Join me in night painted with crimson and black.

The night seized Dal’coler again, carving another hour into its stone flesh. Lorian didn’t know which, his fingers gripping the crimson linen beneath him like sharp claws. The spasms slowly subsided, clinging to his nerves like parasites to the bark of a tree.

He was so used to it.

To almost an uncanny pleasure in his pain, to almost a familiar, well-known rite. He knew, though, that his face now reflected only agony, something he couldn’t show outside, but now, as night fell, he could stop controlling the one aspect of his life he never fully controlled.

This was delightfully wrong.

His nerves pulsed, throbbing with the aftermath of pain. Again, day blurred with night and suffering with rapture.

He remembered how the same pain had left him a quivering mess, crawling on the floor. When no one was watching, of course, still a humiliating fact. In places where he could hide his agony from the ever-watching eyes of the court.

The Fae could never see him like this. But that didn’t mean the pain didn’t reduce him to something he’d rather not be. Long ago… when he was a different Fae.

It was an old time. But never forgotten. A lesson he would have to learn. A part of his life he couldn’t just leave behind. A reminder and a warning.

He felt a hand on his arm. Its golden curls brushed against his skin.

Another spasm, the last.

And relaxing nothingness where the only feeling was her fingers caressing him. Her breasts heaved with a breath, round and full, touched by the immortality that always made them look like the day he captured them.

“Lorian… again?”

Her features offered him no concern. Why should she be worried? She was almost Fae, free of human impulses. And she knew that if he was ever going to die… it wouldn’t be soon.

“The only feeling that will always come, with certainty,” he chuckled lightly. He could see his own black eyes reflected in her own intensely pale blue.

How does it feel to know that she knows? How does it feel to know that the two women you want to drown in know your greatest weakness?

If he were younger, more foolish, he might fear it. But since he had lived for over a thousand years, some things had become more acceptable. He might not like it, but he did not fear it. But one thing he would never accept was failure. Nor would he accept the knowledge that all this pain, this cruel ordeal, would have been for nothing.

She said nothing more, but she moved, rose to her knees. Her body lifted, the light of the candles flickering over her curves. Her pale skin glowed with his aura. Dark tendrils, rooted so deep into her skin. Buried in her like a lover, spreading her with his presence.

A smile. But not joyful, not jubilant. She was nothing like Areltha, who always beamed when he took her. A foolish creature, even if unseelie. Leira did not only want his pleasure. She wanted to dig deeper and draw out all that was in him. A visceral affection, a predatory one. So similar to his own.

Her hand closed over him, right between his legs. She was always hungry. That was what bound them together, this thirst for sensual sensations. She wanted him the way trees wanted water after a drought, and he found it intensely arousing.

And she wanted him even though he knew she would never forgive him. He didn’t want her forgiveness. She wanted him despite what he had done. And that was even more exciting.

She spread herself out in front of him, her fingers slowly caressing his tip as she looked straight into his eyes. Teasingly. She was carnal in her desire and in her darkness. He buried his nails in her hair and pressed against her, her tongue out, tracing a path across his skin.

She was perhaps the same human woman he had taken for the first time, when she still remembered the dark, dying eyes of her human lover; unwilling, hating, but surrendering to him, of her own choice. But now she was stronger and her soul glittered with dark crystals. Cutting with their edges. Sharp and piercing. The way she spied, betrayed and denounced – to him – was making her so attractive. She had no remorse, no pity. She brought him their heads on a plate, presented them to him with all the gruesome details.

She took him in her throat, her muffled moans rubbing against his ever yearning side. Her lips were soft, full, and the touch of them was a torment in itself.

“Deeper,” he whispered, leaning over her, his finger on her cheek. “Swallow me.”

Her mind raced with lust as she took him further and his shadowy tendril slipped between her legs, pressing hard. He could feel she was very wet. He wanted her to be wetter. Her neck muscles tensed, but soon relaxed to allow him to go as deep as they both wanted.

She let him go to get some air. Her lips shone in the dim light.

“So hard… my lord. Such a treat,” and again. And again.

And again.

Her smile as she released him, and the play of light over her throat as he entered… impeccable.

He felt a vicious throbbing, almost a climax, rush through his loins. But he could control his release with shadows. It was not time yet. Her throat took him right to the base, he could feel it, how tight it was, how hungrily it closed over him…

When she let him go again, his desire grew bigger, more painful.

