Bad Fae | romantasy | Bad Fae #1

Chapter Thirty-Six

I was at the window of our room a few days later when I realised that the Shaden were at the stables, and they were preparing their horses to leave. Four horses. Not five. My heart lurched in my chest and I didn't even think, I just leapt over the balcony railing and ran to them.

"What's happening?" I asked, but Dain was decidedly ignoring me as he settled Camoren.

"We..." Venali started, hesitating as though expecting Dain's retribution. When none came, he continued. "We're heading back to the Darkrealm."

"Short term," Phin said like that was supposed to calm the rising panic in me.

"Dain...needs to return," Ninleyn said softly.

Instead of telling any of them to shut up, the shadow that was Dain simply pulled himself onto Camoren and cantered away. I refused to believe I felt a part of me leaving as well, and I blinked back the heat in my face.

"How long will you be?" I asked the others.

They all shared a look, but it was Ninleyn who replied, "We cannot be sure. Dain has...been away too long. The power is...restless. We will be as quick as we can."

I felt something in me harden. I was pretty sure it was my heart. "And can I expect that to be a week or a thousand years? As quick as Dain will let you? Or as quick as it takes Dain to do the minimum of what he must?"

"Yana," Ninleyn said softly, reaching for me, but I took a step back, shaking my head.

"No. No, I'm sure I'll be fine. So long as he's not expecting me to be in one piece when he gets back. As long as he doesn't care if I'm insane, unhappy, lonely, imprisoned. Have a wonderful time," I said, my voice heavy with sarcasm.

"Yana, he has to return," Phin said.

"It might not kill him..." Venali started, then didn't seem to know how to continue.

"But we've never tested the limits this far," Ninleyn finished for him.

I reinforced that new wall, the new armour, around my heart. Logically, I knew that Dain had to return to the Darkrealm. I may not have understood all the implications, but plenty of sidhe had told me it was something he had to do regularly or there would be problems. Problems that I was guessing started with that unshakable shroud of shadow.

I didn't give a shit just then.

"I will let you get on, then," I said, unable to keep the ice, newly forged around my heart, from seeping into my voice. "It would be such a shame if Dain had to suffer in silence alone."

Without fully realising what I was doing, I felt the shadows engulf me and I swept back up to my room.

I spent the day locked in there alone, stewing with my thoughts. Thoughts that swirled with abandonment. Because that was what Dain had done. He'd abandoned me. He bound me to him, he brought me to this place, he'd made me reliant on him, and then he'd just up and abandoned me without a single word. I was left in this prison, that Dain had been unable to save me from.

It clawed at me. At my heart. At my soul.

Pain.

Fear.

Alone.

I had controlled my fear for so many years after that night in Aclad. I had managed to master it. Rise above it. Fear hadn't touched me until Dain bound us. And now, all I felt was fear and loneliness and the aching hole of pain twisting and spinning and reaching for that abyss inside me.

Shadows railed around me in the room, full of the creatures who called them home. A visceral embodiment of my emotions. Controlled but uncontrolled. They wouldn't leave me, they protected me; woe to anyone who entered this room without my permission.