Male shadowborne warrior x female reader (nsfw) *commission* (long!) (Patreon)

This is one of those incredible moments of things just coming together and stars aligning. At the time this was commissioned, my mojo was dipping to an all-time low, but this absolute superstar patron asked for something that I wanted to write as well. And so I suggested Shaer (pron. 'Shay-uh'). He's a fae captain in the House of Shadows, which is the noble family who rank just below the royal family of the Court of Night. He himself isn't noble, but he is employed by the House of Shadows. 

The reader has experienced some trauma (unmentioned) in her younger years which made her incredibly fearful of the dark. When she is snatched away by a wandering wraith from the Fae Realm and awakens in total darkness, it is worse than hell for her. Luckily, she's not alone for long... 

Hope you enjoy! I had a blast writing it, as you can tell from the whopping 17,000 word total wordcount! I'll pop it up on Tumblr in a week or so. 

Mist coiled, lazy as a housecat, around the boles of the reaching elms and ash as you walked beneath their bare winter branches. The air bit at your throat as you breathed, but beneath your feet the crunch and crack of icy divots in the track filled the woods around you and made you smile. The austere purity of winter always refreshed you. 

The lone refrain of a robin sailed sonorously through the shards of sky visible between the trees, and a flash of colour marked his bold position atop a holly’s dark foliage. 

If you hadn’t been revelling in the stark glory of winter’s hold on the forest, perhaps you might have seen the sneaking shape stalking in what little shadow there was beneath that holly bush. 

Only when the sudden silence of the woods pressed in upon your ears did you suspect that something was amiss. 

A twig snapped, the robin wheeled away in the air, and then utter stillness descended upon the woods.

The creature that emerged from the claw-like embrace of the holly bush had too many limbs and it shifted and changed before your very eyes; first a six legged wolf, then a horse with lion’s paws, then a snake with the head of a goat. Rooted to the spot with horror, you couldn’t even breathe, let alone run. Whatever this was lay far beyond your comprehension. It locked its terrible gaze on you, opening a maw that stretched unnaturally wide, and lunged for you in a spiralling rush of blackness.

You awoke in pitch darkness and did not manage to stifle your scream. 

The air around you was rancid, like the foetid cave of some prehistoric predator, and it made no difference whether your eyes were open or shut. Panic - raw, untamed, bilious terror - surged through you, and you scrambled to a sitting position, huddled on a cave floor, rocking slightly, eyes rammed shut, hugging your knees. This was worse than death. Every fear you’d ever had, every awful memory, came pressing in on you until you thought your mind would shatter with the weight of it all. 

The steady, rhythmic dripping of water unexpectedly sliced through your panic and drew your attention. It didn’t make the fear go away, and trying to focus on it was like trying to catch snowflakes with warm hands, but became a tiny torch in your darkness. The cave, or wherever you were, was not all utterly still after all; water - life - still flowed through whatever hellscape this was, and you let your mind latch onto the regular tap of droplets on rock, trying to match your breathing to it, just for something to do until your rational mind returned and you could think clearly again. Nausea swelled in your stomach and you breathed steadily through your mouth to stave it off. 

Something shifted, slithering and skittering, and you tried to muffle your whimpering breath behind your palm. In your mind’s eye, you saw again that abhorrent creature, switching forms in the blink of an eye, and tried so hard not to let yourself imagine it out there in the endless darkness, standing there, watching you. 

When all fell still again, you fought so hard not to give in to the next wave of horrified, blank terror that you didn’t notice how hard your jaw was clenched until your teeth began to hurt. You knew you had to think, to steady yourself, but those warnings were coming from somewhere distant and unreachable in your mind. 

Alone in the dark, you had no idea how long you sat there waiting for that thing to come back and finish you off. 

Eventually a new sound drifted through the darkness. You turned your head, straining to catch it, frowning. What could only be the pulsing of huge wing beats reached your ears, though it seemed to be coming from a long way off. 

You raised your head, feeling raw and groggy, slow to process things. 

Voices. Those were voices. You should cry out. They could help. But what if they couldn’t hear you? What if you only woke the slumbering darkness and roused it? What if it only rose and coiled around you, suffocating, choking -?

Footsteps. 

Claws on rock?

The creature? Panic flared hot and acrid in your throat.

A voice. Gentle. Deep. Male. Calm. 

Something crouched beside you and you recoiled with a whimper that didn’t even seem to come from you, though you felt your throat constrict with the effort of making a noise after so long alone keeping still and silent. 

“Easy. I won’t hurt you. Can you stand?” His voice was practical, his tone neutral, but still it was hard to process the meaning of his question. 

“What?” you rasped. 

“We need to get you out of here. It’s quiet for now. The wraith is hunting, building up its stores again. It’s been hibernating. We have the chance to get you out, but you have to move. Can you get up?”

His voice was softly articulated, with a slight, lilting accent that you couldn’t place and didn’t recognise. It made you think that you really were as far from home as you had begun to suspect.

“I… I don’t know.”

“Let’s try.”

“I can’t see anything.”

“You won’t,” he said, still calm. “Not here. You’re in the Everdark. Very few creatures can see in here.”

“The where?” you croaked, mind still reeling and straining to catch up. 

A slight sigh was followed by a couple of rapid inhales, as though he were scenting the air around you for trouble. “The Everdark,” he said with no hint of strained patience in his voice, though he was clearly very keen to get you moving. “It’s where the nastiest of the creatures go to hunt. It’s my job to keep them in and everyone else out.”

None of that made any sense to you, so you just blurted, “You can see?”

“Not well, admittedly,” he said, and you realised that you could hear the friendly smile in his tone. “C’mon. You need a hand up?”

You shook your head, mentally and physically recoiling from the idea of someone’s skin against your own at that moment. The darkness itself felt like an oily film against your body, a choking presence in your lungs. 

“I’m going to stand, and I would like you to follow me,” he said, urgency finally creeping into his tone. “We need to go. Now.”

There was authority there, which would ordinarily have made you bristle, but he spoke with the confidence of experience, and you were way out of your depth here; wherever ‘here’ truly was. Wherever he might lead you had to be better than this, you reasoned, pleased to be able to process your own thoughts a little more clearly now.

And so, shakily, you lurched to your feet, and when you stood, you heard a warm, gentle chuckle from a few feet away. He was taller than you, though not by a huge amount. “I knew you had it in you,” he said. “Ready? This way.”

You inched forwards, terrified you were going to crash into something or fall off some unseen precipice. “Just follow the sound of my footsteps,” he said. “And leave everything else to me.” Following those softly-padding footsteps for a few paces, you were all too aware of the scuff and scrape of your boots on the wet rock beneath them, and of the dark pressing in on all sides, until he broke the smothering silence again with a question. “What’s a human doing here anyway?”

You froze. “You’re… not human?”

“No.” His answer was candid and instant. “I am Shadowborne. My name is Shaer, and I’m a captain in the Armed Forces of the House of Shadows.”

“Is… Is any of that supposed to mean something to me?” 

“Maybe not,” he said, and again laughter crackled like static at the edge of his tone. “You’ve never left the Mortal Realm before I take it. I did wonder if you were a runaway slave. What a first visit to the Fae Realm this must be…”

Your hearing buzzed and warped and you swayed, half staggering. “The Fae Realm? This… Oh no…”

“Easy,” he said again. “Keep moving.”

Somehow, you managed it. 

As you inhaled a few minutes later, you caught the fresh scent of flowing water over mossy rocks, and heard again the beating of those mighty wings. “What… What is that?”

“We’re almost back in the Twilight,” he replied. “What you can probably hear is Tyvah’s infernal wyvern. He always gets grumpy if he’s grounded for more than five minutes.”

“Tyvah? Wyvern?”

Shaer sighed. “You’ll see. I’m sorry I don’t have time to explain any more. We need to keep moving.”

It was an effort to swallow your fear, but you puffed out a breath and pressed on. You had little choice now but to trust him, and you weren’t going to sit in the dark waiting for that ‘wraith’ to come back and finish you off, that was for certain. 

Shapes loomed out of the darkness ahead, and you suddenly realised that you could see; not much, but still, more than before. Stunted trees, twisted and withered, stubbornly tried to grow here and there amid the blackened grass of what looked like an empty, desolate prairie, and thick banks of fog drifted through the air, making the trees seem to shift and move like ghosts. “What is this place?” you murmured. 

“This is the Twilight,” he explained softly. “It’s the borderland that rings the Everdark. We’re not safe yet. Once that wraith returns and finds you gone, it’ll come after us.”

“Shit,” you swore, feeling sick again, and he loosed a dark chuckle. 

“Yeah,” was all he said in response. 

After another few minutes of walking through the damp, dead grass, Shaer gave a short whistle. The dull, flat light illuminated the silhouettes of a small group up ahead with something much larger lurking behind them, and at the sound of your approach, they all fell silent and turned to face you. 

It was still too dark to see more than the eerie, black blades of grass at your feet, but when you looked more closely at the vague shape of your rescuer just ahead of you, you realised with a jolt that he’d been telling the truth when he’d said he wasn’t human. The hunched outline of wings became apparent as the light increased a little, and you gasped as a bank of fog shifted and you saw him properly for the first time. 

His legs were not human either. Your eyes rolled up his body from the large, black taloned, almost paw-like feet, up his avian legs, over his loose, dark brown trousers where, at the top of which, a long, slate grey tail curved behind him. His legs were like those of an eagle, except that where a raptor’s legs are scaled, his were smooth, free of either hair or feather, and the skin was a gorgeous, smoky grey. 

Once you’d finally stopped staring at his legs and slender tail, you took in the massive, bat-like wings that were pinned tightly against his back. Each one was tipped with a curving, onyx talon, and the leathery skin seemed tough but somehow still delicate. An overwhelming urge to touch them surged through you and you bit it down with only a twitch of your fingers to betray you. A couple of scars lightened the dark membrane, and in one place he even had a little hole. He had seen action as a soldier, and as you recalled the horror of that wraith, you realised it was probably from creatures like that. Or worse.

Shaer carried a long, slightly curved sword at his left hip, and a bandoleer of knives across his chest, beneath which was a flexible cuirass of overlapping leather plates. He wore leather bracers at his wrists, and his hands were the same slate grey as his feet. 

