My breathing stopped as the question took me by surprise. With a suddenly racing heart that had nothing to do with being afraid of Karmuth and everything to do with being attracted to him regardless of the things he’d done, I gulped pathetically.

“What’s that got to do with it?” I mumbled.

Karmuth’s eyebrows furrowed. He’d forgotten his own advice to keep moving and stopped to take a better look at me. His eyes roaved over every inch of me as if there was a way he could read my age from my appearance. There wasn’t.

There were no obvious ways to tell the age of a fae. Being absolutely certain there hadn’t been any death fae born within the last twenty-five years, I knew all of my protectors were a whole lot older than me. There were other tell-tale signs like the way a fae talked, or how they carried themselves. After the first century, many fae became self-assured. After the second, they might have learned their lesson and mellowed. Every fae aged differently, however.

I did not wish Karmuth to know I hadn’t even reached my third decade yet; rather, I was barely over the border of the second. In the years of fae I was but a youngling. Even in human years I hadn’t yet reached full maturity.

Not reading anything significant out of my posture, as I’d guessed he wouldn’t, he turned back around to continue walking. There wasn’t a path to follow, so he made his own through branches and bushes.

“A century ago, a pack of delthers attacked the court of Hessia. Seven hundred fae died within an hour before the beasts were finally taken down. Fifty years later, Felroth suffered similar losses. Since the Vindican court grew in strength with every one of those deaths, the council of courts turned against us, restricting our feeding grounds. There haven’t been any further attacks, but we’re still taking the blame for them. It is believed that delthers are born out of a death fae’s nightmares, but the fae must be at full strength to conjure them up. A lot of bullshit, if you ask me.”

He gave me a tight smile after his history lesson, and I nodded in appreciation. Not everyone had the patience to educate me, and I’d learned a long time not to ask too many questions. It would immediately out me as a youngling and result in special treatment.

“So, how old are you?” Karmuth asked again as if unable to stifle his curiosity. “I thought everyone knew this story.”

I stiffened. “Elverstone has not been attacked by delthers. We do not gossip about other courts’ misfortune, either.” Which was partly true, but my mother likely knew about delthers and failed to mention them when we moved in right next door. “How old are you?” I asked back, hoping to get the focus off me. Just how many decades older was he?

He shifted his shoulders and avoided my eyes. “Is there anything specific you’re looking for in here? I suggest we not stay for much longer.”

Did he also wish to change the topic? Was he hiding his age because he was younger than he wanted to be, or would he think I’d baulk to know he was more than a few centuries older than me?

“Oh, pray tell, is your age making you uncomfortable?”

“No, I just don’t want you to get the wrong idea,” he replied slowly. “Despite my age, I am more than capable of taking care of you.”

Very cryptic, and absolutely uncalled for. I’d like to think he did not mean it the way it came out, but his voice turned low and seductive at the end. I couldn’t have misinterpreted it.

Sela had seemed to emphasise the same thing, that Karmuth was an expert in taking care of… things.

“If you say so.” I swallowed, hearing the rush of the blood in my ears.

“Hmm… You are not convinced.”

“Hmm… Should I be?”

His smile turned into a mischievous grin that turned my stomach and brought goosebumps to my arms. He took a step closer to me and I backed away until I hit a tree. With two swift steps he crowded over me so close I could feel his breath on my face, but he wasn’t touching me. Even then, the throb of the ring on my finger intensified.

“I wish I could prove it to you, Isay, but you’ll just have to take my word for it.” He breathed in deeply, eyes drooping low. “For now.”

I opened my mouth to object, not knowing if I meant to protest the proving in general or just the ‘for now’ part of his admission. Him this close to me got my skin crawling and my head spinning. His body radiated heat that transferred to me without any need for physical contact. It was hard to remember why I hated him when his proximity made me wild. I wanted to test the ring again.

Only hot air wafted out from between my lips, and it was all well and good this way, because all of a sudden Karmuth was as stiff as a brick wall again. His eyes no longer on me but instead wildly searching the woods as his finger ended on my lips and I gasped despite the warning.

His eyes widened for a brief moment, but then went back to looking for threats, darting back and forth between the trees.

I thought he was being paranoid until I heard it, too. A rustling right behind us, then a wet sniffing and a snort. I craned my neck to see past the tree at my back, but Karmuth pulled me back and shook his head in silence.

