A Strange Hymn (The Bargainer Book 2)

  Following the Queen and King of Fauna is a group of beautiful men, each dressed in a deep green tailcoat and breeches, and behind them are a set of musicians, carrying harps and lyres, fiddles and flutes.

  Mara breaks away from the fairies around her to approach the middle of the gathering.

  “Welcome, welcome all,” she says, spreading her arms out wide, “to the first evening of Solstice.”

  All around us I spot Fauna fae, Flora fae, and Night fae. There’s only one set of fairies that’s noticeably absent.

  “Where is the Kingdom of Day?” I whisper to Des.

  “They don’t usually come until first morning light.”

  I make an “O” with my mouth, like that makes some sort of sense to me, when it really doesn’t.

  Whatever.

  “… This is a week of revelry,” Mara continues, “when even the Mother and the Father embrace deep in their earthen tombs. When water and wine, soil and sun, men and women all come together.

  “This week, let us set aside our woes and vendettas,”—some Fauna fae cut their gazes to me and Des—“and let us drink deeply, eat hearty, love fully, and revel thoroughly.”

  A cheer goes up from the crowd, several fairies whistling their approval.

  Mara waits until her audience quiets before she continues. “Deep from the womb of the night we were born, and deep into the night do our spirits return when the body has died and the flesh has cooled.

  “And so we shall begin this week of festivities with that which came first, before the flickering of the first light, the primordial darkness. Turn your gazes to the Lord of Secrets, Master of Shadows—Desmond Flynn, the King of the Night.”

  She gestures across the clearing to where Des and I stand. The stares of the crowd were unnerving before, but they’re nothing to the heated focus of the gathering now.

  My wings hike up at the attention, but Des is as calm as ever. Placing a steadying hand on my back, he maneuvers us towards Mara and her makeshift stage.

  This is not exactly what I had in mind when I agreed to stay by the Bargainer’s side this evening.

  Once we reach the Queen of Flora, Des’s gaze sweeps around the clearing. For a moment, the only sounds are the sputtering hisses of the bonfires.

  And then Des begins speaking. “There are a few things all fae are born knowing: that the night is dark and the flesh is warm. That our lives might be long, but someday even they must eventually end. Tonight and for all of Solstice let us bring forth life from the darkness.”

  His words sound old, like this verse has been recited long enough to have a sort of magic to it.

  “Only in the shadows and dark spaces do we find our truest wishes and deepest desires,” he continues, the audience watching him raptly. While he speaks, his thumb draws small circles on my lower back. “Only in the night do we let go of our civility and loosen the ties that bind us during the day. Only then do we reach for soft skin. Only then do we dare to dream.

  “So release your inhibitions, give in to my pull, find a willing partner, and sow yourself deep.”

  I glance at Des. Is he suggesting what I think he’s suggesting … ?

  The music strikes up, distracting me from my thoughts, and fairies take to the clearing, grabbing waists and hands. People begin to spin, and all that expertly coiffed hair and all those tightened bodices loosen themselves as people are sucked in by the music.

  Even I’m not immune to it, my hips swaying from side to side, my hand going to my own hair, which hangs in waves down my back.

  “You managed to keep me waiting this year, Desmond.” Mara’s voice is deceptively sweet as she comes up behind us. She places a hand on his shoulder, and he turns to face her.

  “I thought,” she continues, “that perhaps you wouldn’t show.”

  “Ah, how fun it is to keep you guessing,” Des says, his eyes sparking with mischief.

  The men that followed Mara now come up to her, one proprietary hand goes to her hip, another grips her arm. One of them leans in, whispering something into her ear, his dark eyes pinned to me as he speaks. She leans back into their touches.

  The whole thing has my skin prickling uncomfortably, especially when she flashes Des a wanton look. “Enjoy your evening, my Night King,” she says, and then she turns away, into the group of waiting men.

  They close in on her, and a moment later I hear her peeling laughter as they begin to twirl her between them.