His expression was neutral as you stared openly at his face now, and despite the shifting unease of the soldiers behind him - all of whom had wings and legs like his, and some even had horns and additional spikes - Shaer remained still, letting you absorb the strangeness of his form for a moment longer. 

Glowing, amber eyes stared out at you from a face that was sharply handsome, angular, with high cheekbones and a straight nose. His dark hair was pulled back off his face into a stubby ponytail, a few sections falling forwards into those inhuman eyes, and you stared openly at them. There were no whites to his eyes, only glowing yellow, with a slit pupil that had widened to accommodate the low light levels here. At the corners of his attractive mouth, he had a smattering of paler skin, as though bleached by lye.

A couple of the soldiers in the small company behind him shuffled impatiently. Some of them were much taller and broader than Shaer, with hulking muscles and almost spiny looking adornments to their wings but beneath the brown, overlapping plates of his leather armour, Shaer seemed slender and athletic rather than bulky and muscular. He was built for speed and agility, not raw strength.

Before you had any more time to spend gaping at the strange company, a low-frequency rumble disturbed the uneasy silence. It was so deep and powerful that you actually felt it in your chest, and it seemed to call Shaer back to the situation, though no one reacted as if it were a threat.

What you had originally taken for just a darker patch of shadows just beyond the group of eight or so winged soldiers, began to move. 

You took half a step back before realising that Shaer didn’t seem worried at all. Standing firm, you felt your eyes widen and your mouth drop open at the sight of the beast that emerged from the darkness, preceded by a slender figure. 

As they rounded the company of soldiers and approached Shaer, you couldn't take your eyes off the creature. It was the size of a single-storey house, low and long, with angular wings tucked up along its dark, murky green body, and where you’d thought from its size that it must be bulky, you now saw that it was lanky and skinny, with plates of hard scale and an elongated, triangular head that sported elegant horns which snaked back over its head towards its long and equally spined neck. 

It walked on its wingtips and on huge, taloned hind legs, with a lashing tail to balance the length of its neck and head. A young woman, wearing what looked like riding leathers and a leather jerkin, strode along just ahead of it, leading it with a simple black bridle and a long loop of rein. You nearly gasped in shock as you saw the extensive scarring on her face that extended up into her hairline well past her ear. She had shaved her black hair close to her scalp on that side, as if to accentuate the full extent of the claw marks, but the other side of her hair fell long over her right shoulder. Her eyes were the same burning gold as Shaer’s, and her skin was an even darker grey, but she had no wings and her legs appeared humanoid. As the unusual pair came to a halt in front of the captain, the creature stretched its wings and raised its head, letting out another deep, low frequency grumble and parting its slender jaws in what had to be a yawn. 

“Thought you’d got lost in the dark, chief,” the newcomer said to Shaer without preamble, and you watched, intrigued, as the captain’s mouth quirked up into a lopsided smirk. 

“Have a little faith, Scout,” was all he had time to say to her before the wyvern’s head shot up and it began to snort, shifting and pawing at the ground. 

Shaer whipped around and cursed. You followed suit, but couldn’t see much beyond the eerie banks of fog drifting through the trees. “What?” you hissed. 

“The Everdark knows we’re here,” he said. “Its inhabitants are stirring. We need to leave.”

“Boss,” the scout said. “She’s got no wings. She’ll have to ride with me.”

Shaer nodded and turned to his company. “Get back to barracks,” he said. “Keep in formation. When you land, report in to Maier and wait in the mess room for a quick debriefing. I’ll fly escort with Tyvah. Go!” and without delay, the company took wing as one, pushing themselves from the ground on those powerful, seemingly spring loaded legs, and wheeling up into the low-hanging clouds like a flock of bats. 

In a quieter voice, Shaer said to you, “You’ll need to fly with us…”

You looked him up and down and risked a little smile, despite the way your heart was now hammering against your ribs. “I’m sorry I left my wings back at home…” you said, and he laughed softly, his eyes crinkling at the corners, and in the paler specks of skin at the right hand edge of his mouth a little dimple appeared. 

“You could borrow mine,” he said, “But I’ll have to hold you, or you can ride with Tyvah on her flying monstrosity. She’s got to go back to report in as well.”

“Flying monstrosity?” you asked, eyeing the wyvern, who, at that moment, had gone back to snuffling around at the base of a nearby tree in a manner very reminiscent of a cat after a bird hidden in the foliage. “Looks kind of sweet to me,” you said. 

Tyvah, still tense and watchful, grinned toothily at you, and you saw that she had elongated canines that flashed dangerously. Combined with her unusual eyes and extensive scarring, it made her look more than a little intimidating, but the expression she wore was open and friendly. “See, Boss,” she said, crossing her wiry arms across her chest, “At least someone can appreciate a wyvern’s true beauty.”

Shaer only smiled at her, and turned back to you. “Your choice. But you need to decide now.”

Your eyes went to the wyvern again, and Tyvah grinned and slapped her thigh. “Yeah! I knew she’d pick the wyvern over you. Good choice, by the way,” she added conspiratorially to you. 

You smiled shyly, honestly utterly overwhelmed by all of this. You’d grown up knowing about the existence of the Fae Realm, and like most folk you wore some kind of iron talisman, but you’d never imagined for a moment that you’d be ripped through a tear in the veil between worlds, with the terrors of this ‘Everdark’ pressing in from all sides. 

Shaer, golden eyes shining, shook his head and smiled at Tyvah, his dimple on show once again. “The shit I put up with from you, Ty,” he chuckled. “Come on. Let’s get you settled,” he added to you, heading over to the wyvern, who was now watching his approach intently.

“Ah come on, Shae-Shae,” Tyvah said, punching him on the arm as he passed her. “You can’t blame her for choosing a smooth ride with Indis and me over being bundled up in your arms. I mean, I know all the Shadowborne in the Court of Night dream of having you sweep them off their feet and into the sunset, but… you can’t compete with a fucking wyvern…” she said, voice dripping with playful sarcasm. Shaer just jutted out a wing and cuffed her round the back of the head with the ‘thumb’ at the top of his wing, making her stagger and grunt indignantly at him. 

“It’s… It’s not…” you faltered, but Shaer laughed, his little ponytail bobbing merrily. Even his wings lifted a little. 

“It’s alright,” he said. “I’m not offended. I get it. I wouldn’t want to be passed around like a piece of cargo either. I’ll fly escort with you back to the House of Shadows.”

At that moment, Indis flapped his enormous, ragged, bat-like wings and threw his head in the air, his long, skinny neck arching like a black swan’s, and he let out the most awful, earsplitting screech. 

“Oi!” Tyvah reprimanded him, striding back over to him and yanking his bridle down so that she could stare him directly in the eye. “Shut the hell up, you stupid lizard! Do you want every wraith in the Everdark to come creeping out here?”

The wyvern shrugged and flapped his wings, puffing acrid smoke out into Tyvah's face and making her cough. 

“Indis is right,” Shaer muttered darkly, eyeing the shadows that seemed to be billowing around you now, as if seeking you out in particular. “We need to get out of here.”

Shaer extended a wing slightly to herd you towards the wyvern without actually touching you, and you were only too happy to comply. As you came to a halt next to Indis, the huge, lanky beast swivelled its head around and lowered it curiously to you. His breath was warm, and smelled a little like sulphur as he snuffed at your clothes, and you looked anxiously over at Tyvah who stood nearby, watching. “Can I touch him?” you asked. 

She shrugged, which you took as a yes, and she began adjusting the girth of his leather saddle. You gingerly reached your hand out for his scaly head. He rumbled and purred audibly as you ran your warm palm over his cool, leathery scales, and a shiver ran right through him, making his tack jingle. 

With a roll of her eyes, Tyvah growled, “Alright, you overgrown housecat, that’s enough. You’re ready for takeoff. Let’s get out of here.”

Indis grumbled and snapped his jaws, revealing wickedly sharp, white teeth, but despite that, you still weren’t afraid of him. 

A hand on your shoulder blade made you jump, and you whipped around to see Shaer standing behind you. “Sorry,” he mumbled, nodding towards the saddle where Tyvah was settling herself down. “We need to get you up and back to the barracks…”

You nodded, suddenly almost overcome with the urge to touch his wing as he turned away and presented you with the full sight of it. It looked too delicate to support a fae of his size in the air, too fragile, but the muscles of his back and shoulders and core looked more than sufficient to support himself.

“I’ll give you a leg up,” he said. “You just sit on Indis’ back just behind the saddle and hold onto Tyvah. Don’t worry,” he added as the realisation of what you were about to do sank into you for the first time, “Tyvah’s a good rider. She won’t let you fall. You might get cold though, but it’s not far.”

You nodded, and he dropped to one knee, lacing his fingers and allowing you to step into the cradle of his hands. He sprang you up onto the wyvern’s back, where you landed with an inelegant yip, adjusting your balance and trying not to scrabble and cling to Tyvah’s lean waist. 

“Alright?” he asked, turning his large, golden eyes up to your face. The pupils were still blown large, and you had to smile at him; he looked honestly rather adorable, despite the intimidating wings and those taloned, avian legs. 

“Uh,” you replied, an equal mix of excitement and terror flooding through you. From the higher vantage point on the wyvern’s back, you could see the blackened meadow better now, and beyond that swathe of darkened ground, a bank of absolute darkness reared up, black and formidable as a prison. Tendrils of darkness were indeed creeping slowly like snakes across the meadow towards you, and your eyes went wide with horror. 

You shuddered violently, and he caught the nauseating fear as it thrilled through you again. “Come on,” he said, bending his knees slightly and unfurling his great wings. He leapt into the air and soared up over the spindly trees that dotted the sparsely vegetated meadow. Shaer did one circle above you, looking like some kind of nightmarish bat, before swooping down and hovering beside Indis, waiting for Tyvah to give the command. 

“Hold on tight, little human,” she grinned, turning half over her shoulder to speak to you. “And try not to scream…”

The wyvern jiggled slightly as if in excitement, and then began to beat his wings, gathering lift, until he took a few skittering steps like a gecko on hot sand, and then you were sailing straight up in a gut-lurching trajectory. 

