Author's Note:yes, yes, I know, it's been forever since I've updated! Trust me, with moving and this job and everything, I'm behind on everything! But I finally got a new chapter out. Yay! Excitement! The only reason I haven't updated Once Upon a Winter's Night is because I need to watch something before I can write about the torture scenes and stuff in the next chapter. So that's taking forever. But I'm going to try to update Once Upon a Time by July 4 and we'll see about updating Winter's Night. I do have 3 other fics (2 for Avengers, 1 for Hellboy) that I also need to update…

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Chapter Sixteen

Hold Me for Ten Thousand Nights

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"May the gods help me, Dylan, but I…I think I love you, as well."

He regretted it the moment the words spilled from his lips like blood from a wound. Shame sank its talons into his heart and ripped him wide. A shudder heaved through his body and he drew away from the silken warmth of her; it left him feeling brittle, and so cold he ached with it. The only pinpoints of warmth came when her fingertips touched his shoulder. He sucked in a breath as her heat pierced him like molten needles. He shuddered again.

"It's okay—" Dylan began.

Nuada jerked away from her, surging to his feet as something sick twisted inside him. He shook his head, trying to shake off the potent awareness that nothing shielded him from her sight except the shadows cast by the candle-glow. He snarled softly, "No. It is not all right. There is nothing all right about this. There never has been." He heard rustling, the creak of the bed—oh, the bed, where he'd lost himself in her, and for how long? Until the clutching need had loosened its hold just a little, and that had taken hours, such sweet hours—and he realized she was going to get up, to come to him, so warm and vulnerable and soft…

"Nuada," she tried again, and he hunched away from the whisper of his name like a caress in the dimness. "You don't have to lie to me. It's okay."

Shutting his eyes against the sudden stinging, he forced a rueful smile to curve his mouth. He turned to her, his new mortal wife wrapped in a sheet of palest champagne silk, dark curls tumbling in a tousled waterfall around her bare shoulders. Didn't have to lie, she said. Lie about this rot poisoning him from within, this aching. It hadn't been enough to take her again and again in this place, in that bed, knowing she welcomed him this time. That didn't stop him from trembling at her nearness, stop his body from yearning toward her. It wouldn't stop. Nothing would make it stop. He would never be done with her, never have his fill of her.

And it wasn't simply her body. He wanted her touch, even as innocent as her palm against his cheek, or that gentle tug and release of her slender fingers pulling through his hair. His breathing stuttered when he couldn't catch the rhythm of hers; his heart stumbled in a vain attempt to match hers. Where she drew close, his skin seemed to fill with light. He had never felt such a thing before.

Lie to her. She believed this torment of his to be a lie. What did she think, then? That he had fallen into her arms driven by nothing but the burning? Had she given herself to him not out of love, but perhaps duty to her new husband? Or because his desire had dragged her under, beneath a tenebrous sea of what he alone could do for her, and she'd been unable to resist?

Yet she'd claimed to love him. So then did she think herself unworthy of this wretched shadowed thing inside him that attempted to pass itself off as love?

He touched gentle fingers to her cheek, felt the snap and sizzle of the need still crackling beneath his skin like lightning. Her skin was so soft…exquisite…Nuada stroked a line over the thick scar slashing down her cheek. A tremor moved through Dylan.

"We're going to have to learn to live with each other," she murmured. "Now that we're married. I can do it, if you can."

Learn to live with each other. He could do that, surely. He could do it if it meant protecting her, upholding his honor, defending the babes yet growing inside her. So he forced another smile and cupped her cheek, murmuring, "If I can? That sounds like a challenge, my lady. Are you challenging an Elven prince?"

She offered her own hesitant smile. "Maybe."

Settling his hands at her hips, scrunching the smooth silk under his hands, he drew her to him. The brush of silk against his bare skin, warmed by her body, made his breath catch. Slowly, carefully, waiting for her to deny him, he glided his hands up from her hips over her ribs, and up, to just beneath the curves of her breasts. His thumbs smoothed in a slow tracing over her top ribs. Her breath fluttered warm against his skin. The tip of his nose just touched hers when he leaned into her.

