Page 131 of His Darkest Desire

Kinsley lifted her skirt, lowered herself onto the cushion between Vex’s legs, and lay back against his chest. She smiled and nestled against his warm body as he wrapped an arm around her. “Do the highborn look like…”

“The queen?”

“Yes.”

“Some do. They are ethereal, beautiful…cold. At times, it is nigh impossible to tell seelie from unseelie when it comes to the highborn. Regardless of their blood, highborn may travel far more freely than other fae. They are largely feared by lesser beings. Hence my suspicions regarding the writer of this journal.”

He held the book out before Kinsley, and she opened it to the first page. The wisps hovered just over them, casting their soft blue glow, which granted the ink on the parchment a faint metallic glint. The magic hands placed the food and drinks on a small shelf built into the nook, easily within arm’s reach, before dissipating.

“Herein shall I, who have taken the name Alythrii, record the breadth and scope of my travels,” Vex began, his deep voice rumbling into Kinsley. “Of my own accord have I deigned to undertake this journey, that I might better understand what gifts my blood has bequeathed to me. I shall travel as though blind to realms hitherto unknown to me.”

Kinsley listened raptly as Vex read, occasionally nibbling on the snacks or sipping wine that had been poured by the magic hands. He did not relinquish his embrace; Kinsley turned the pages when he signaled and fed him bite-sized pieces of food when he leaned his head over her shoulder. No words were necessary for their little exchanges. They were attuned to one another, in sync.

As Vex had implied, Alythrii offered scant information about herself, focusing instead on describing the people, places, and things she encountered in her travels.

Instead of transforming the whole room with magic, Vex created a wide illusory window—though to Kinsley, it was much closer to a movie theater screen. The images within were almost dreamlike, depicting landscapes and creatures too fantastical to be real.

The journal’s writing downplayed the wondrous nature of its author’s travels across planes of existence. Alythrii offered matter-of-fact observations sprinkled with infrequent opinions and speculations, many of which seemed almost hesitant.

But the places… Vex showed Kinsley alien worlds filled with odd flora and fauna, places with skies of any color, where magic overflowed from every pebble. Alythrii had walked so many worlds, had seen so much.

Kinsley could only wonder who the mysterious author had been. What had she looked like, sounded like? Had she been kind and curious or callous in her desire to see everything? What had driven her to wander for so long, to face such dangers?

And why could Kinsley relate so much to that drive?

The glimpses of those fantastical worlds offered by the journal and Vex’s illusions only fanned the flames of adventure and exploration in Kinsley’s heart. She’d always loved learning about far-off places, but she loved experiencing them even more.

She wanted to see with her own eyes a world where islands floated in the sky. She wanted to walk in a world where flowers were as tall as houses. She wanted to visit a realm where cities drifted across an endless ocean atop the backs of giant sea creatures.

But when the journal described a place called Silverfall, something familiar caught Kinsley’s attention. Alythrii spoke of luminous crystals growing from the land in pillars, in cliffs, in entire mountains, defining the landscape as far as could be seen.

Vex’s illusion depicted a world shrouded in night—a place with thick, overgrown forests and bogs which stood beneath and around huge formations of raw crystal whose light created as much shadow as it destroyed. Settlements, even whole cities, lay clustered around those formations.

And in some places, the bases of the crystals gave way to veins of silver, though it was unclear whether the crystals had sprouted from the precious metal or it had bled from them.

“Vex, those crystals…” she said, brow furrowing. “They look a lot like the ones here. Just much bigger.”

His fingers flexed on her belly, and he tilted his hand, angling the book downward. “Because they are the same. Silverfall is a haven for unseelie. It was my aim with the translocation spell, and here, Silverfall and your world bleed together. Hence the abundant crystal growth.”

“Is that where you’re originally from?”

“No, my moonlight. My realm of origin was rather more volatile. Alythrii details it in a later entry. She dubbed it Wrathhome. A place of fire and shadow, midday and midnight, chaos and conflict. Where silver and gold clash and blanket the land in death. I know not its state today, but in my youth, it was a realm torn asunder by the unrelenting war between seelie and unseelie.”

Kinsley frowned, tucking her head beneath his chin. “I’m sorry. I can’t imagine what it must’ve been like to get caught up in a war spanning multiple worlds.”

“I escaped that conflict by coming to your world. Unfortunately, I but delayed the inevitable. My second attempt at escape met with far less success.” Keeping his place with a finger, he closed the journal and turned it, examining the worn leather binding. “In truth, much of my knowledge of other realms was garnered from this text and a precious few others.

“Discounting this limbo, I’ve but once ventured between realms. There existed a portal in the realm of my birth, one I discovered only after years of research, toil, and exploration. Its condition was dire when finally I uncovered it, and I fear my use of it must’ve depleted it beyond recovery. But it brought me somewhere else…and that was all I’d wanted.”

Kinsley felt those words resonate in her soul. She understood all too well that desire to be somewhere else, anywhere other than the place you were. That was what had brought her across a continent and an ocean. And she’d felt that wanderlust, that need to move, the whole time she’d lived with her aunt. The worst part had been the vague but insistent sense that she had…nowhere. Nowhere to go back to. Nowhere she belonged.

But somehow, Vex had silenced her desire to roam. Being with him felt like being at home. Like she was exactly where she was meant to be. Like no matter where life took them, she’d always have her place—she’d always have him—to return to.

“I’ve felt a lot like Alythrii for as long as I can remember,” Kinsley said. “Even as a kid, I rarely stayed indoors, spending most of my time exploring the forest in our back garden. Much to my parents’ frustration.” She frowned, running her fingers over the book. “If it has to do with my blood, wouldn’t one of them also be a realmswalker?”

“At least one of them is undoubtedly fae-touched,” Vex replied. “Yet not every descendent will inherit the gifts of their ancestry, especially as the bloodline is further and further removed from the fae progenitor.”

“My parents never really understood me. They still don’t. My mother is—was—trying to get me to settle down with another career. A stationary career. She always worries about me traveling on my own, especially at night. I, uh, guess her worries were valid considering I got myself impaled by a tree while driving at night.”

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