“Oh gods,” you cursed, wondering if you’d left your insides behind on the ground as the wyvern climbed higher. A shadow flitted into sight in the field below, growing larger and larger as it neared the spot where Indis had been standing mere moments earlier. Shaer shot down past you as a blur, wings folded back like a diving peregrine falcon. As he passed you caught a flash of steel and realised he had drawn the long sword from his scabbard as he’d lanced back down into the fog. 

Your hold in Tyvah’s waist tightened, but she yelled back at you over the rush of air, “Don’t worry about him. He can hold his own - I think he was given a wooden sword to use as a teething toy… Trust me, there’s no one better in a fight than him.”

“Right,” you gulped. You didn’t have the stomach to look down and see what was happening as the wyvern banked left and you clung to Tyvah’s back, face pressed into the leather of her armour, eyes closed. The steady beating of Indis’ wings filled the air above the rush of wind in your ears, and your hands began to burn with the cold as you shot up through the low clouds, leaving damp trails on your skin. It was a while before you dared open your eyes again.

When you did, however, you jumped as Shaer shot out of a bank of cloud below, sword sheathed once again, and looking just a little flushed in the face. He dipped a wing slightly and banked effortlessly towards you, swooping underneath the wyvern’s slightly paler belly, and rising up on an up-draft on the other side. He was breathtakingly graceful, and you offered him a watery smile as he drew level with you. 

“Alright?” he yelled above the rush of the wind. When you just nodded and tried to look brave, he offered you a smile and turned his attention away from you, clearly sensing your need for a little privacy. 

Tyvah guided Indis through the air, using her heels to steer him, and occasionally whistling sharper commands at him while Shaer glided silently beside you. After another few minutes, your curiosity got the better of you, and you shifted your gaze from the nape of Tyvah’s neck to the clouds just above you, and then to the landscape spreading out like a patchwork quilt below. 

Behind you lay what you had at first taken for just a bank of endless, black fog. In fact, as you focused on it, you saw that it was a tangled forest, and around it curled a wide, churning river, flanked with rocks and cliffs. The lands around that river on the other side were the same dull, foggy twilight as the meadow where you’d first emerged, but after that, the earth changed into rolling fields and wooded copses, with little streams and wide pastures. The clouds lifted too, evaporating to leave a deep, rich blue sky above, bathing the land in sunshine. 

Despite the presence of the sun, however, stars filled that blue sky like a glimmering veil. 

The warmth of the sun spread over your face and you turned towards it for a moment. Despite the whipping wind, you were beginning to find it exhilarating rather than terrifying, and the sunlight felt doubly glorious after the impenetrable blackness of the Everdark. “I thought you said we were in the Court of Night?” you asked Tyvah, leaning forwards to whisper in her ear. It was tapered to a sharp point, and pierced all along the edge. The little rings glittered in the brilliant sunlight. 

“It’s not dark all the time,” she scoffed, as though she thought you a bit slow for thinking it would be. “We do need the sun to grow our crops and stuff…”

“Oh. Right. Of course…” you muttered, foolishness flushing your cheeks. 

“But you can always see the stars here,” she added awkwardly after that. 

You passed almost the rest of the flight in silence, and Shaer had been right; you did start to get really cold. Your fingers lost feeling after a while, and you began shaking so badly you thought you might just slide off. You didn't dare flex your hands to warm them in case you did just slip sideways off the wyvern’s back.

“Look,” Shaer called after perhaps another fifteen minutes of flying. You peeled your cheek away from the relative shelter of Tyvah’s back and squinted through watering eyes to see what he was pointing at.

Up ahead, a beautiful palace of glimmering black stone rose above pine trees, and a long, snaking, bone-white road led up to its ornate gates. A hundred towers jutted up into the blue sky like needles in a sewing case, each one topped with a flag pole and adorned with a fluttering black banner. It was eerily beautiful. 

“Is that where we’re going?” you asked. 

Tyvah shook her head, the long section of her hair flapping back into your face for a moment. “No, that’s the palace of the Court of Night,” she said, “Where the prince lives.” Raising one hand, she gestured beyond to a rectangular complex about two miles from the palace itself. “That’s the barracks where we live. We’re based in the palace itself although the House of Shadows has their own lands and palace about a day’s flight from here. I doubt you’ll get to go there before you’re sent home.”

Too cold to respond, you simply curled up against her back and clung on. Flying - even on the back of a mythical wyvern - had rather lost its appeal now. 

For the whole flight, Shaer had soared silently beside you on economical strokes of his leathery wings, occasionally dipping below, falling back, or rising up to scout around, but he always came back to fly beside you. Just before the descent into the barracks, Tyvah leaned a little back and twitched her jaw to get you to lean in closer. “He’s showing off for you, I think,” she snickered. 

“What?”

Tyvah shrugged, grinned and returned her attention to her mount. “We’re gonna land in a minute. Hold on…”

Landing was about as unpleasant as taking off had been. You did, however, surprise yourself by not falling off onto the gravel of the courtyard that had rushed up to meet you with alarming speed as Indis had dived at Tyvah's command. 

When Shaer alighted softly in the stark courtyard bedside you, he raised his arms. “Want a hand down?” he asked. 

You took a deep breath, hesitating, but you looked at that slate grey skin, those steady, strong hands, knuckles flecked with scars, and you took a breath and smiled. “Sure, thanks.” Besides, you weren’t sure that you could even make a landing from that high up, and certainly not with feet like blocks of ice.

He answered your smile and once you’d swung your long leg up in front of you, perching precariously on the shifting wyvern’s back now, he grinned and said, “Trust me…”

And, rolling your eyes, you did. 

He caught you easily around the waist and lowered you gently to the ground, releasing you once you had your feet. “Shit, you’re frozen,” he scowled when he saw your ice-white hands and the way you stood, hunched over and shaking. “I was going to ask how your first flight went,” he said as Tyvah slithered silently to the ground beside you and patted Indis’ flank. The wyvern grumbled again, and she growled something about taking the beast off to be fed before it ate her. 

“He wouldn’t really…?” you began, but Shaer shook his head. 

“No, that beast is pretty well bonded to her. Come on, I’ll take you inside and show you to your quarters where you can warm up. You’ll have to meet the Garrison Commander later, but it shouldn’t be too long til you’re on your way back home.”

He stepped away and began to head towards the building in front of you. It bore a brutish facade, made of a smoky, grey stone that seemed to let the shadows cling to the deeper corners more than any building you’d ever seen before, and your throat bobbed, tightening, as you stared at it. 

Shaer paused and glanced back, his little ponytail swinging. More strands of his jet black hair had escaped during the flight, but instead of looking a mess, you thought he actually looked more rugged and handsome. He had a bit of scruff around his jaw too, and it only added to his slightly roguish appearance. The courtyard was eerily empty, giving the impression that you two were the only ones here, though from somewhere behind the building came the ring of steel from what must be a training yard. 

The winged captain waited for you to get your bearings, halted there and standing silent as a grave statue with those heavy looking wings. You still ached to know what they felt like. 

Embarrassed, you hurried over to him and let him lead you towards a gaping, dark entrance. As you approached, he clicked his fingers and blueish flames roared to life in torches bracketed to the wall. Your eyebrows rose as your eyes widened, but he grinned at you. “Can’t have shadows without a little light,” he said. “Don’t worry. It’s not like the Everdark, I promise.”

And he was right. Little glowing balls of light drifted in random, dreamy patterns along corridors inside, though never close enough for you to touch, and your feet faltered as you gazed up at the ceiling above. It was painted to look like the night sky, with little dancing points of light shimmering and blinking. When another violent shiver passed through you, Shaer growled softly and muttered, “Come on. You need to warm up.”

He took you through the barracks to what he called the guest wing, and settled you into a room. He lit the fire in the grate with the same magic as he’d used to light the braziers in the wall, and then said, “I need to report in. I’ll come back and bring you something to eat as soon as I’m done, alright?”

You nodded, staring at the flames of the fire. 

“What’s your name?” he asked, and you startled out of your bleary-eyed reverie to tell him. He smiled, nodded, and then took his leave. 

Tiredness swept over you, and once you’d begun to thaw out, you eyed the simple bed in the corner of the room and felt it calling to you. You stripped the damp clothing off and hung it over the back of a chair by the fire, and climbed naked into the bed. The sheets were icy to start with, but you drew the heavy blanket up around your ears and slipped into a deep and exhausted sleep almost a heartbeat later. 

A knock at the door had you jerking upright and scrambling for the sheets as they fell away from your body. “Who is it?”

“It’s Tyvah,” came the reply from the other side. “Birdy boy got called off to go train or something. I have some clothes for you, and some soup.”

“Birdy boy?”

“Shaer,” she snorted. “It’s the legs.”

“Oh,” you giggled. “And thank you. Uh… come in,” you said, glancing at your ragged clothes by the fire and hoping a sheet would give you enough modesty for the time being.

When she saw you in bed, she smiled. “Good. You looked fucking exhausted earlier,” she said, setting a steaming bowl down on a nearby table. “Not that I blame you. Trust me, I know what the Everdark does to you - sucks the starch right out of you. Here,” she said, flinging some leather and fabric clothes at you with informal ease. “Put these on,” she said. “I won’t peek, I promise.”

“Right,” you said, watching as she crossed to the fire and stood there with hands outstretched towards it. Her silhouette was one of wiry strength and discipline, but her tone when she spoke betrayed a lively heart beneath. 

“Shaer went to the Commander,” she said without turning round. “He found me afterwards and said the boss will try and get you an audience with the Prince. He’s the only one who can use the waystones and create portals and such to the Mortal Realm. Should be about a week or so, maybe a bit longer.”

“Oh,” you breathed, stepping into the soft trousers that looked almost identical to the ones Tyvah was wearing. They fitted you perfectly, despite the length of your legs, and the same was true for the top and warm, fur-lined jerkin. 

“You done?” she asked and turned around anyway. 

“Yeah,” you smiled, and she returned the gesture with a sharp, playful one of her own. 

“Good. Get some of that soup in you. I’ve got to go and see to Indis now, but you can come too if you want. I’ll give you a bit of a tour of the place if you like?”