He pushed her onto the bed, pinning her down with his weight, and she immediately spread her legs, pulling him to her. Her hands gripped him in a possessive gesture. The wetness of her desire glistened against him, pooling between her thighs.

“You are such a ravenous slave, Leira.”

“Always.”

She wasn’t a slave anymore. Not in the true sense of the word.

But she was a slave to her desire, her hunger and their mutual pain. The one he caused her and the one he felt. They fed on it as on the rarest of delicacies. On the darkness that now bound them, no longer separated them.

“Fuck me, my lord… make me bleed…”

He buried himself inside her with a particularly powerful thrust. Her mind screamed, but she opened her legs even wider, wanting it. She was so like him.

Filled with a sickening urge.

She wanted to melt beneath him, to take his heated shadows as if they were a spoonful of sweet dessert. And he wanted her to squeeze them out of him, to take his pain and turn it into… something more.

Her fingers traced a path down his back, closing in desperately, wanting him closer, more intensely. As his shadows slipped through her lips, her eyes opened wider, but only for a small, insignificant second.

She swallowed them with a desperate moan. Shivering with pleasure, choking on the night. Her thoughts latched to his mind, fevered, growling in her head, like a caged animal. Frantic and disconnected, a wave of sensations and ideas, dreams and fantasies.

Image of him, with blood dripping from his body. His skin covered with crimson.

His shadows creeping into veins of his victim, growing with thorns, causing suffering.

You like it.

Very.

Leira…

He was taking her, knowing she wanted swift fulfillment, quick and sharp as lightning. He could give her that. A hurried fuck painted in red.

Her walls closed over him, twitching with pleasure, fast nd inevitable. Her skin glistened with sweat as heat circulated through her body, both her own and that of his shadows. The heat most would not take, but she came to his touch.

Twisted.

Beautiful.

He needed her.

She came with a muffled moan and he joined her, driven by her quivering insides. He could never get enough of it. Her eyes dug into him like daggers. Her legs wrapped around his waist, small drops of blood dripping from her, drawn by his power.

“Desire me like this, always,” a soft, quick murmur.

He will.

Oh, he will.

Every second, every moment, tugging at her never-satisfied soul, lingering in her marrow, filling her bones.

She hated him, she wanted him and she loved him.

And he would show her what it meant.

The grove was as silent, lulled to sleep by lack of any sound. A hushed cocoon of stillness enveloped it like a thick cloth. White and pale, an autumn gossamer, but cold and frozen in time. The trees reached up to the sky like black towers, high and thick. But they were not barren. Not devoid of colors. They were blooming with leaves, in the heart of harsh winter. Emerald and thriving, but silent like this whole place.

Perhaps this grove was both alive and dead, just like the village.

Each of the trees grew out of a puddle of dirt and mud. Like plants on a windowsill, Alina was growing before winter came. She tended to them daily, adding water. These trees looked as if they were growing in a nurturing pot.

Do not come closer.

You know it’s magic.

And magic won’t make you any different from any other human, it will just swallow you up, as it always does.

The air here was thick and heavy, like molten silver. Leaves and small, blood-red flowers growing from the branches appeared to be laughing at winter, defying it with colour and life. It would be a hopeful sight if he didn’t know that spring and summer had no place in Avras. If the green was here, it was not a good sign. It was a promise of danger, or at least a trick.

The scent was peculiar too… like old foliage left to decompose, far from sun and light. Wet, somehow sticking to the skin. Like remains of something that drowned in ocean and drifted on the bank, to rot there.

He walked slowly past the trees. Something drew him in, like an inappropriate feeling of safety and peace that he tried to ignore, but… it was still there, whispering to his ear.

The scent of decay became stronger as he entered deeper between the trees. Tiyan couldn’t tell what exuded it, as the place was beaming with sunlit beauty.

At that point, he could swear he saw movement, close to the trunk of the nearest tree. But when he turned, no one was there. The trees stood in hush, no wind in the branches, not even a murmur of the leaves.

No one and nothing… until he looked closer. Until he deciphered the shapes. Until he saw the reason of the wet scent.

Tiyan felt his heart sink. He felt a sudden rush of blood to his face.

