled in, one with drinks, the other with desserts, both with lips sealed and that same desperate look in their eyes.

“Oh, bravo,” one of the guests cried. Another rose, clapping. Within moments, they were all on their feet, clapping and raising glasses to their host and what she’d created.

She sat at the head of the table, drinking it all up with a smug smirk.

Until a crash shattered the applause. I leapt to my feet, and Faolán was already upright, clawed fingers raised ready. Ever the defender.

But it was no attack. The first “servant” had dropped a tray of food. Our host’s smirk soured as her lips pursed. The second creature, carrying drinks, tried to help the first, hunching over, clumsy in its mismatched body. Down went another tray with a tinkle of broken glass.

The sapphire-eyed woman’s chair shrieked across the floor as she stood, all elegance gone. “No!” Dark eyebrows clashing together, she pulled her slender finger hing into the third, who had also approached. In a tangle of limbs, they crashed to the floor, and finally my own body remembered how to work. I hurried towards them, ready to help.

“No, no, no!” Her voice rattled the cutlery, the chandelier, the floor tiles… even my bones. “This wasn’t how it was supposed to—”

She swept her plate from the table and shrieked, the sound so tight with rage, it made me shudder as I reached out to help the first of her poor creations.

“Enough.” She slammed her fists into the table, and there was quiet.

When I opened my eyes from flinching, there was no dining room. No sapphire-eyed woman. No “servants” or guests. Just me, Faolán, and the hallway outside the ballroom.

He surveyed me, nostrils flaring. “Are you all right?”

I swallowed and nodded, not able to find my voice after what we’d just witnessed. My stomach churned, caught between nausea and, of all things, guilt. I hadn’t done that to those people, but I also hadn’t been able to stop it. My eyes burned all over again.

Faolán gathered me close and bent in, like he could shut out House’s dream-world. “This all happened long ago. There was nothing we could do for them.”

But I felt the tension thrumming in his muscles. He wanted to rip the sapphire-eyed woman apart just as he’d done to the kelpie. But every time we’d seen her, she’d been surrounded by fae who stared at her not with disgust or hate, but with admiration. They cheered at her sacrifices and applauded her every abomination, just as they had in that dining room.

It was only in that moment I realised the very specific pain these memories caused Faolán, the shield who could not be a shield.

“I’m sorry,” I murmured against his chest, stroking his back.

He shrugged and squeezed me tighter. “You don’t have to apologise for crying.”

“Not for that.” I pulled back and met his gaze. His eyes were dark and dim as though they mirrored the tired shadows that pooled beneath them. “For you having to endure this when you can’t change it. When you can’t do what comes naturally to you and stop it—stopher.”

He gave a grim, flat smile, shoulders sinking as he exhaled. “She’s already done all this. And lucky for her, she’s no doubt already long dead”—his lip curled into a silent snarl—“otherwise I’d hunt her down and…” His gaze skittered away and his mouth clamped shut.

Was that shame on his face? Or worry? Maybe both.

I shook my head and cupped his cheek, turning him back to me. “What would you do to her, Faolán? I want to hear it. I want to be able to picture that bloody justice the next time her crimes come to mind.” Any other day, the cold intensity of my voice might’ve scared me. But not today or tonight or whatever this was. Not after what I’d seen.

He searched my gaze, eyebrows slowly rising as he read what was in there and saw my own impotent rage and how it hungered for justice. “First, I would haunt her.” His voice was low and hard, no sign of hesitation. “Sounds in the night. A shadow at the edge of her sight. Always there. Always gone when she turns. Just enough to have her wondering if there was ever anything there at all.” He dragged in a long breath, nose wrinkling. Did his teeth just grow in length?

I blinked and shook off the thought. The dream-memories were getting to me. Thank the gods we only had one more night in this place.

“Then louder sounds, more, closer. Scratches at her bedroom door. Under her bed. Howls outside her window. More and more and more, so she couldn’t sleep.” His fangs gleamed as he smiled. “And when she finally cowered in a corner, clutching a weapon, weeping for fear and gibbering from lack of rest,thenI would appear to her.”

I nodded, seeing it all, seeing how afraid she’d be, rejoicing in how much she deserved it.

“I’d let her run, and I’d hound her. Through the house, through the grounds, snapping at her heels, always just this close to catching her. And when she could run no longer, I would close in. I wouldn’t use iron. Too quick. Bit by bit, I’d rip her apart.”

There was a hunger in his eyes, mirroring my own and I leant towards it, towards him, eager to share it.

“Slowly. Deliberately. And as I did it, I’d tell her why. Every crime she was paying for. Every innocent life I’d seen her take. Every bit of pain we’d witnessed her causing. I’d make sure she knew that was why andtheywere why and that her body would be scattered in the woods, anonymous and alone, uncelebrated with no one to speak her name.”

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