“Thanks,” you nodded. The soup was delicious, and you finished it in record time, not stopping to think that not eating food of the Fae was one of the cardinal rules you must never break. When you realised, your eyes went wide, but Tyvah grinned. 

“It’s safe, don’t worry. That’s pretty much just bullshit made up centuries ago by you humans. I wouldn’t eat just anything here though… but stuff from us here is safe for humans.”

“Right,” you said again, feeling a little weak in the knees. This was all happening so fast. 

“C’mon. Let’s go pet a wyvern.”

Tyvah watched you cross the room to the door and then followed afterwards. The corridor outside was lit with the same floating balls of light, and when she saw you frowning curiously at them as you passed beneath them, she grinned and made a leaping jump like a cat and grabbed one out of the air, holding it gently in cupped hands as if it were a butterfly. “Night Sprites,” she said. “They’re kind of passive little spirits that live here in the Court of Night. Cute, aren’t they? Here,” she said, thrusting it out at you. 

Taking it with slightly wary hands, you felt its feather-light weight land in your palms, and gasped. It was about the size of a large bumblebee, and about as delicate. It tingled softly against your palms, and as it touched your skin, the darkness of the corridor retreated, leaving only shimmering light without shadows. 

“Oh shit,” Tyvah gasped, laughing and staring at your expression. “I forgot the effect they have on mortals! It’s weird, right?”

You nodded, and heard a very soft tinkling like a distant silver bell ringing, and as you glanced down into your hands you saw that the ball of light was in fact a tiny creature. It was unbelievably fluffy and a bright blue, with large eyes and no visible arms or legs. “It’s so cute!” you gasped, making the creature wiggle and vibrate, the light flaring. 

“Stroke its back,” she said as you continued to make your way down the straight corridor. “They love that.”

You did, and it closed its eyes and began to purr. “I want one,” you said, and Tyvah only laughed. 

You released it as you came to a staircase, and it did a couple of laps of your head and then preceded to tag along, only parting ways from you when you emerged from the clattering kitchens where everyone had stared at you, their wings shifting slightly, as if uneasy at your presence. So far you’d seen no other humans there at all, despite the tales that spoke of human slaves in the Fae Realm. 

Outside it was still daylight, though the sun was sinking towards the horizon, and as you and Tyvah crunched across the gravel towards a separate building, you inhaled deeply. It all smelled so fresh and beautiful here. Everything in the Fae Realm seemed so much more real, so much more tangible, in a way you couldn’t quite explain. The colours were more saturated, the scents stronger but not unpleasantly so, the sounds crisper. 

As you looked about, you saw open pastures dotted with wooded copses and realised that the barracks sat atop a hilltop, surrounded by deciduous forest. From the air it had all seemed so flat, and then you’d closed your eyes for the descent. 

“These are the stables,” Tyvah said, gesturing at the dark buildings ahead. “There aren’t too many wyverns here, and we tend to turn them loose when we’re not scouting, but they never go far. Indis likes the woods around here.”

“How does that even work?” you asked. “How do you tame a wyvern?”

“Oh, he’s not tame,” Tyvah said easily, striding along towards the stables and nipping inside a narrow doorway to pick up a heavy bundle. You hung back in the sunlight as she hefted it up over one shoulder with a grunt and then indicated a direction with a jut of her chin. You walked along beside her, trying not to stare at the strange menagerie of creatures housed in the ‘stable’ block. There was nothing that even remotely resembled a horse to be seen, and whatever the hell was in the end stall vanished into a puff of black smoke that filled up the stable, concealing it like an octopus amid a cloud of ink. 

“So if Indis isn’t tame, how did you come to ride him?” you asked, trying to distract yourself.

Tyvah smiled. “Wyvern scouts are kind of rare,” she said. “Most wyverns will rip a person to shreds if they get too close, but some wyverns are actually quite well disposed towards us. If we can form a bond with them, they’ll let us ride them and they won’t eat our friends. It’s been happening for millennia, but we still can’t really explain it.”

“Right,” you said stupidly. “Dare I ask what’s in the sack?”

“A sheep. He loves lamb.”

“I regret asking,” you said flatly, prompting a bark of laughter from Tyvah. 

In a training ring just up ahead and to your left, you watched as two soldiers went at each other with blades flashing in the sun, steel ringing. Your eyebrows sailed high at the sight of them. They were both pretty much bare-chested, muscles rippling as they danced around one another, and it was possibly the strangest and most beautiful sight you’d ever seen. They were extraordinarily good. You’d seen folk in the village practising with staves, and even a couple with blades, but it had always been a tentative few blows before a lot of circling and weighing up. These two made the swords ring with a music that had no breaks, no pauses. 

“Impressive, huh?” Tyvah giggled. 

“Yeah,” you croaked. 

One of the soldiers was female, with little more than some tight linen wrappings around her small muscular chest, and she had a thick, almost reptilian tail to balance her and keep her steady. Long white hair, tied back in a plait that was studded with spikes of metal, swung down her back like an additional weapon, but like Tyvah, she had no wings, though she did have clawed legs like the others you’d seen. Her skin was a startling pastel blue, in stark contrast to the soldier she was fighting. 

His back was to you as he fought, but you saw patches of pale skin, almost like milk spilled on a slate floor, splashing all the way up his corded, muscular back and over his left shoulder. He was also dotted and slashed with scars here and there. He wore the loose pants you’d now become familiar with, tightened with a band at the ankles of his avian legs. His long claws splayed and dug into the dirt of the ring as his opponent came at him with relentless speed and force. In a flash, he raised his sword and blocked her attack with a grunt of effort. His ponytail was just about to come loose, and as you watched, his shoulder-length hair spilled down his neck between his flared wings, catlike tail thrashing behind him in frustration. He ignored it and lunged for her again. 

“I could watch them all day,” Tyvah sighed beside you. “Particularly Heather.”

“Heather?”

“Shaer’s opponent,” she said. 

“That’s Shaer?” you asked, whipping back to stare properly at him. Now that you knew, you didn’t know how you’d missed it. 

“Told you he’s good, didn’t I?” she said. “He was raised here in the barracks so he’s been fighting about as long as he’s been walking on those freaky legs of his. Come on, I’ve got a hungry wyvern to feed, and if I don’t get this to him soon, he might start making a fuss.”

You tore your gaze away from the display and followed her reluctantly along the path that led to an open field at the end of the stable complex. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure,” she said, adjusting the heft of the meat in the sack over her shoulder. “Shoot.”

“How… How come Shaer looks different from you? Are you different kinds of fae?”

“Yes and no,” she said. “We’re both Shadowborne, and its rare for Shadowborne females to have the birdy legs or the wings, but some do, like Heather. I’m actually a bit of a mutt anyway. I’ve got some huldra in me too, from my Grandma.”

“I… I don’t know what that is,” you admitted. 

“Forest spirit,” she said. “Essentially.”

“And what about Shaer?” you asked. 

“Oh, he’s a purebred Shadowborne stallion, though he’s a bit runty if you ask me…” 

You couldn’t help the snort that left your nose, and Tyvah shot you a delighted, sidelong look. 

“He was dumped at the barracks gates as a baby for whatever reason, and they kind of took him in and raised him. He rose through the ranks and he’s now our captain. He’s probably my best friend here, though his ‘superior rank’ means I’m not allowed to swear at him around the others so much any more…”

You had nothing to say to that, wondering what it would be like to be raised by soldiers. After a moment, you murmured, “Must have been harsh, growing up here.”

“Mmm,” Tyvah nodded in agreement. She looked as though she might have said more, but her yellow eyes were fixed on a spot in the meadow beyond, and she groaned. 

There, lying on his back and wriggling like a dog in fox shit, was Indis. 

“What the fuck?” Tyvah barked at him as she saw what he was doing. “I literally just washed you down!” 

He jolted comically - a guilty creature caught off guard - and quirked his head up, still lying upside down with all his legs in the air. 

“Gods, you’re such an embarrassment to me,” Tyvah deadpanned at the comical reptile. “Get the fuck up before I disown you.”

Despite the harshness of her words, there was no anger in her tone, only affection, and the wyvern seemed to sense this too, because he shook himself off, sending a cloud of dust billowing up off him, and then promptly let loose a cacophonous sneeze. 

Rolling her yellow eyes, Tyvah dumped the sack on the ground and used her belt knife to open the sacking. You chose that moment to look away, and as you looked back down the path towards the training ring, you saw that Shaer now had three opponents. It was mesmerising to watch him dancing around all of them, blades glittering as they flitted about in the late afternoon light.

Once Indis had devoured his dinner, he rumbled happily at Tyvah. Then cocked his head at you and gave another little friendly, curious chuffing noise, pranced on the spot, and then padded over to you. The way he moved was absolutely not with the dignity you’d imagined for a creature so big. He scuttled and shimmied, and when he came to a halt in front of you he drew his head up high, gave a little squawk like a bird, and stuffed his nose into the palm of your hand with the speed of a striking cobra. 

“He says thanks for dinner,” Tyvah laughed, rolling up the remnants of the sack.

“He’s… kind of…”

“A loser?” Tyvah asked, raising an eyebrow. 

“I was going for adorable,” you said. 

“Ah, he’s alright,” Tyvah chuckled, coming over to join you. She rubbed her knuckles between his eyes and he wiggled happily. “He’s my buddy. We do a lot of patrolling together. He’s a huge idiot, but I trust him with my life.”

His scales beneath your palms were warm and smooth, and you could feel the breath as it hissed in and out of his huge lungs. There was something relaxing about petting him, and you lost yourself for a few minutes in the feel of him. His talons were wicked sharp, but he was careful as he pranced about, preening under the attention of the two of you. 

“Come on,” “Tyvah said eventually. “Let’s get you back.”

You nodded, said farewell to the wyvern, who did an odd little shuffling motion and then beat his wings, launching himself into the sky. He circled the pasture once, and then vanished over the trees. 

“He’ll be back this evening,” Tyvah said. 

As the two of you approached the training ring again, you saw that the bout had ended, and Shaer was leaning against the fence with his wings draped over the outside of the ring, sweat gleaming on his skin, his chest heaving. His opponents were picking themselves up off the floor as you neared them, and Tyvah caught the look on your face as you stared at Shaer’s frankly gorgeous body. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on him, and he had the hard muscle tone of someone who trained every day for hours at a time. When he saw you watching them, he inclined his head, but he didn’t come over. He looked wiped out. 