In the tree…

… It was the heart, dark crimson, almost black. Almost invisible between the bark… but still beating, still alive. Ona caught up with him, but Tiyan, driven by a morbid curiosity, drew closer, as if pulled by a string.

The heart was melted into the tree, connected to it by veins that still seemed to pump blood. Tiyan’s gaze began to take in the whole scene, with a terrifying clarity.

The veins led to the body. Scattered under the bark, hands not connected to the torso, but held together by lonely tendons, pulled hard between the wood, stretched so tightly, that the bark was biting deep into them; but not breaking.

And there, above… a face.  Only eyes and mouth were visible, but it was a human face. They looked just at him, their lips moving. And they let out a powerless sigh.

Tiyan bumped into Ona and backed away, his face pale. Ona followed his gaze and made a low, choked sound.

And it dawned on them as they embraced the entire grove that every tree held a human captive, every tree fed on them.
The puddle under the trunks was not just mud.

It was old blood.

“Damn it!” Tiyan propped himself on his knees and tried to compose himself. Ona’s hand drifted to the melted bark, but didn’t touch it. The whole grove laughed grotesquely at life. Taking and pumping it into its own system.

She took a breath… and exhaled. And once again. And again.

“The whole… village must be here,” she said in a dull voice.

Tiyan’s eyes seemed slightly unfocused as she looked at his face.

“We should leave as soon as possible,” she continued. The silence of this place was deafening.

“Not even to help them? They suffer, for goddess’ sake!” Tiyan sounded more aggressive. Ona though it must be the shock.

“How?” there was an irony in her own voice that she hadn’t intended. “You want to rip them off and put them back together again?”

Tiyan knew it would be futile. Only magic kept them alive, for whatever sick reason the Fae kept them here. Probably for fun. They always do it for fun. The humans were too deeply fused, and they had no suitable weapon or tool to rip the trees in half – even if it did offer the captives the relief of death.

“I hate this.”

“I know. I do too.”

“Ona…”

“I know.”

“Do you think they are still here?”

“The Fae? Perhaps. I don’t plan to be here long enough to check. Or we want to join these people.”

These humans were lost and Tiyan had a purpose, not to let them do this to Mina. To get her out of those cruel claws. She was the most important thing now, she was the reason he didn’t give up and drown in grief.

And the villagers… are already dead. Even if they felt life in every fibre of their being.

They left silently, their souls as heavy as their steps. Their feet buried in the snow, in places where the cursed trees hadn’t sent their roots. Tiyan could swear he could still hear the moans of the humans trapped within the bark… but their lips were still. Like a macabre still life painted by a twisted artist.

They were both almost certain that the Fae had already left this village. They didn’t even seem to stay to feed their eyes with suffering. Who knew how long these people had been exposed to it. Perhaps days… or years. Tiyan couldn’t imagine the latter.

The houses in the city looked even more empty, even more abandoned now. A silent altar to the life that had once been here, even if it had been hard and dangerous, still a life. No imitation of it.

Ona watched Tiyan all the way down the steep slope. He was holding up well, but she could see the pain on his face. He had lost his family too, not long ago. She didn’t know how they were killed or how he found them. But the scene in the grove had to remind him of them. The wound was too fresh, too wide open.

Maybe she hadn’t known him long, but he had lost his sister. And Ona could relate to that.

Being pushed and forced to act, not even being able to experience grief, might have seemed better for a short time. But later it came like an avalanche, leaving even more shattered feelings, crashing against the soul with delayed pain.

She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t feel the need to. Tiyan was hit by loss, maybe not with full force… but hard enough to feel it.

The village was soon left behind, with all its magic, all its suffering, all its memories. And they had to move on. Both from here and with their own losses. Ona just hoped they wouldn’t be too late, as they were too late for these people.

The wind began to blow again, as if the enchanted bubble had released it from its influence. The biting cold now stung like a famished predator. But it was better.

Better than silence.

Tiyan’s cheeks immediately reddened. But she knew that he was pale inside, at least until he had finished fighting his own demons.

And that… would take time.

With silent intensity, the snow began to fall. Ona buried the signs of the fire and together they turned the snow house into an unrecognisable drift. Tiyan slept poorly, plagued by elusive nightmares, but he was aware that Ona didn’t sleep at all. She was like a magical being – as offensive as that sounded to her. Tiyan wondered under what circumstances she had learned to survive so well, and what tragedies had made her so implacable. He couldn’t tell her age, the marks on her face added years, but he guessed she was much younger than he was. But the spark in her eyes was fierce and she was far from giving up.