"I can do it," he said, lips whispering against hers. Her warmth flooded him like gentle hellfire as she slid her arms around his neck; the sheet stayed mostly in place, held up by his hands. "If you can do it."

Dylan nodded. "We can do it."

We. Not me, not I, not you. We. Us. A unit, a team. United in this cause, in this struggle, as they had been when he had tortured and tormented them for that eternal fortnight. The two of them, together. Always together.

He had to do it then. Kiss her. Take her mouth in a sweep of longing and need that sent him spiraling down, down into desire and that love he'd allowed himself to acknowledge, only to have it thrown back at him with such naïveté, such innocent cruelty. It wasn't love, not for true, but it was close enough, a midnight mirage that would never fade, a pale imitation but all he was capable of now, after he had broken the Elven prince. The dark Elf whose name could never be spoken or even thought again…

Nuada loved Dylan. He'd taken her for his wife. Made her his, seeded her, bound her to him. Yet it didn't help. Nothing helped. He still kissed her as if he was starving and she was food; as if she was a tall, cold drink of water and he'd spent eternity wandering in a desert waste; as if all his life he'd been drowning and she was the first breath of air he'd ever known.

"You're so beautiful," he groaned against her mouth. "Why do you haunt me like this?" He kissed her cheek, the delicate edge of her jaw, that sweet spot beneath her ear. She melted into his arms and he lifted her, light as gossamer. "How can you bewitch me so?"

Where the sheets had cooled now from his and Dylan's brief absence, she was only warmth, a living flame when he laid her back on their bed. Her hands were like zephyrs brushing over his shoulders and back. Her voice fell on him like shadows, silken soft. Nuada plunged into desire riddled with icy shards of despair and shame, but she surrounded him, anchored him, brought him back after the lightning faded from his blood and the sweat cooled on his skin. He laid his head on her breast in the quiet, surrounded by the shush of her breathing and the steady drum of her heart, and struggled to breathe past the tears in his throat.

One week. He would give them one week to be alone, here in this sanctuary where only memory and the ghosts of the past could touch them. Maybe two, if this clutching fear didn't leave him by then. And then they would return to Bethmoora.

He had no way of knowing if he would be going to his death.

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Sometimes they ate their simple meals curled around each other in bed, Dylan's head on Nuada's shoulder or his head pillowed on her belly. Sometimes Nuada would draw her up and hum soft tunes as he taught her to waltz. She would read aloud to him by the fire while he laid his cheek on her thigh and watched the flames flare and then burn low, and when the fire offered them only embers, he would draw her down to the soft Shahbaz rug and make love to her in the dying glow. When he noticed her hand resting on her belly, shielding their unborn babes, he would move her hand and kiss her there before reaching out with his magic to touch those tiny lives. Their innocence was so pure, so simple, it made him hurt.

He found that brushing Dylan's hair soothed him. They played chess late at night when nightmares of memory slashed at their hearts; once they'd tried playing with Dylan sitting in his lap and the board sideways, but she'd been so distracting he'd actually lost. When pain spiked through his temples from dark thoughts and darker worries, she eased the pain with gentle fingers and soothing words. She brought him a small measure of peace in that week in the sanctuary.

Why couldn't they stay? Why shouldn't they stay? He could do this for her. He could give her sanctuary for a little longer. He wanted to. He needed to.

So they stayed for a week. Two. Three. A month. Time flowed, sand trickling through the glass so softly and gently they scarcely noticed. Nuada shuddered at the thought of returning to the real world, always telling himself they had time. When Nuala brushed his consciousness, he shoved her away, throwing up psychic walls of stone and jagged ice and burning iron to keep her away. Sometimes wisps would come in the night while Dylan slept, tiny stars with messages from Wink and—although rarely—his father, asking or demanding to know where he was, what had happened, why he hadn't returned. He offered them promises of later, always later. When Dylan was ready. When he could bear the thought of the court's knowing what had happened to him, to her. It would only be in part, but it was enough to send sickness shivering through him, bile burning his throat, grief and shame clawing at his heart. Soon enough his father and sister and all the rest would know his shame. Until then, couldn't he simply be at peace for just a few moments?