The small knot of people around the ring all turned their, mostly yellow, eyes to you, and you suddenly knew what it felt like for a rabbit to be in the sights of a golden eagle. 

“C’mon,” Tyvah muttered. “You can give Shaer the chance to flirt with you some other time.”

“What?” you barked in astonishment.

“I told you earlier he likes you,” she whispered in your ear, and as she leaned closer to you, you realised that you’d stopped seeing the scars on her face. “Trust me,” she went on in the same conspiratorial whisper. “This is a big deal. I’ve never known him take an interest in anyone.”

“So how do you know he’s flirting with me?” you hissed back as you let her steer you back towards the barracks. The sun was beginning to set now, those eternal stars beginning to glimmer all the brighter now that they didn't have the sun to compete with. 

“Look, he’s my best friend,” she said. “I know we don’t act like it much around the others, but there’s no one he’s closer to than me. In fact, I don’t think he has any friends other than me. He’s kind of a loner, you know? He belongs to the barracks, and he’s risen through the ranks, clawing his way up to where he is now, with no noble Shadow blood to help him.”

When she saw your frown, Tyvah grimaced. “I keep forgetting you know fuck-all about any of this. Shit, I’m sorry. Look, the House of Shadows is like nobility here. They answer to the Prince of the Court of Night, but to no one else. They pretty much do as they please because they’re the only ones who have the ability to shadow run.” 

“Shadow run?”

“They can become one with the shadows,” she said. “No one who doesn’t have the purest noble blood can do it, but it makes them formidable warriors. They claim their gift comes from a marriage to the royal line of the Court of Night thousands of years ago. The whole reason they’re important though is because they guard the Everdark. It’s important to the balance of the Fae Realm that the creatures who live there still be allowed to live and whatever, but if they get out, they have to be hunted down.” 

You shuddered visibly, and she noted your reaction. 

“Yeah, and the wraith that took you is small fry. The nobles need their powers, and they need their soldiers. Us Shadowborne are basically runts and bastards and people with nowhere else to go. We keep the dark shit in, and stop people from wandering in there.”

“Why would anyone willingly go in there?”

“Oh, you know,” she breezed, waving a hand. “Idiots who think they have something to prove… It’s also a prison though. I mean, they’ve got to have something to hunt… Nasty way to get punished if you ask me, but hey, that’s tradition for you.”

“People get sent in there?” you asked, horrified. 

“Yup. But let’s not dwell on that, eh? You hungry?”

“Yeah,” you admitted. The soup had been nice, but it hadn’t filled much of a hole. 

She nodded. “We can grab something on the way through and eat it by your fire, if it’s still going.”

“Thanks, I’d rather not eat with all the others staring at me like I’m some kind of freak…”

“You are!” Tyvah laughed. “I mean, not actually, but it’s been so long since we’ve had a human around us. You can’t blame us for staring a bit… you’re so… soft and… well…” she shrugged. “You’re kinda pretty too.”

You snorted at that. “I’m really very ordinary,” you said. 

“Fuck off,” Tyvah growled. “Don’t give me that.”

“I am!” you protested. 

“I bet you’ve got suitors lined up from your front door all the way to the sea,” she laughed as you neared the main barracks building, kicking at a stone with the toe of her boot. 

You just stared at her. “No,” you finally said. “No one has ever looked twice at me. I promise you, I’m extremely ordinary by human standards.”

“Humans have shitty standards then,” she said, but she dropped it when she saw how uncomfortable you were. 

You ate together in your room, but she excused herself a while later to go and wash up and head to her own quarters. You’d not been alone for more than twenty minutes, sitting by the fire and just processing everything you’d been through that day, when a knock sounded at the door. 

“It’s Shaer,” came his quiet voice from the other side. “May I speak with you?”

“Sure, it’s open,” you said, and he pushed the door open and came inside, grinding to an awkward halt just over the threshold. 

“How are you? I saw you with Tyvah earlier…”

“I’m alright. I saw you too,” you smiled, making to stand from your comfy seat by the fire. 

“Don’t get up,” he said immediately, raising one hand a little in front of him, his wings flaring a tiny bit behind him. His skin looked like dark, sculpted clay in the strange blue light of the fire, and his eyes were little more than pools of darkness with a bright, golden ring around his massive pupil. He smiled, and the patches of lighter skin around the corner of his mouth stretched a little. 

“Come and join me?” you asked, eyeing the other chair. It was only as he perched on one arm that you realised it was not a room designed for someone with wings. “Sorry,” you murmured, but he only laughed. 

“It’s not the first chair I’ve had to navigate,” he laughed. 

“Tyvah said you’d arranged a meeting with the Prince?”

“My commander did,” he corrected. “And she also thinks it’d be best if you didn’t stay here while you wait to go to the Prince’s palace.”

Fear thrummed through you. More change? So soon? “What? Why?”

His expression and tone were sympathetic as he said, “A lot of the fae here see humans as… less. As… slaves. If you’re going to get home in one piece, then she suggested I take you somewhere safe.”

It was too much. After everything you’d gone through, you just wanted to remain still and let the world stop spinning around you. Tears welled up in your eyes and you turned your face away. 

“Shit,” he hissed under his breath, pushing himself upright and coming over to you. He knelt beside you, and the gesture only overwhelmed you even more. “You’ll be safe, I promise. Safer than here.”

“I… I can’t…”

He smiled. “Tyvah and I can come with you. Ty’s got to go out on patrol tomorrow, so she can take you, and I’ve been assigned to keep you safe. Nothing bad will happen to you there, I promise. Plus, it’s beautiful. It’s an old hunting lodge of the Prince’s. We use it for when dignitaries come and want to go hunting in the palace grounds, but no one will be there at this time of year. It’s gorgeous. You’ll love it.”

He tilted his head to one side and looked up at you. Tears streamed down your face, mostly just because you were so darned tired, and he smiled softly. Your eyes fell to that beautiful patch of paler skin, like dappled sunlight on granite, and you swallowed, feeling the flow of tears stem a little. He reached slowly up for your face, halting just shy of touching you, palm facing your cheek. 

You closed your eyes and leaned into the touch, inhaling softly as his hand connected with your damp skin. He thumbed the tears away and smiled. “There,” he said. “There, that’s better.” With a sigh, he withdrew his hand and stood. Your eyes fell to the tail that hung quietly behind him, and then to his wings. 

“I’ve never imagined anything like you,” you whispered, and he beamed a smile at you, revealing that he had slightly elongated canines too which somehow had escaped your notice until then. “I’ve never seen wings like yours… How can you fight with them? Are they heavy? Am I being rude by asking about them?”

Shaer laughed again, a rich, warm chuckle, and stood. “It’s usually considered pretty personal to touch someone’s wings, but you can if you like.”

“Really? I don’t want to be rude…”

“No, you’re alright,” he said, offering you the tip of his right wing. 

You reached out tentatively for it and let your fingers trail down the very edge of it. Shaer sucked in a sharp breath through his nose at the touch, but otherwise didn’t react. “They’re so soft,” you said. “I thought they might be rough, and they’re warm too… They’re so beautiful!”

He actually turned away at that, his tail coiling around an ankle. When he looked back at you, his pupils had nearly eclipsed the ring of gold around them. He sighed and said, “To answer your questions, you get used to fighting hand to hand with them. Fighting in the air while flying is a totally different martial art. And yes, they’re heavy.”

You smiled. “I love them.”

Shaer beamed again, and then cleared his throat. “Well, look, if you’re alright, I should let you get some sleep. It’s been a hell of a day for you. I’ll come by just after dawn tomorrow to wake you, and we’ll leave as soon as you’re ready.”

You nodded and rose, stifling a yawn. Your whole body ached for sleep, but before he crossed to the door to leave, you caught his wrist and he froze. “Wait,” you said. “Thank you. I’ve heard tales of fae capturing humans, and if what you said is true about your kind seeing humans as little more than animals, this whole thing could have gone a whole lot differently. But you saved my life. Thank you. I can’t… I can’t quite express what it was like for me in the dark back there, but… thank you.”

He regarded you with that piercing gaze, head tilted like a hawk’s, and then his expression softened. “I have some idea,” he said. “I pulled Tyvah out of it when we were children, and she told me what it was like to be trapped in there. I vowed I’d never let another soul get lost in the Everdark as long as I lived after that. Human, fae; it doesn’t matter.”

You gasped in shock at what he’d said about Tyvah, and he nodded. 

“Yeah, Ty got her scars from a blood wyrm’s teeth. That story is not one to tell before bedtime though. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

“Thanks,” you said again, releasing his hard, muscular wrist, and he nodded once before sliding out of the door and leaving you alone with a cacophony of thoughts in your head. 

By the time he came for you in the morning, you were already up and dressed, and he led you through the silent barracks and out into the courtyard where you and Indis had landed the previous day. The wyvern was already saddled and waiting for you, and Tyvah was scratching him under the chin. 

“You flying with me or him today?” she asked by way of greeting as you approached. 

Shaer looked down at you and raised an eyebrow. “Up to you,” he said, adding with a grin, “But it’ll be warmer with me.”

Tyvah rolled her eyes and made a disgusted noise, swinging herself up onto Indis’ back and adjusting her seat and the length of her reins. “Last chance, human…” she grinned wolfishly at you. 

Looking back at Shaer, you watched him open his arms slightly, and you grinned. “Ah, what the hell. Go on then,” you said, striding back to him and making him laugh. 

“No!” Tyvah cried melodramatically. “Dammit!” 

You looked over your shoulder at her just as Shaer began to laugh even harder. “She just lost a bet.”

“You bet on me?” you asked, feeling betrayed. 

It must have shown on your face because he tucked his wings in tightly against his back and shuffled his feet. “She bet me that you wouldn’t want to ride with me. I said you might. That was all.”

You narrowed your eyes, the knot untying itself in your stomach already. “Fine,” you said. 

“You can still change your mind…” he said. 

“No,” you said firmly. 