They were both tormented by memories, Tiyan could tell. But Ona dealt with them with stubborn resistance, while he… just let them gnaw at his nerves.

Perhaps it was just a mask.

Maybe she was dying every day – just like him.

The truth was that just knowing he was not alone in his pain was enough to keep him going. As selfish as it sounded, Tiyan was happy not to be alone.

“What’s her name?”

A sudden question broke his train of thought and Tiyan brushed the snow from his face. The snowfall was so thick that nothing would be able to track them from where they had rested during the night. Their footprints disappeared behind them as if touched by… magic.

“Name?”

“Your sister.”

Tiyan sighed. Ona was only curious, but even telling Mina’s name in this lonely wilderness, far from home and exposed to the cruel winds, was hard for him. As he had told it to himself so many times, he didn’t have the strength to do it again.

“Mina.”

It came with the air from his lungs and left him empty. A name that hung on his heart like a feather, but made of steel. He didn’t know if she was still alive and if so, how much she was suffering. Saying it out loud made the truth harder and… real.

“I have a sister too.”

The first time Ona had said anything about her past… apart from chocolate. Tiyan didn’t want to push, but he sensed that Ona wanted to talk. He knew about that great fire in the chest that threatens to burn you to the inside if you don’t let it out. A fire of guilt and pain, of the past, so real you could bite through it and make it bleed – with thick, crimson blood.

Ona’s face was as blank as the face of a winter morning as she let it out.

“I grew up in a village where the people were too aware of the danger the Fae brought. And learned to respond to their magic with iron and blue blood. My sister… She was a warrior. But she…”

She looked as if the word wouldn’t leave her mouth, thorny and sharp.

“Have you heard of the Praetor?”

Tiyan nodded. The Holy Praetor of Arelt. Arelt was a large city in the north, ruled by the Trading Company in the days before the war. Now it fell into the hands of the person who claimed to know how to stop the magic, how to stop the hunger, the pain and the cruel violence inflicted on Avras. Tiyan didn’t know him, but he knew one thing – the hunger, the pain, the torment of the land would continue. This man was either delusional… or mad. Or he was just another opportunist, feeding on the hopes of the people and taking their prayers as if they belonged to him…

“My sister…” Tiyan looked at her, suddenly feeling the change in her. He had always been able to sense such things, observant and attentive to body language. Now Ona looked different. As if the weight of the words hit her, as if she realised that she was telling this to a practically unknown person. There was a line on her forehead, and Tiyan could swear she saw a tear in her eye through the wind and snow.

Perhaps it was the wind and the snow.

Or maybe Ona’s pain was greater than he had expected.

“You don’t have to tell me,” he finally said. “If it’s too much.”

Ona looked at him, the tear already gone. Her eyes changed colour from deep blue to mossy green.

As if touched by magic.

But Tiyan saw a spark of gratitude in her eyes. She wanted to tell him, she wanted to throw the burden from her heart… but it seemed to be too heavy, still.

The landscape began to change. The snowfall eased, giving them a clearer view, and Tiyan could finally take in the surroundings.

The trees bent under the snow, lulled to sleep by its weight. The road widened and in the distance… At first, Tiyan couldn’t believe his eyes. But yes, the familiar shapes were real.

A small village spread out before them. He couldn’t tell if it was still inhabited, but even empty buildings could give them a moderately safe shelter, at least from cold and snow. He didn’t see any movement, but the villagers could be inside.

All of them.

Not so strange in the times that came and ravaged the land, intensely and painfully.

He saw that Ona also saw the village and tensed. He knew why. The people didn’t like visitors, not now, when any stranger could be enchanted and used by the fey to do harm. In Inamora, they chased them away, did not allow them to enter. His father had always been against it, his heart was in the right place – the same heart that didn’t approve of telling the other villagers about his encounter with the small folk. The same heart… that burst in his chest under the haunting and beautiful song of the Bean Sidhe.

“We can at least try,” Tiyan said, shifting the scarves to better protect him from the wind.

