“Is that what they do?” he asks with a trace of curiosity, as if this is a subject of fascination for him.

Tierney squints at him. “They’ve been talking about it for weeks.”

“Their festival is of no concern to me.”

Tierney feels a small twinge of surprise, because she can sense it there, buried under his flat inflection.

Hurt.

Tierney points to the sky, wondering if Viger is truly immune to the moon’s entrancing pull. “Do you feel its effect at all?”

He holds her stare, unblinking. “I sense it,” he says, a trace of tension lighting on the air between them.

“It’s supposed to be good luck, you know,” she says as she presses down her disquieted feelings. “To kiss someone under the Xishlon moon. A full pairing is said to be an even greater blessing.”

“Romantic nonsense,” Viger scoffs, glancing down at the shadowy water. “Made up by a world that wants to deny death, destruction, and despair.”

She blinks at him, unable to stifle a short laugh, his outrageously bleak attitude an unexpected balm this eve. Their eyes catch, gravity seeming to shift as Tierney stares into his midnight gaze. That sense of being drawn toward him ripples over her, everything else receding as the world darkens.

Tendrils of his dark mist shiver over her exposed skin, the odd sensation not completely without appeal. “What would it be like to kiss a Death Fae, I wonder,” she muses before she can stop herself, overcome by both Viger’s and the Xishlon moon’s thralls.

Viger’s mouth curves into a slow, feral smile that sends a shiver down Tierney’s spine as dark horns spiral up from his head. “It’s terrifying, I’m told,” he says, and Tierney feels like her eyes are magically locking to his, a different type of danger now riding the air.

Warnings she’s heard murmured at the Wyvernguard flit through her mind—kiss a Death Fae and they’ll invade your nightmares. Kiss a Death Fae and be buried in the deepest dark.

Kiss a Death Fae and become one with Death itself.

Viger reaches up and pushes her hair behind her shoulder with a surprisingly silken touch, his claws skimming the base of Tierney’s neck, making her shudder, his touch like shadows sliding across her skin. And his scent...it’s like cool, silent places. Like secrets. A flush rises on Tierney’s neck, his dark, penetrating gaze shifting to heatedly enthralling.

“Viger.” She swallows as her heartbeat deepens, her water magic warming as his claw tips slowly circle the back of her neck. “I’m a Water Fae tied to the life of my river. You’re a Death Fae. Do we really want to do this?”

Viger smiles, a single claw now tracing an enticing line down the length of her neck. “I think you know the answer, Asrai.”

Tierney swallows, mesmerized by him, as the purple-lit forest darkens further.