A tiny, good-natured smile twitched at the pale corner of his lips, perhaps showing a hint of chagrin too. He picked you up gently, holding you with your knees hooked over his right arm while he caught you under your arms with his left. “Hold on tight,” he smiled. 

And then his enchanting wings beat once, twice, and he sprang into the air, sailing upwards over the trees as his powerful wings carried him higher and higher. Below you, Indis let out an indignant screech at being left behind and kicked up clouds of dust as he too became airborne in a bit of a scrabble. 

The flight wasn’t far, and honestly it was so much warmer in Shaer’s arms than it had been on the back of a wyvern. You couldn’t see quite as much, but that didn’t matter. You weren’t freezing your hands and feet off. 

As you journeyed over them, the patches of woodland started to knit together until a blanket of deciduous forest covered the rolling hills. Beside you, Indis started to give a happy series of squawks and chitters until Tyvah shut him up with a laugh and a pat on the withers. 

Up ahead, rising just a little out of the trees, was an old stone fortress, complete with cylindrical towers and crenellations, the walls covered in greenish moss and flowering creeper. “There it is,” he said. “Hold on.” And then he dived almost straight down for it.

Exhilarated, you squealed and clung to him, but he laughed, spreading his great wings behind you and slowing the descent to land smoothly in front of the castle. 

A very human-looking woman was already standing at the top of the steps, and Shaer hissed down at you as he steadied you, “Anca is one of the zână,” and when he saw that you had no idea what that meant, he added, “She’s a forest fae who takes care of travellers. She’s been châtelaine of the castle for centuries. You’ll be made welcome here, don’t worry.”

Indis circled overhead and Tyvah gave a shrill whistle to attract Shaer’s attention. “Excuse me,” he said, bobbing his head politely at you and launching himself into the air, leaving you in a cloud of dust and dry leaves. 

Coughing slightly, you looked around to see Anca hurrying down the stairs towards you. She looked older, perhaps in her sixties if she’d been human, with her grey hair plaited up into a simple bun, and she moved with incredible grace as she approached you, tutting and glaring up at Shaer. “Rude boy,” she said, flapping her hands. “He is so rude to leave you like that! I will tell him off later. Now, come inside, please…” 

You let her usher you inside the small castle like a grandmother welcoming a favourite grandchild, and you gasped when you saw the building’s interior. It was warm and cosy, wood panelled, and welcoming, with bunches of woodland flowers in vases on tables and a large fireplace alight with normal coloured flames in the drawing room. 

“Drink? Food?” she asked, her voice heavily accented with a lyrical melody that instantly warmed you to her. 

A while later, with a cup of tea in one hand and a tray of various pastries on a table beside you, the door opened and Shaer walked in. A light dusting of rain dampened his hair and darkened his wings. “Started drizzling,” he complained, plopping himself down right in front of the fire with a grunt. A beat later he added, “Got to admit though, it’s nice to be here as a guest…”

“You’re not normally allowed here?” you asked, sipping your fragrant tea. 

He eyed the pastries and then leaned over to grab one. “You mind?”

“Course not!” you snorted. 

He smiled a wonky smile at you, and demolished it in seconds. That done, he said, “I’m usually working when I’m here, you know, as a guard or something.”

“Glad to give you a holiday,” you grinned, leaning back in your chair. 

Anca reemerged a moment later and when she saw him lounging like a soggy hunting hound by the fire, she scowled and tutted at him again, shrilling, “Up! Get up! You overgrown bat!”

“I’m all wet, Anca,” he complained, shaking his shaggy hair out and spraying little droplets all over the hem of her black dress. “I need to dry out.”

She turned dramatically to you and gestured towards him. “You see what I must deal with when he come here?”

You smiled. “Ah, he’s not so bad, Anca,” you said, and she looked at you carefully with her forest green eyes. 

“No, he’s not,” she said fondly, a light glimmering in her green eyes. “I have known him since he was a very tiny little boy, with wings too big for him. Like a puppy with ears too big. They were so long and heavy they drag on the ground behind him!”

You bit your lip and made an inarticulate noise in your throat, as Shaer’s cheeks darkened and he looked away. “I take that back,” he said. “I hate coming here.”

Anca crossed to him and ruffled his soggy hair. “I’ve missed you too, boy.”

The three of you all ate supper together that night. Tyvah was off scouting and wouldn’t be back until after you’d gone to see the prince, and it was just Anca and her magic that kept the hunting lodge in good order when there were no visitors. You, it seemed, did not merit any extra servants, something for which you were immensely grateful. 

The next morning you came down to find Shaer standing by the window in the drawing room, looking out at the forest beyond. Rain pattered down, drumming on the windows and adding a glorious sheen to the forest. From the way his wings were hanging down his back, they looked relaxed, and he took a deep inhale as you stepped into the room. A floorboard creaked and he shifted his gaze to you. In the bright light of morning, his eyes glowed yellow, the slit pupils narrow. “Hey,” he murmured, voice thick and croaky still from sleep. “Did you sleep well?”

You nodded. “Oddly, that was the best night’s sleep I’ve ever had. I don’t sleep well on the whole.”

“Not a fan of the dark, are you?” he smiled. 

You crossed the room to him and stood bathed in the forest light beside him. “No. Not for a long time.”

He flexed his wings in a stretch and then relaxed again. “Must have been hell for you here then.”

You turned to face him. “Not exactly,” you said. “Listen, thank you again. This isn’t what you had planned for the next week at all, is it?”

“Honestly, no,” he smiled. “I’ve just taken charge of a new unit. We were supposed to be flying patrols with Tyvah.”

“Couldn’t you still be doing that?” you asked. “I mean, I don’t need you to babysit me.”

He flinched a bit at that, and then chuckled. “Is that what you think I’m doing?”

“Why else would you want to hang around with a human while you wait to send them back to where they belong?” you asked. 

Shaer sighed. He didn’t speak for a long time, but eventually he broke his silence and eased himself down onto the cushioned seat of the bay window, arranging his wings so that he didn’t sit on them. He looked up at you and smiled again, a touch sadly this time. “All I’ve ever known is the barracks. This is it. Training; patrol; fighting… I suppose I wanted to find out what else is out there.”

“May I sit?” you asked, and he nodded. He had to shift his wing out of the way, and the only way you could sit near him was for him to put it behind you. When he started to apologise, you reached behind you and stroked a finger down the membrane, forgetting what he’d said about how personal it was. 

The sound that escaped his throat was anything but chaste. He screwed his eyes shut and laughed awkwardly. 

“I forgot,” you mumbled. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s alight,” he said. “I’m just… sensitive.”

With him seated so close beside you, you were instantly aware of his presence, and of the heat of his body too. His legs dangled off the edge of the seat, his taloned toes resting idly on the floor.

“Well, if you want to ask about the Mortal Realm, go ahead. I’ll tell you what I can.”

“Do all humans look the same?” he blurted. “Like you, I mean? Shit, no… but… you know?”

You had to laugh. “No,” you said. “I mean, we’ve all got the same sort of anatomy. It’s not like you fae with your legs and tails and horns and different legs and such,” you said hurriedly. “But some have dark skin, others lighter; some are tall, some short… that kind of thing.”

He quizzed you all morning about human families and social structure, though you had to admit to being a bit of a loner. He smiled knowingly, understandingly, at that, but didn’t press it. You talked too about the history of your people and about the way you thought about the fae in general. On that last point, you had to admit that it wasn’t all that kind. “I know that the nobles and royalty like to keep fae as pets,” you admitted. “They bind them with iron chains and use them for whatever they like.”

Shaer snarled fiercely, revealing his sharp teeth. “I would never let anyone chain me.”

You looked up at him through your lashes and smiled. “No, and I doubt anyone ever could,” you agreed. 

“Do you wear iron?” he asked, going back to your earlier comments about most folk wearing iron charms against the fae. 

You nodded and cautiously opened the top button of your shirt to reveal a leather cord with a small hoop of iron hanging from it. His eyes flashed at the sight of it and he snarled, but it wasn’t directed at you. He raised a finger and touched a fingertip to it. It hissed on contact, and he withdrew his hand immediately. 

“Should I take it off?” you said in a rush. 

Shaer only barked, “No, don’t. Leave it on.”

“But… you said I was safe here.”

“You are,” he said. “I gave you my word that you’re under my protection. It’s just…” he shrugged. “An extra precaution.”

The conversation lagged a little after that, but he suggested a walk before lunch if it had stopped raining. It had, and he took you through the forest surrounding the castle, and up a winding track that wove through boulders and craggy outcrops beside a waterfall. He never once suggested flying, and in fact he seemed to enjoy being on the ground for once. When you said as much to him upon reaching the top of the path and pausing to get your breath back, he nodded. 

His claws flexed in the leaf litter beneath them, and you stared in fascination at his unusual body. “It’s nice to feel the earth beneath my feet,” he said, “Despite how much I love to fly.”

Shaer had paused at the very top of the path, and he looked down at you and gingerly extended a hand to help you up the last section. You were hardly in the best shape, and honestly that last section of the climb had been a bit of a strain. Brushing your hair back out of your face made you realise it was probably frizzing itself into a horrible mess, and you wondered if it would be possible for you to shrivel up and die of shame at that point. But still Shae stood with his hand outstretched, waiting to see if you’d take it or not. 

Ah, what the hell… you thought again.

So you took it and let him tug you up the last incline, feeling a new sensation prickle through you at his touch. With a jolt, you realised you wanted more. This was a revelation in and of itself, but you tried to keep it to yourself. However, as you landed in front of him, he quirked his head. “Alright?” he asked. 

“Yup. Just… maybe not as fit as you are…” you joked awkwardly. 

He smiled. “I think you’re just fine,” he said gently and turned away. The rest of your walk passed without much conversation, but when you emerged out of the trees at the crown of a hill and saw a large monolith standing in the centre, you shivered. The air shifted, and Shaer looked askance at you. “You feel it too?” he asked. 

“What is this place?”

“That’s a portal stone, or a waystone. It’s one of the ways to travel between the realms. It’s not active now though. Only the Prince knows the spells and can work the magic.”

“Don’t you have magic?” you asked. 

The wind lifted the little floppy sections of his dark hair out of his eyes and as it circled around the exposed hilltop, you shivered again, cooling off rapidly after the exertion of your climb. 