“But—” I whispered.

No, he mouthed back.

I was content on waiting it out and never seeing the beast of Karmuth’s nightmares until a quiet squeak ripped through my heart and the monster bolted after whatever had made that sound.

All I heard then was the loud thumping of its feet that highlighted its size and the wind in my ears. I wasn’t thinking straight when I took off right after it, Karmuth cursing behind me.

We were running through the thick growth, the delther carving a path for us by ramming through whatever barrier presented itself. Its prey was smaller, a squirrel or a rabbit perhaps. I wasn’t quite sure, but I felt its life force bright and strong as it ran until it disappeared into a tight hole in the ground and the beast I was chasing stopped in its tracks and started digging at the obvious den.

Only now did I have a chance to take in the animal in front of me. Built like a bull, with black leathery skin and crevices in its muscled back that regularly opened up and closed emitting a smoke each time. it didn’t look all that bad until it turned to face me instead of the cave.

Nostrils flaring, eyes as dark as night, and slimy tendrils creeping out of its mouth like hundreds of thin tongues, the delther looked horrifying.

“Isay, back away slowly,” Karmuth’s tight voice instructed from behind me.

I couldn’t. A small white rabbit was at the entrance to the destroyed den, pressed tightly to the ground. Its life force flared to the beat of its heart, to the frantic beat of mine.

I attempted to side-step the delther instead to get to the rabbit first. I could protect it. Somehow.

Wrong move. It sprang on me faster than I could comprehend, and the impact of its sharp horns was only halted by Karmuth’s sword. I let out a cry anyway as my heart tried to catch up to what was happening.

The beast’s tendrils wrapped around his sword-wielding arm and cut through skin. A sharp hiss was the only sound Karmuth made, but his hand began to shake as the delther pushed more pressure on the sword while pulling at him with its tendrils. Then I saw it: Karmuth’s ecos being drawn out of him through the tendrils, the contact weakening him with every passing second. He hadn’t told me delthers fed on life force.

With a grunt Karmuth pulled at his locked-up arm, but he was already staggering on his feet with more than half of his ecos gone.

If he died here and now, I would undoubtedly be next, and then the bunny. I don’t know if it was the fear of death that summoned the burst of life from my chest that slammed into Karmuth, but whatever it was helped. Strengthened by my ecos, he managed to slice through the tendrils imprisoning him and danced around the delther, avoiding its head now that he knew what to expect.

I ran for the rabbit the moment the opportunity arose and pressed it against my chest. Karmuth kept on twirling around the delther, slashing at it strategically, but it was clear he wasn’t as strong as he’d been in the training field. The monster had taken something of him I couldn’t fix.

I tried anyway. Doing what I despised the most, what we weren’t supposed to do, I collected from the forest around us, drawing the power to myself and channelling it toward Karmuth, who stumbled once when he felt me push at his damaged ecos but started carving at the delther with a renewed force.

My vision filled with white as the energy flew around me in suffocating velocity. My head swam from the effort it took to keep the channels open and not harm the rabbit still cuddled in my arms.

The patch of grass under my feet dried, and the leaves on the closest trees turned grey. I couldn’t stop it. The flow—I couldn’t lock it back up.

I kept on taking more from the forest and pressing it all into Karmuth by instinct as the raving delther picked parts of it out of him for its own meal. I thought the fight would never end; they were both continuously reinvigorated and could go on for hours should I be able to keep this up myself.

At long last, the delther made a mistake that Karmuth used to his advantage. As the beast buckled left, Karmuth dove right and executed a successful hit into one of the smoke emitting slits in its back, then cut through the softer spot in its thick skin and gutted it in front of my eyes. The delther shrieked and fell on its hooves, whimpering pitifully until Karmuth beheaded it.

It was done. It was finished. Only I was still pushing all of what the forest had to offer into him.

“Isay?” His worried voice came from right in front of me. “You can stop now.”

I panted, searching for his eyes. “I… I can’t.”

“Isay, you really need to stop now.” His eyes were burning. His whole face was glowing. Karmuth radiated life itself. He was absolutely stunning. “Please stop,” he whispered.

I tried to plug the connection. I gritted my teeth, closing the channels where the power pushed through into me.