“I would pray so it would be abandoned,” Ona said, a new kind of stubbornness on her face, along the charcoal lines and white pigment.

Tiyan couldn’t help but agree.

Better to find a warm and hidden place to sleep for the night than to be attacked by suspicious villagers.

They trudged through the snow. The silence that surrounded this place indicated that the settlement was indeed uninhabited. But that didn’t mean that magical beings couldn’t take possession of it. Tiyan’s muscles were hard as stone, and a sudden warmth travelled to his throat. How low the humans had fallen to be frightened by the sight of a lonely village in the forest.

The cluster of houses was closer now, and Tiyan could see that they weren’t in bad shape. Some even had freshly painted shingles, with white and brown paint. One or two roofs looked as if they had been repaired recently. Ona must have noticed this too, for she began to look around cautiously, but without fear. Ona was focused, but she wasn’t afraid.

Tiyan realized that he was not. Concern, strong, but not fear. Fear, which had been his daily companion, his friend and his enemy, suddenly left him, leaving an empty void.

Human danger was nothing compared to what really awaited him. And small folk would not kill him – he was protected by the Shadow, as naive as it sounded.

When they reached the village and ducked between the houses, the silence became almost deafening. As if even the small animals had decided to leave this place, as if it had become a black hole, sucking in all sound and life.

“I don’t like it,” Ona looked at the freshly repaired roof of the nearby house. “There seems to be no one here… but…”

“Someone was here not long ago,” Tiyan agreed.

“I don’t know if the warmth of the stables is worth the danger. Who knows what drove those people away. And if it’s still here.”

Tiyan couldn’t shake the feeling that they shouldn’t have entered the village at all. But what was done was done. And if they wanted to leave now, this was their last call.

In dead silence they approached the first house. It was covered in snow… and rowan. The iron horseshoe hung from the door, draped in old hay and dry grass. In the windows – wooden faces representing aspects of the Goddess – Life, Death and Rebirth. Death’s empty eyes seemed to look into them, Life dressed in old linen, Rebirth with flames painted on her wooden torso. The door was closed, the wind swirling in the chimney.

Something bad hung over it, as if something had died here, releasing spores.

“I think…”

“We should go.”

In the distance, a rattling sound was heard, as if someone was picking the branches or tossing them into a fireplace.

The heavy air enveloped them like a cocoon as they took one last look at the house and quickly left, heading down the slope. Their boots left footprints they would rather not have, but the snow began to fall again, small ethereal flakes staining their faces and slowly making the path they had come on invisible.

But as soon as they moved, Tiyan heard a voice.

A quiet, aching, pleading voice, begging him, urging him. The whisper of a dying soul.

He stopped halfway.

It could be anything, from a luring danger to a wounded person in need of help. The world was no longer safe for kind hearts.

But if he could help anyone, anyone who was still here and needed saving… he couldn’t help his parents. He’d feel terrible if he left without even checking whose voice it was.

“Do you hear it?” he pulled Ona by the sleeve of her jacket.

“Yes,” was a muffled reply.

“Do you think… it’s a human…?”

“I don’t care. This place is cursed. The longer we stay here, the more danger we expose ourselves to.”

Tiyan knew it was true. He won’t be able to save Mina if he lets himself die here, probably saving a lost cause.

Please… it eats me… so deep… deep…. d e e p…

It could be a Fae… tempting his guilt, pulling all the right strings.

But the Fae already knew he was untouchable.

And Ona was with him, saving his ass so he could reach the faerie realm. No one would dare harm him or her. He was needed. And without Ona, he wouldn’t get one step closer to his goal.

But there was more. His body reacted to that voice like pulled by a rope. Somehow, he knew that his footsteps would lead him in, willingly or not.

He looked apologetically at his companion and began to walk through the snow in the direction from which he had heard the voice. Ona seemed to hesitate, her lips forming a thin line, but in the end she couldn’t leave him alone. She didn’t say a word, but he knew she thought he was a fool.

They walked through the ghastly village like ghosts themselves. Tiyan – determined, scared to the bone. And Ona, strangely calm. Observant. Open to any danger that might come their way.

They passed the lonely rows of houses. They still felt the lingering memory of warm fire and human presence. Of… the familiar coziness that could still be created by loving hearts that wouldn’t let the dark times extinguish their flame.

Until they reached the grove.