“I do,” he said, turning to look at you. “But nothing like the power that’s needed to open one of those. You need a royal to do that.” His gaze darkened and he frowned slightly. “You’re cold. We should head back.”

“I’m fine,” you countered, not wanting to cause a fuss, but he just looked at you flatly. 

Crossing his arms, he said, “Don’t make me pick you up and fly you home…”

“What would it take for you to do that?” you asked playfully. 

He seemed taken aback at that. “You could just ask,” he said rather awkwardly. “I mean, if you wanted me to… you know. I just didn't think you liked…”

“Contact?” you asked, stepping closer. “I don’t. Not from people I don’t trust or know anyway.”

“But you trust me?” he asked. 

It wasn’t a malicious question, and you nodded. “Yeah.”

“You’d just leap into the arms of any guy who saves your life?” 

With a scowl you retorted, “Of course not. You just… You and Tyvah, you’ve been… gracious to me where perhaps others of your kind would have just locked me up, or not even bothered to try and send me home. I appreciate that. And I respect you.”

“Oh,” he said, and then his face split into a wide and slightly cheeky grin. He opened his arms and said, “Shall we go back then?”

You nodded, and he picked you up again. Once you were settled comfortably in his arms, you looked up at him and said, “I still can’t believe that I’m alright with this, and that you can even pick me up! I’m not exactly light…”

“Ah, you’re fine,” he said. “And it’s my pleasure. Honestly.”

After he’d beat his wings a few times to create a nice lift, he took off and you tried not to leave your stomach behind. Airborne, you said, “Tyvah told me that not all of your kind have wings…”

“It’s true,” he said, rising carefully above the trees and soaring away towards the forest castle. It wasn’t that far, and you could see it clearly amongst the canopy below. “Not all of us have tails and horns either. I don’t have horns, for example.”

Perhaps it was the adrenaline of flying that made you so bold, but you bit your lip and then said, “Tyvah also told me you’ve got a number of admirers…”

He rolled his eyes. “They want what they can’t have,” he said flatly. Seeing your puzzled expression, he laughed. “There’s never been anyone who’s… you know.”

“What about Tyvah?”

“She’s not interested in males,” he said. “But anyway, she’s more like my sister. I don’t know who my family is, and growing up in the barracks, she became the only family I have.”

“I see,” you said. 

He shrugged without missing a wing beat, and added, “Family is who you choose, you know? It’s not about blood.”

Something struck you about his words, choking you up almost to tears. When he asked if you were alright, you blamed it on the wind in your face, and he dipped a bit lower so that he was barely clearing the top of the trees. He landed on the roof of the castle a minute later and set you down gently. 

You slid your hands down his arms until you were just holding hands, and you squeezed his strong fingers briefly. “Thank you,” you said, unable to articulate any more, but he seemed to understand. 

He closed his eyes and bowed his head once. “I’m going to patrol the area,” he said. “I’ll see you at dinner.”

You nodded, and he stepped back, hurling himself sideways off the parapet and soaring into the sky a moment later. Had his voice been a little huskier than usual? Had his eyes truly lingered on your joined hands the way you’d imagined? This was new to you, and you felt dizzy as you made your way down through the castle towards your room to clean up after your walk and the flight home. 

Over the next few days, you fell into a regular routine. Shaer spent a lot of time flying around the place, and sometimes he would train alone in the courtyard, going through set, almost choreographed, routines and moves while you read in the library. The castle had an incredible story collection, and it fuelled your already active imagination so much that you even dreamed about the stories you read during the day. Shaer would usually ask if you wanted to walk in the afternoon, and, providing it wasn’t raining, you accepted. 

He opened up to you about himself a little more, letting you in on the regrets he had about not knowing more than the narrow outlook of the barracks and his life as a soldier, about his insecurities. Apparently, despite his obvious strength and skills with a sword, he was rather small for a pureblood Shadowborne, and he was often treated as a bit of a runt and looked down on, especially having risen through the ranks to the rank of captain. Shaer had had to fight for everything good in his life, but that didn’t mean he was dissatisfied or jaded. He knew the true worth of things, and that warmed you to him even more.

You’d found yourself staring at him in the firelight in the evenings, and even beginning to fantasise about his hands on your body as you lay in bed at night. As the days ticked down towards your appointment with the Prince, a new feeling of time slipping through your fingers began to creep in, bringing the usual nausea of anxiety with it. 

One night as you picked at your supper, he reached across the table and gently covered your hand with his. Your skin was so pale it practically glowed beside his slate grey fingers, and he squeezed you gently until you looked up at him. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know that I actually want to go home,” you admitted. “I mean, I realise I can’t stay here, and it’s not as if I could live at the barracks or anything. I know I have to go home, but… this has been…” Tears brimmed in your eyes and you looked away, trying to recoil from him. He let go of you, but remained attentive. “I don’t have many friends at home, and I don’t tend to go into the village very often. I can’t help thinking that probably no one has even noticed I’m gone. And here you are, keeping me company when you should be training with your new unit… I just feel so bad.” 

Tears streamed freely down your face and you knew your cheeks would begin to go all red and blotchy any moment, but you couldn't stop it. 

“Hey,” he murmured, pushing his stool back from the table and moving round to kneel beside you on the hardwood floor. “Hey, shh, I’ve had an amazing time with you. I… I needed this. I’ve never had anyone I can connect with. I’m talked to as a captain or a soldier all the time, and I’m either taking orders or giving them. Other than Tyvah, I’ve got no one.” He took your hands in his and kissed your knuckles. “You’re beautiful and funny and smart and sweet. I don’t want you to go either,” he smiled. “You’re my friend…”

At those words, you pushed your own chair back and flung your arms around his neck. He caught you easily, encircling first his arms around you and then his wings while you cried into his collar. He stroked your hair and, a moment later, he pressed a shy kiss against the side of your head. 

You pulled back, watery eyed, and saw his blurry, strangely handsome face looking at you with such gentle kindness that you began to cry all over again. 

“Hey now,” he laughed. “I’m not that bad looking, am I? To make a fair maiden weep?”

You punched him pathetically in the chest, and he laughed again. 

“Come on. Let’s get you up.”

“It’s like the first time we met,” you said, snuffling vaguely. “You wanted me to follow you and I was a complete mess then.”

“I thought you were the bravest person I’ve ever met, except for perhaps Ty,” he said immediately. 

“Oh come on,” you scoffed, standing and smearing your sleeve all over your face. 

Shaer rose and stared at you, a fierce light now burning in those amber eyes. “I mean it,” he said seriously. “The Everdark is a truly terrible place. You held it together, and you walked out in one piece. Not many people can say that.”

“I was terrified out of my wits!” you protested. 

“You can’t be brave if you’re not afraid,” he said.

His words left you stumped, so you just accepted his outstretched hand and let him lead you up towards your room. He opened the door and paused outside. Biting your lip, you turned your eyes up to his and swallowed thickly. “You… You don’t have to…” you began, cursing the way you sounded so awkward.

Shaer took a deep breath. “I want to,” he said shakily. “I want to come in. I just… I don’t think it’s a good idea…”

“Why not?”

“Because…” he shuffled his feet, claws pricking the carpet slightly. “Because I don’t want to take advantage of you. Plus, I’m already attached to you enough. If I go all the way, saying goodbye to you will be…” He blinked furiously, eyes glassy as polished ambers. 

Feeling a lot braver than you had in the Everdark, you moved two steps back to him, took his face in your hands, and kissed him. “Goodnight then,” you said, and he nodded, exhaling shakily. 

“’Night.”

When the morning light came, you realised you only had one more full day before he took you to the Prince’s palace. You ate breakfast alone, and there was no sign of him throughout the morning, or at lunch. Something began to crack inside you, and you went over and over the previous night in your mind, trying desperately to work out what had gone wrong, where you’d messed it all up. Had it been that kiss? Had you offended him? You were so lost in thought that you didn't hear Anca come in, and you leapt almost out of your skin when she murmured your name from right behind you. 

“Sorry, child,” she giggled. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright, Anca,” you said, trying to school your face into something resembling polite interest. “What did you need?”

“I came to ask you why you are so sad?” she said. “Is it because you are leaving?” 

“I… I had hoped to see Shaer again…”

Clouds scudded across her eyes, and she sighed. “Ah, that boy. What am I going to do with him? He went out early this morning. Said he was climbing the path to the top of the hill, near the waterfall.”

“What’s wrong?” 

She reached her hand out for your jaw and cupped your face affectionately. You still flinched, even though you had no reason to recoil from her, but she didn’t seem to notice. “Child,” she said. “He has always been so… closed off. He opened himself to you, and now you must leave.” She stared at you with her deep green eyes a moment longer, and then winked and grinned, “Go and find him, eh?”

It was determination more than oxygen that got you up that hill. 

Red-faced and panting, you followed the line of the stream along a path you’d not yet walked, and stopped abruptly when you came to a wide pool of water in a clearing up ahead. Shaer was sitting in the middle of the pool, head leaned back against the rocks on the side, his wings spread out like pieces of paper on a puddle, floating. And he was completely naked. 

He lurched upright when he heard your footsteps as you entered the secluded glade, the water lapping around his hips. He chirped your name self-consciously and stared at you. “What are you doing here?”

“Anca told me to come and find you.”

“She did? Why?”

You gave him a flat look, and he blushed. 

“You want to join me?” he asked. 

You eyed the clear, rippling water. You could see the shadow of his legs beneath the surface, but no detail. Not from that angle at least. “Is it cold?”

He smirked. “Come and find out?”

Rolling your eyes, you crossed to him and knelt beside him. He made no move to cover his dignity, but you didn’t look too closely as you dipped your fingers into the spring-fed pool and hissed. It was freezing. 

“How can you stand that!” you yelped, your question almost drowned out by his laughter. 

“It’s a warm day,” he said. 

“It’s not that warm! I’m not convinced.”

“Fine, I like the cold,” he said. “I miss winter too. I miss the snows. I find the cold… calming.”

You regarded him as he lolled his head back again, eyes closed. Taking a deep breath, you reached for him and stroked a finger through his long hair, the tips damp and trailing in the water. “Me too,” you said quietly. 

