Fear and awe mixed into a heady wave of ice-layered warmth from the city dwellers. For the beasts masquerading as typical fae males were anything but. One could learn a lot from merely observing and listening, and since arriving in the city only this morning, I’d gleaned a surprising amount of information about the kingdom of Vordane.

These wolves were both saviors and nightmares—stars-bent on shredding souls and livelihoods in their neighboring kingdom of Sinshell.

What Vordane’s king hoped to attain from such brutality wasn’t for me to discern. Though a part of me did long to give the seemingly unconcerned faeries of this kingdom a glimpse at just how devastatingly destructive bloodshed forged from hatred could be.

Interest in the wolves soon waned, the attention of most creatures given back to their liquor and companions. Two females seated along the wall in a booth by the door leaned closer to one another, their smiles and flushing cheeks earning them a glance from one of the warriors.

Hit with a hint of nostalgia for the excitement, the sweet-fragranced wonder the females fed to the musty air, I tried on a smile of my own.

It wobbled, my lips good for nothing more than fusing to the wineglass I gave to them.

I drained it, then scooped a handful of peppered nuts from the small bowl before me. The silver-haired bartender had kindly delivered it with the decanter of wine to my lone table in the corner when he’d noticed that I was in no hurry to leave. Uncanny yet not so wildly improbable, the flavored nuts tasted the same as our own. I’d hoped they wouldn’t, but hoping was futile.

I could run. I could cross an ocean to hide amongst unknowing strangers and allow desperation to make me believe my brief escape would help. That it would make it hurt less or even offer some perspective.

But it hadn’t worked. Not yet. Perhaps it wouldn’t at all. So I ate, and I drank.

Feeling eyes upon me, I looked up to find there was only one.

A male with dark shoulder-length hair tied at his nape had seated himself beside a golden-haired female in the booth. He was missing an eye. A scar, severe and hooked, slashed through his sealed eyelid.

The females didn’t seem to mind, offering broad smiles when he looked at them.

I was willing to wager the disfigurement deterred no one, his every feature sculpted with alluringly fierce edges. Dark hair peppered thick over his jawline. His cheeks sat high, intense enough to suggest many a knuckle had shattered upon trying to inflict him harm, and his lone eye resembled moss after the rain.

He was both utterly terrifying and beautiful.

Two things I’d gorged on for years, only to now find myself in hiding from the heartbreak of it all.