  I swivel to Des, and right about now we have an entire conversation with our eyes.

  That was fucking weird.

  I know. It’s only going to get worse.

  Des steps in close. “Would you like to—”

  Before he can finish his question, a fae noble cuts in, the man’s dark brown hair plaited into an intricate series of braids that spill down his back. “Desmond, Desmond, Desmond, you’re a hard man to get ahold of …” He pats my mate on the shoulder, angling him towards a waiting group of similarly dressed men and women.

  Des resists, reaching a hand for me.

  His companion pauses, noticing me for the first time. Or maybe the fairy was aware of me, but he didn’t want to acknowledge my presence. Despite their interest in me, I can feel the subtle rebuffs coming my way. No fairy seems terribly eager to elevate a mere human to a status of importance, king’s mate or not.

  “You go on,” I say to Des. “I’ll meet up with you later.”

  He frowns. “Later,” he reluctantly promises, looking unhappy about my decision to skip away.

  I get that he wants me by his side, but it’s clear that his audience wants him and him alone. And I’m not all that eager to stand next to him and play docile little mate while the rest of the fairies ignore me.

  I back up, sensing that the crowd gathered here is still watching me. And that’s the irony of the situation. Pull me into a group, and I’ll probably be ignored for the conversation, but let me roam free, and every eye will be fixed on me.

  Ignoring the looks, I back away, moving into the crowd until I find the woman I’m looking for.

  “Finally I get you to myself,” Temper says. “I was thinking I’d have to hex someone to get three fucking minutes with you.”

  “I wish you had,” I mutter. At least then I’d stop feeling like the most unfortunate person at the party.

  Temper arches a brow, beginning to smile. “Good to know …”

  “I need something to drink.” As soon as the words are out of my mouth, my eyes dart to the fairy wine.

  “Bitch, I am already there.” Temper takes my hand and tugs me towards the table of wine. “I thought you were taking a break from drinking?” she says over her shoulder.

  Errr, I never actually admitted that my sobriety was more Des’s idea than my own.

  “Break’s over.”

  “Praise black Jesus and all the baby angels,” she says. “Things are much more fun with a little bit of rum,” she sings, reciting a stupid song we came up with once upon a time in Vegas.

  We get to the table and ladle ourselves each a glass of wine, carrying our bounty off once we each have a full cup. The two of us stick to the edges of the clearing, not fully in the party but not fully out of it either. We’re still just those two misfits who met back at Peel Academy.

  “Ahhh,” Temper sighs after she takes her first swallow, “now this shit is good.”

  I take a sip myself and—yum. Fairies make excellent wine. The two of us sip our drinks in silence, people-watching.

  “I hate this place,” Temper finally says. She nods to the fairies mingling about the field. “Look at the way they stare at us. It’s worse than high school.”

  In the darkness, I see the firelight flickering in their unnatural eyes. Their gazes indeed keep coming back to us.

  “They’ve been staring at you too?” I ask, my brows rising.

  “Since we road in,” she says. “You’d think they’ve never seen a human before.”

  To be fair, I doubt they’ve ever seen a
sorceress—or a winged siren.

  … Not that that’s the reason they stare.

  Here we are, the two enigmas amongst them, the humans who managed to outmaneuver the rules of their realm to end up in the highest echelons of fairy society.

  “Did you notice?” Temper nods at the servers moving in and out of the crowd like ghosts.

  I watch the humans, the changelings of this realm. Either they, or their ancestors, were swapped at birth with a fae baby.

  “Notice what?” I ask, following her gaze.

  “Look at their wrists.”

  I take another look at one of the nearby waiters. It takes several seconds to see it at just the right angle, but when I do …

  I suck in a breath.

  The raised, mottled skin of their wrist is a raspberry color, and it’s styled in the shape of a leaf.

  “They’re branded.”

  Chapter 22

  Branded like livestock. I’m reeling from that realization long after Malaki joins our group, his eyepatch silver tonight. He only lingers long enough to invite Temper to dance, and then my friend is gone, dancing about the field like she belongs to these people.

