“Why are yours so small?” he counters. “Go to sleep.”

“Are they big because you have wings and it’s for gripping? I noticed your feet were big, too.”

He sighs, and his breath brushes over my hair, teasing it. “I do not know. We are two different peoples, thus we are made differently. Are you going to ask why my knees bend in the opposite direction of yours? Have I asked you about your tail?”

“Tail?” I hiss. “I don’t have a tail. Do you have a tail?” Is he hiding it under that kilt?

“Go to sleep, Candra.”

As if I can sleep now. I wriggle backwards against him, hoping that he’ll react. Just a small groan. A hitch of breath. Something that tells me he’s noticing how blatantly I’m pressing my backside against him. There’s no response, though, and I fight back disappointment. He’s not interested, I realize.

But if he’s not interested, why does he jerk off to thoughts of me?

The man is a perplexing mystery, but I’m not going to give up. Not now that I’m warm and wide awake. “Are you tired?” I whisper. “Because now I’m not tired.”

“Candra.” There’s a hint of amusement in his voice. “You are impossible sometimes.”

Am I? I’m clearly not the impossible one. His big hand is a breath away from landing between my thighs, his cock is pressing up against my backside, and I’m the one being unreasonable? I want to laugh at the irony of it. “Want to play our game? We can skip the dares and just tell each other secrets. It’s too cold to get out of bed anyhow.” I blow a breath out and watch it fog in the air.

I wait for him to give me a grumpy sigh or tell me to go to bed. Instead, his weight settles in against mine, his delicious hip heavy against my thigh. His chin presses against my hair. “What do you want to know?”

“Do you have a tail?”

Now I get the heavy sigh. His hand twitches against my belly. “Ask me something else, Candra.”

“I’m going to assume that’s a yes, since if it was a no you wouldn’t be so fussy at me.” I tap a finger on the back of his hand. “But fine. Tell me when your birthday is.”

“My birthday? Do you truly celebrate such childish things?”

“Why not? Birthdays are a celebration of you. What makes that childish?”

“My people do not celebrate birthdays after you come of age.”

I tap his hand again. “Well, I’m human, and I want to celebrate it, so humor me. When is it?”

He’s quiet for a moment. “On the seventeenth of spring, I will be twenty-eight.”

Born a short time after the last people in his family were in the tower, then. “Were either of your parents in the tower?”

“My aunt.” He pauses. “She was never the same afterward.”

Mine neither. My aunt Calliope was older when she went to the tower, and my mother (Calliope’s much younger sister) said that she was never quite right in the head afterward. That she preferred to sit in the darkness and liked a small, quiet room. She moved to a monastery not long after she returned from the tower and died a few years later. My mother rarely spoke of her, and whenever I asked about the tower, I’d been told that it was Meryliese’s duty and not to worry about it.

Now I wish I’d pressed more.

We’re both quiet for a long moment, and then Nemeth’s mouth brushes against my hair. “That was two questions, you cheat.”

Two questions? Oh—the tower and his birthday. “Well, ask me two questions, then.”

“Your birthday?”

“Alas, I am high summer, three days after solstice.” I smile into the darkness, cocooned against him. “Didn’t feel much like celebrating this past year. I just turned twenty-four.” I pat his hand again. “Next question.”

“Did you leave a lover behind?”

Oh. I’m surprised he asked that. Perhaps he’s not as detached as he’s pretending to be at the moment. I stroke my fingers over his hand on my belly and consider my answer. Most men don’t like hearing that a woman has experience in bed. They seem to think that we don’t have needs or desires like they do. That we’re supposed to be pristine, virginal goddesses until they deign to stick their cocks into us and “make us whole” or some such drivel. Erynne waited for her marriage to Lionel, and she told me that her wedding night was so awful that she cried for a week.

I’ve never regretted being free with my favors. But I also don’t want Nemeth to think less of me. “I left a great deal of lovers behind,” I say, deciding to go for a teasing manner. “But if you are asking if I had my heart on someone specific, the answer is no. Court was just…court. Everyone there was bored, including me. You amuse yourself the best you can, and sometimes you end up in someone’s bed. It means far less than you’d think. It was mostly flirting, and sometimes flirting would go a little too far. But no heart attachments, no.”

I hold my breath, waiting for his response. Waiting to see if he’s going to shame me for my immorality.

“So…this Balon…he is not a great love of yours?”

Oh, is he jealous? I’m thrilled to my core at the thought. “Balon? Please. He wants to marry a Vestalin.”

Nemeth chuckles. “So it is not true love?”

I snort. “Very clearly not. He got bored and stopped visiting. If he really loved me, he’d be out there constantly. He’s just fascinated by me because I’m an incorrigible tease and I have an important family name. Even if he was in love with me, his family wouldn’t allow it. Balon will need heirs.”

“Ah. So you don’t wish to give him heirs?”

I pause. “No one will marry me. I have the blood curse, and it makes me barren.”

“This blood curse. You’ve mentioned it before. What is it?”

I turn my head, as if I can look back at him in the darkness. His breath fans over my face, and it’s warm and pleasant and surprisingly cozy. “How many questions are you going to ask? You’re not very good at this game.”

He squeezes his hand over my belly, sending a pulse of heat straight through my body. “Just tell me. I wish to know.”

“Do your people not have the blood curse then? The First House of Darkfell?”

“No curse at all.”

Figures. I consider for a moment, wondering if I should tell him. He’s still the enemy, even if I enjoy cuddling with him. Even if I’m starting to have filthy daydreams about him. Would he use this information against me in the future? But…we made a promise that whatever was shared in the tower would not be used against each other. I decide to trust in that. “The blood curse dates back to Ravendor Vestalin, the first of our line. Have you heard of her?”

“Everyone has, yes. Even those of us monsters in Darkfell.”

I poke him for referring to himself as a monster. The more time passes, the more I’m convinced that he’s just a man. A man with wings and fangs and weird legs and possibly a tail, but definitely a man. He has people, just like I have people. “So you know of Ravendor Vestalin. Then you know that she was the first of her line, and she was born from starlight. She wasn’t given the name Vestalin until her quarrel with the Golden Moon Goddess. Back then, they called the goddess Vestal. That was before we lost the right to call the gods by their names. Have you heard this story?”

“A version if it, but very different than yours, I imagine. Keep talking.”

“So Ravendor was a fierce warrior who sold her sword to whoever would pay her. The goddess was upset because Ravendor had killed the goddess’s son in battle. He was supposed to be impossible to slay by any blade, so Ravendor used a club given to her by a male of the First House of Darkfell. The goddess was extremely upset and appeared in the sky as the Golden Moon for the first time. She demanded that Ravendor and the male from Darkfell pay a penance—to give seven years to the goddess. Seven years of piety and prayer, and the goddess would forgive them. Ravendor agreed, and so the goddess rose the tower from the land itself—this tower—and Ravendor went inside. The Golden Moon hung in the sky for seven long years, watching over the tower to ensure that Ravendor and the Fellian did not leave. Once the seven years passed, Ravendor stepped foot outside of the tower, but the goddess was furious because Ravendor had been blessed by the Gray God during that time and had given birth to a child.”