“I’m fine,” I said, though I was anything but—my innards twisted into a never before felt chaos. It rendered me incapable of focusing on any singular emotion, left me floating as if I’d escaped my life via a dream I’d soon wake from. “I just have a sweet tooth.”

“Kept away from sweets growing up?”

I grinned down at the flowers. “My father was somewhat of a simple male.”

“Eat what you want,” he said with a smirk when I looked over. “You’re far from a youngling now.”

“Indeed. In fact, I do wonder if I’m older than you.”

I assumed age was not an issue for those of faerie blood on this continent either, as most of us could live for thousands of years. But I was picking, wanting to see if he’d fray at all. I needed him to give me a reason to run from this place I shouldn’t be clinging so tightly to.

But it would seem my needles were too blunt.

“Thirty years as of last week,” he said. “Is that experienced enough for you?” He clasped my elbow, tugging me around a puddle of thickened mud and spoiled milk. Pulling me close, he whispered, “We both know it is.”

I flushed, unable to remember the last time I’d grown heated in the cheeks so often. Too often, considering I was five years older than he. It coaxed a wild smile from me, then laughter when Scythe dragged me into an alcove in the alleyway, steam rising from the fogged window behind us.

I was pressed against the wall, the flowers falling limp in my hand, when he said, “Open your mouth.”

A hardened sweet was placed over my tongue, his gaze heating when it curled around it. His hands framed my face. His lips fell over mine. Unbearably still, he breathed me in with a low rumble coating his throat. A harsh exhale later, he opened my mouth with his tongue to scoop the sweet into his.

Before I could melt into the stone, he pulled me down the alleyway toward the street.

I was still reeling, my mind as fogged as the windows we’d left behind.

As if knowing, he took advantage of that by asking, “Tell me where you’re from.” He threw it out there so suddenly that it was clear not knowing had plagued him.

“Wistensia,” I said, and the reveal felt like a betrayal somehow, even as some relief arrived from having finally said it.

Abruptly, he stopped at the end of the alley and turned to me with questions flooding his eye. “Across the Night Sea.”

I nodded.

A tilt of his head. “Why come here?”

“For a break, I guess you could say.” It wasn’t a lie, and thankfully, he seemed to sense that as those broad shoulders dropped a fraction.