  And here I am, still the same wallflower I was in high school.

  I stare down at my wine.

  This is why I really shouldn’t drink. Pity isn’t flattering, no matter how well you wear it.

  My eyes sweep over the gardens, taking in the revelries of Solstice.

  This isn’t a party, it’s a bacchanal. Everywhere I look people are dancing, their forms illuminated under the moonlight. They’re laughing and spinning, their loose hair whipping about them.

  Those that aren’t dancing are on the outskirts of the dance floor, chatting and drinking. Well, they’re either chatting and drinking, or else slipping away. Couples are disappearing into the woods, and I’ve seen at least one fairy leave with one man and return with another.

  Everyone’s eyes are too bright, their smiles too wide, their cheeks too flushed.

  Tanked out of their minds.

  The crowd has all managed to let go of their cares for the evening. The only people who haven’t are me and the human servants, the latter who keep their eyes downcast most of the time.

  “Enjoying yourself?”

  I jump at the voice, my drink spilling over the rim and onto my hands.

  “Shit,” I curse under my breath.

  Green Man is at my side, and I have no fucking clue just how long he’s been there watching me as I’ve been watching everyone else.

  “Sorry,” he says, his eyes trained on my face, “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “No, you’re fine,” I say, shaking off my hand.

  “We were never formally introduced,” he says, holding out his hand. “I’m the Green Man, king consort to the Flora Kingdom.”

  I take his hand, mine still a little sticky with wine. Rather than shaking it, he brings my hand to his lips and presses a kiss to the back of it, his amber eyes trained on me.

  His eyes, I decide, are too intense, too mischievous, too covetous.

  He releases my hand. “So, are you enjoying yourself?”

  The man is too perceptive. He knows I feel uncomfortable and out of place.

  “No,” I say, going with the truth.

  The Green Man’s face lights up with my admission. “It’s a rare treat to come across honesty within these walls.” He glances around us.

  Technically, there are no walls around us, but the ones he’s talking about are invisible. They divide peasants from nobility, humans from fairies.

  I give him a tight smile, my gaze moving to the crowd. They’re watching me again, probably because the Green Man is at my side.

  “It’s awful, isn’t it?” he says.

  I glance to him. “What is?”

  “The eyes that both see you and don’t. The posturing. The effortless gaiety.”

  I hide my swallow. This man is reading me, and I don’t like it that he can do so, so easily.

  I make a noncommittal sound, searching the crowd for Des. There’s an ever increasing cluster of fairies around him, vying for his attention. I’m tempted to elbow my way back to his side, but I don’t want to be in that dog pile any more than I want to be right here.

  My eyes then land on Mara, who’s laughing amongst her group of men and some fawning nobles. She’s the sun and they’re all planets revolving around her, eager for her smile, her touch, her gaze. The only one missing from her group of admirers is the man at my side.

  “Will you dance with me?” said man asks.

  That makes me turn my full attention to the Green Man.

  Fairies in general, and male fairies in particular, make me nervous. Karnon and his men are to blame for that.

  But when I look at the Green Man, I don’t see a predator, I see a kindred spirit.

  Why not dance? Tonight is a festival, the Green Man looks eager, and I’ll be damned if I don’t have fun.

  “Sure,” I say.

  He smiles at that, and I reel back at how staggeringly handsome he is when he’s happy. It’s not that I hadn’t noticed earlier—all fairies seem to be attractive. It’s just that Mara’s presence seems to eclipse him.

  He takes the wine from my hand, setting it on a side table, and leads me into the crowd of dancing bodies. And then we’re moving, spinning just like all the other couples.

  The alcohol warms my stomach, and the dancing throws away the last of my caution. I find that as soon as I move my feet, I’m caught up in the music’s haunting rhythm.

  “So you are the Night King’s mate,” the Green man says, staring a little too intensely at me.

  “Mhm.” It’s hard to focus on him when the music, the wine, and the dancing all want to pull my attention up and away.