He hummed in pleasure, and you caught the way his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. After a while he opened his eerie yellow eyes and you watched the pupils flare from slits to wide, dark circles, and you giggled. “What?”

“You’re very expressive,” you said. “I don’t know if you even realise it though.”

He snorted but said nothing. 

You trailed your fingers in the water and after a while, you let them slide up his arm, feeling the wiry strength of his muscles, watching that dark grey skin rise into goosebumps beneath your touch. Glancing at his face, you saw his lips were softly parted to reveal his elongated canines. He looked like a statue carved by a master sculptor, just shy of the throes of pleasure. The thought sent heat thrilling through you, and he cracked an eye open and shot you a look. 

Shaer turned slowly in the water, clearly preparing to get out of the ice cold pool, but he halted. “I… I’m going to get out. If you… er… If you’ve got… delicate sensibilities… I’d maybe turn around.”

You stayed put. 

“Alright then,” he said. 

He pushed himself out of the water, making no effort to shield the sight of his more than half-hard cock from you. He could easily have employed a wing to do so, but he chose not to. As his powerful, avian legs got him out of the water and his feet came to land on the grass beside where you knelt, you reached a hand for them and touched his strangely delicate ankles. The claws flexed, toes splaying briefly. 

“You’re really beautiful,” you murmured, risking a look up at him. 

“Fuck, I can’t do this,” he said, and you withdrew your hand as swiftly as if you’d been stung. 

Shaer turned away, making for a pile of clothes on a nearby rock, and giving you a stunning view of his muscular back, his wings, his perfect perfect arse, and that slender tail. 

“Shaer, wait,” you called. Puffing out a breath, you began to undress. 

The Shadowborne warrior had half turned to look at you when he did an almost comical double-take. As you stood up to step out of your clothes, he stared at you as though he’d never seen a naked body before, and was entranced. 

“Gods,” he whispered, taking an involuntary step towards you, wings flaring wide. “Gods, look at you…” 

His cock bobbed, standing straight upright, and you smiled shyly. This was by far the boldest, bravest, wildest thing you’d ever done in your whole life. The last thing to come off was the iron charm around your neck, and it hit the grass with a dull clunk as it fell from your fingers.

Shaer crossed the glade to you again, and he took your face in his large hands and kissed you. He moaned into the gesture, letting his eyelids flutter closed before deepening it, tasting you. All the while he kissed you, his hands wandered all over you, sculpting you anew with his reverent touch. 

Breathless, he broke the kiss and eased you down onto the soft, mossy floor of the clearing. He worshipped you - there was no other way to describe the way he took his time with you, explored you, worked you up and kissed you - and when he could sense that you were relaxing enough, he parted your legs and lowered his face between them, kissing down your thighs. “Your skin is like starlight,” he murmured. “It’s so pale…”

Beside his, you supposed, yours was pretty glacial. “I practically glow in the dark,” you snorted awkwardly. “I mean, if I don’t make it out of here, maybe I can get a job as a Night Sprite or something.”

He smiled, eyes crinkling at the corners, and he returned his lips to your inner thigh. His hands caressed you, and he paused, biting his lip, and looked up at you. “May I?” he asked, thumbs resting idly at the junction between thigh and hip. 

Shyly, you nodded, and he smiled again.

His tongue licked one hot stripe over your sex, and you shuddered. He held you in place so gently, and yet somehow he managed to keep you steady as he circled your clit and then began to move up and down, catching you in all the places you liked while his wings spread above you like sails in a high wind. Closer and closer he took you, lavishing attention on you in a way you’d perhaps never dreamed anyone ever would, until you gasped, feeling heat coiling inside you, white and intense and incredible. Your back arched, your hips writhed, and he kept going, pushing and coaxing until you broke, pleasure ripping through you in immense waves. Your body heaved and you cried out while Shaer pressed his mouth to your clit, feeling the way you pulsed and trembled, easing you through your climax until exhaustion rushed in to replace the ecstasy and you let your body go slack. 

Still twitching from time to time, you opened your eyes to find him gazing at you with a remarkably soft expression on his harshly handsome face. His wings were still spread wide, and tentatively, you reached for one, only barely able to graze the tip, but he gasped, breathing air across your throbbing clit in a rush that made you jolt again. His wings shivered and fluttered, and he groaned almost painfully. Glancing down, you saw that he was looking up at you with heat in his eyes, and further down you saw how his hard, dark cock was weeping freely now. 

“Shaer,” you hissed. “I… I want you…”

The light flared in his eyes and he lined himself up. Pausing with his tip at your entrance, he looked one last time at your face. 

“Please…” you practically whimpered. 

The noise he made as he inched into you, sinking himself hilt deep inside you, was a sound you would never forget. “Oh gods…” he grunted. His wings flared out as wide as they could go, the dark membrane stretched taut as a drum as his hips connected with yours. He lifted one of your thighs up, and his own powerful legs drove him into you again and again as he began to move. “Oh gods…” he said.

He filled you utterly, and as he moved his hips back and forth, he brought one hand to your clit and nudged circles around it with his thumb, all the while his cock catching that spot inside you that made everything else fade into shadow. 

Shaer closed his glowing eyes, losing himself in the ecstatic feel of you, endless phrases falling from his lips about how good you felt, how perfect this was, and how close he was getting. No one had ever made you feel this… unique, and as he worked himself closer and closer to his peak, he never forgot about pleasuring you. He never lost himself so much that he ignored you. Teetering on the edge a little while later, his breath rasped and the rhythm of his hips stuttered. 

“I’m… I’m close,” he snarled. 

You reached forwards and ran a finger down the delicate membrane of his left wing, starting near the shoulder and moving down towards the tip of one of the sections. With a bellow, Shaer came hard, eyes rammed shut, hips thrusting deep into you, thumb trembling on your clit. The sight of him, lost in his release, tipped you over the edge once more, and you clenched hard around him, drawing his orgasm out until he whimpered and let his wings fall limply to the forest floor beside you. 

Sweat glistened at his temples, and his heartbeat hammered so fiercely you could feel it as you brought a hand to his chest. His arms shook from bracing himself up, and without warning, they gave way. He slumped forwards onto you, barely catching himself on his elbows in time to keep from flattening you. “Fuck,” he hissed in your ear. “I don’t think I’ve ever come like that…”

Somehow, without crushing his wing, he rolled over onto his back a little way away from you and opened his arm in invitation. Still a little dazed yourself, you laid your head down on his chest, listening to his heartbeat pounding. His body was incredible, and now that you had a slightly better chance to look at him more closely, you saw that there were flecks of paler skin on his stomach and over his right hipbone too. Tracing them with a finger, you smiled as his breath hitched. 

“Sensitive, aren’t you?”

He nodded and laughed without opening his eyes. 

His cock lay across his thigh now, and you sat upright, shuffling a little and letting your hands play down his muscular thighs. His taloned toes curled up and he grunted and then laughed. “Sorry,” he muttered. 

“Ticklish?” you said again, and he rolled his yellow eyes. 

“Something like that,” he said. You worked your way down his strange legs, and he flexed his toes as you reached the delicate skin. 

“You know, you could do some real damage with these…”

“I think I told you that aerial combat is very different from fighting with a sword,” he said. “Get back up here, will you?”

He tugged you playfully and you landed beside him. He held you close and inhaled the scent of your skin at your neck. “Don’t go back,” he murmured. “Stay with me.”

“What will we do? What will you do? Run away?” 

He growled softly. “I don’t care.”

“I do,” you said. “Think, Shaer. You’re a captain, you’ve got everything going for you. I’m a human - I don’t belong here.” A second later, your hand atop a patch of pale skin on hard ridges of his abs, and you added, “No matter how much I want to stay.”

“We could figure it out,” he said, kissing the top of your head. “You could work at the barracks…”

“What, feeding the wyverns?” you asked. “Come on.”

“You could help train the new mounts,” he said. “You clearly love animals, and Indis adores you. There aren’t only wyverns there. You could learn to work with all of them. Please?” 

“Then why have I been hidden away out here for a week? Oh yes, because your kind hates mine…”

Shaer growled and held you closer, protective and half desperate at the same time. He rolled onto his side, forming a tight, outer shell as he wrapped his body around you. “Please,” he all but whimpered. “Please, try it? I’d keep you safe. You’d be under my protection. No one would dare lay even a finger on you.”

You took a deep breath and stared at his slate grey hands as they clasped around you. Being honest with yourself, you felt like you fitted in here in this bizarre realm a lot better than you ever had at home. “Let me think about it tonight. I’ll give you my answer tomorrow morning.”

Dawn came, and found you standing outside on the balcony of your room leaning on the stone balustrade. The nights here were cold, and the lingering chill in the air cut through you, freezing all the extraneous rubbish away from your mind and leaving one thing crystal clear. You loved it here. You were happier here than you’d perhaps ever been at home, despite the fact that this was the Court of Night, and full of dark shadows and corners. You could start over here. 

A rustle behind you made you turn and you saw Shaer standing in the doorway, dressed casually in a slightly rumpled shirt and loose trousers. His face was hard, set, as though bracing for the worst.

“On one condition,” you began without preamble, and his head tilted curiously to one side. “I’ll stay on one condition.”

“Name it,” he said, flaring excitement tinging his voice and setting his eyes ablaze. 

“I can return, unharmed, to the Mortal Realm whenever I say so. I won’t be bound here.”

Shaer looked horrified that you’d even suggested it. He lurched forwards and came to an unsteady halt in front of you, snatching up your hands and squeezing them. “You’re not a prisoner,” he said. “Of course you can go back any time you like…”

You nodded. “Then I’ll stay.”

He laughed and swept you up into his arms, turning in a circle and burying his face at your neck. 

“Thank you,” he said. “I promise you we’ll make this work.”

************************************

 I hope you enjoyed reading this one as much as I did writing it! If you want a commission of your own, you can find the info you need either here in this announcement post, or on my commissions page on Tumblr (it says they're closed, but they're not closed for you folks). Come and talk to me - here in messages or on Tumblr - and we can work something out for you!    

Don't forget that you can browse my masterlist for other stories and posts (since the format of this site is not great for finding older works)

(click here to read a short drabble with him, done for the 100 subscriber giveaway)