I studied him, truly studied him. I followed the scar on his cheek, the taut way he held himself, and the barely concealed violence in his stance.
He had blood on his hands, without any doubt.
He had nightmares in his soul and death in his veins, but...
He reminded me of someone.
Someone who’d run from kissing me and vanished into the forest after remembering something that he couldn’t forgive himself for.
Someone who’d been raised in this valley, groomed, molested, and then left to die.
Kas belonged in this valley.
He was more animal than human and more broken than whole, but he was healing...slowly. He was trying. He was learning how to live one hard, horrible day at a time.
This man reminded me of Kas.
His bi-colored eyes held the same haunting. His body pulsed with power, ready to kill instead of accepting another bruise from someone else.
His head cocked as if he couldn’t understand why I’d stood down, but he never stopped assessing me, poised to attack.
I lowered the stick.
His nostrils flared as the stick rested on the ground, no longer aimed at his face. “Wise move. If you’d struck me with that, I wouldn’t have been responsible for my retaliation.”
I swallowed hard.
My arm bunched to bring my weapon back up.
If I was wrong about this. If I was seeing things that weren’t there, then I was more stupid than I thought.
My mind raced with names that Kas had moaned in his nightmares. The names written in books resting on pillows of slaves, binding them to a particular fable, ensuring their fates were no longer theirs but written by their so-called master.
Balling my hands, I whispered, “Wes?”
The stranger stiffened to steel. His eyes narrowed to slits. “What did you just call me?”
“Zanik, perhaps?” I stepped toward him, dropping my stick on the way. “Umm...” What other names had Kas said? What other names had been on those books? “Neo? Maliki?”
He seemed to grow, gathering all the shadows and wrapping them around himself. His boots snapped a twig as he stepped toward me, closing the distance I’d put between us.
The air crackled as he approached. The forest went thick with anticipation.
I stopped moving as he came nearer. My body buzzed with adrenaline and warning, but I wouldn’t run. I had no doubt if I ran, it wouldn’t end well. It was either fight or persuade. Those were my only two options. I would never turn my back on this man.
Not when he was so similar to Kas but also entirely different.
Kas had been rough and brash when we’d first met. He’d been cruel and fierce, but beneath it all, there’d been an endearing sort of fumbling. He’d invoked terror but also summoned empathy.
This man wasn’t like Kas in that respect.
There was no humanity buried beneath decades of protection.
There was nothing in him that struggled to understand who or what he was.
He knew.
He knew he was dangerous.
He knew he could kill and get away with it.
He knew who he was and wasn’t afraid to use every skill he had to his advantage.
There’d only been one family member Kas had moaned about in his sleep who seemed different from the way he talked about the rest. Whenever he mentioned him, reverence and shame would fill his tone as if he was both in awe of his adopted brother and guilty that he wasn’t able to protect him better.
A boy who’d stepped into the darkness with Kas and hadn’t walked back out again.
“Jareth?” I whispered.
The man froze.
His one blue eye and one brown locked onto mine. His blue one blazed almost aquamarine while his left seemed to feast on every shadow inside him. With a predator’s grace and a hunter’s power, he crossed his arms over his chest. He inhaled, making his jacket creak and rib cage expand. For a second, I didn’t think he’d answer, but then his lips twitched, and he cocked his head in a small bow. “It seems you know more about me than I thought.”
I let out a small exhale, triumph filling me to have figured out who this random nightwalker was. “You’re Jareth? One of the Fable children?”
His jacket creaked louder as his arms tightened. “Never refer to me as that again, understand? Mention the word fable, and your heart will be pumping in my fist.”
I shuddered but didn’t drop his stare.
Icy silence swirled between us.
Finally, he sniffed and asked, “Where is he?” Stepping into me, he dropped his arms to his sides as his hands curled into stone. “Are you running from him? Did you think tonight was a good night to escape?”
I fought the urge to back away, standing my ground. “I have nothing to escape from.”
He chuckled black and low, his gaze dropping to the chain around my ankle. “That so?”
I dug my toes into the earth. “That isn’t what you think.”
“You so sure about that?” He swayed toward me, his breath tickling my cheek as he sniffed the air around me. He sniffed me as if a simple scent could give away my lies and secrets. “I know someone else who wore that chain, and he refused to escape too.”
I braced my shoulders as memories of Kas holding me in the bath, washing my hair, and kissing me hard filled me. “He didn’t escape because he refused to leave you.”
His face shut down. A switch from curious toying to stark unreadability. He studied me as if he couldn’t figure me out. As if the effort might not be worth his while. His knuckles cracked as he fisted tighter, shifting on the balls of his feet.
I didn’t like the look in his eyes.
I didn’t like the way my instincts went from wary to downright panic. “If you hurt me, you hurt him. Kas is mine. Just like I’m his.”
He jerked back. “So he is still here.” He tripped a few steps before his knees locked into place, his gaze locking onto the chain around my ankle. His surprise gave way to pure rage. “The day that fucking cunt buckled that chain on my brother...it was the beginning of the end for him.” His voice dropped to a husky murmur, his memories thick with fury. “His mind cracked after a month of wearing that.” He looked up, his face etched with moonlight, sharp like blades and carved with pain. His clean-shaven cheeks and trimmed dark hair were a stark difference to Kas’s heavy scruff and wild locks, but they mimicked each other in stance, in mannerisms, in blatant denial of being someone’s possession.
Stalking around me, he raked a hand through his hair, his voice like a snake wrapping around my shoulders. “Bet he didn’t tell you that. Bet he didn’t tell you a lot of things. You say you’re his, but do you know how far he’ll go for those he loves? How much fucking shit he’ll endure just so you don’t have to?”
I rubbed at a flood of goosebumps over my arms. “I know enough.”
“You know enough,” he repeated with scorn, nodding as if I’d said something ridiculous. “Bullshit.” He paced around me again, his eyes all over me. “Did you know I told him to stop volunteering? To stop trying to save us all?” He wiped a hand over his mouth, his body turning jerky with history. “Some nights, he’d shit blood for hours after they were through with him. He stopped eating. His nightmares kept us all awake. He could barely walk after the guests finished using him. Yet he never once stopped protecting us. Never once turned his back on our pain, even when his was greater.” He spat on the ground, his voice slipping to rage. “So you can understand why I’m protective of him. Why I’m not inclined to believe you. Why I will do whatever it goddamn well takes to keep him safe.”