  “You have all of our kingdom fascinated by you,” he says, his hand moving to the small of my back. “A human who has supernatural powers, a mate to the King of the Night. Not to mention that you are lovelier than many of our women.”

  Why are we talking? And why about this?

  “What does being lovely have to do with anything?” I say, distracted.

  I guess it’s a stupid question to ask here in the Otherworld, where beauty is a point of fixation and ugliness only ever lurks beneath the surface.

  “Everyone thought the merciless Desmond Flynn had gotten himself shackled to some ordinary slave,” the Green Man says. “We had pitied him until we met you.”

  The wine sours in my stomach, the music begins to grate, the dancing starts to dizzy me. I push away from the Green Man, no longer interested in dancing with him.

  “Is something wrong?”

  He says this as though he didn’t just call my people slaves, as though he didn’t just insinuate that he holds them in such little regard. It’s his casual bigotry more than anything that’s off-putting.

  “I am an ordinary human,” I say as the couples around us continue to twirl.

  “No, Callypso Lillis, enchantress of mortals,” he says, “you are not.” With that, he begins to back away. “Try to enjoy yourself tonight,” he recommends. “You have a week of festivities ahead of you.”

  With that, the crowd swallows him up, and I’m alone once more, warm, twisting bodies brushing against me from all sides.

  The thought of a week here, surrounded by these fairies is suddenly so terribly daunting.

  On the edge of the dance floor, a thick shroud of darkness cuts through the brightly clad fae, and right at the center of it is the Bargainer. He strides towards me, the night clinging to him like a cloak.

  I head over to him, noticing that for once this evening, he’s free of an audience.

  His eyes are pinned to someone in the crowd. “That little fool is right,” Des says when he reaches me. “You are not ordinary.”

  “You were listening in to my conversation?” One day I’m going to have to figure out just how he comes by his secrets. There’s no way Des could’ve just overheard what the Green
Man said to me.

  “Are you surprised?” he asks, turning my question into one of his own.

  I shrug. Now that he’s here, his presence like a drug, I find I don’t really care about whether or not he was snooping, or the fact that he might’ve left his fan club just to make sure another dude wasn’t poaching on me.

  I drape my arms around his neck. Suddenly, I get what’s gotten into everyone else. It’s the smell of the smoky bonfires, the thrum of the music, the tingle of the alcohol in my veins. It’s all coaxing me to fall into this night and this man. To give everything to magic, if only for a single evening.

  He cups my cheeks, and I see him drinking in my expression. I imagine that I must now look like all the other revelers—flushed cheeks, dilated eyes, easy smile.

  Making some decision, he kisses me hard. He tastes like fairy wine and dirty thoughts.

  “Dance with me,” I say when our mouths part.

  His thumb strokes my cheek. “I don’t want to dance with you.” The pitch of his voice hits me right in my core.

  He doesn’t want to dance, but his smoky, pale eyes want something else, something that’s waking up my siren.

  My eyes move to the edge of the clearing, where fairies have been disappearing and reappearing all night.

  He pulls me in tighter. “I would make it worth your while …” he whispers, knowing where my thoughts are.

  I could just give in. I mean, why not?

  … But I shouldn’t. Right?

  His hand moves to my wrist. “Or I could simply make the decision easier.”

  My breath catches as Des holds my wrist between us, the black beads seeming to suck in the light around us.

  “Truth or dare, cherub.”

  If I choose truth, the two of us will have a little heart-to-heart, and then we’ll go back to dancing and drinking. But if I don’t …

  My gaze moves up his imposing frame to that hardened, pretty face of his.

  “Dare.”

  His hand squeezes my wrist tighter for a moment, as a slow, devious smile spreads across his face. “So be it.” His hand slips down to my palm, his magic smoothing along my skin like a thousand light caresses.

  The Bargainer warned me about this before I bought my first favor off of him. That with a siren, he wouldn’t just ask for secrets.