Dylan quit her job in their third week in the sanctuary without explanation. She sent a text to her brother telling him she was on an extended vacation and she'd call if and when she could. When her brother attempted to call on her new cell phone, she ignored it. When he arrived at her cottage, Dylan would step through the door connecting her old home to the sanctuary to show her twin that she was, in fact, alive and well.

Nuada didn't know when or how she told her brother of her pregnancy, but once after a visit she returned to the sanctuary with a pair of stuffed bears made from pastel cloth—one candy pink, one lemon yellow—that were obviously meant for infants. She set them on a stone shelf and said nothing about them beyond that they were gifts from John. Then she sat on the bed, dropped her face into her hands, and wept until Nuada could bear it no longer and he kissed her tears away, soothing her with soft words and lovemaking until she slept peacefully in his arms.

One month bled into two, and two into three, and three began to border on four, and he saw as if through a fog that Dylan had become pale as moonlight, shadows like bruises beneath her eyes. In the aftermath of their passion, he would follow the blood flowing blue-gray beneath her skin at her neck, her wrists, her palms, with the tips of his fingers. He would trace the scars carved across her wrists that betokened a night of despair and blood. He would kiss those scars, and the ones at her elbows like snow-white funeral mounds, before finding her mouth and trying to breathe the taste of life into her again.

And then there came a night—or perhaps it was day, because their only sky was stone walls and ceiling, their only sun firelight and candlelight and shadow—when they lay in each other's arms, breath shuddering and hearts skipping beats and their skin damp with the exertion of chasing away each other's darkness. And she whispered, We have to go back, don't we?

The words were soft and sweet and sad in his mind. He nuzzled her shoulder, her jaw, brushed his lips over her ear. He didn't speak, aloud or in her thoughts. He couldn't bring himself to tell her that yet again, there was something he could not protect her from—duty. It had been put off for far too long. And he would not allow himself to whisper sweet words of love to soothe her; they would only hurt her, striking like lies, because she still couldn't believe in his love. And why not, shallow and sickly as it was? So he breathed warmth against her skin and said nothing.

Of its own accord, his hand stole to her belly, cupped the fullness there. A woman's body offered its own sort of curve there for a man to cradle, but when she was with child, it swelled with the life inside her, a promise and a reminder to them both. Nuada smoothed his fingers over Dylan's bare belly and wondered…so many things. So many things that hurt and burned and raked at him. What would his father do to these unborn children of his? Was this the right thing? His doubts festered, fed by his own dread at acknowledging what he'd done to this woman, this mortal, this friend and ally, lover and wife. Would Balor take Dylan away from him? Would the king try to take the children away? Would he have any allies in this at all, save Wink?

Dylan's thumb touched a wrinkle between his brows, and he realized how fiercely he'd been scowling. She smoothed the frown line away. Kissed the tip of his nose. An odd lurch tripped in his chest as he gazed at her. They'd talked of this many times in the last three months.

Don't worry, she whispered now as she always did. We'll be all right. We're together. We'll be just fine. We can fight anyone, take down anything, if we fight together.

Then she did a remarkable thing. In the nearly-four months since their marriage, she had given herself to him again and again, with breathless murmurings and kisses that made a siren's intoxicating caresses pale in comparison. But she had never moved to him as she did now, cupping his face in her hands, kissing him with a timid desperation that made his blood burn. She had always given, never taken. But she took now, during this, their last night safe in their sanctuary. And he gave himself up, let her take what she wished, until there was nothing left of him that wasn't held together by her touch, her breath, her gaze like stardust. He breathed her name, soundless in the candle- and firelight, and it echoed in his mind like a spell, Dylan, Dylan, oh, my Dylan, mine, always mine, forgive me, Dylan…

And his name reflected back to him, on and on forever, a whisper in his skull like the silky brush of the wings of a butterfly, Nuada, Nuada, Nuada, Nuada…

In the dying glow of the fire, he held her as she held him, spent now by passion and that seething emotion that dared to name itself love in the back of his fevered mind, and he prayed he wouldn't lose the solace he'd found in her. He didn't know if he would survive it.

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The next night came like the fall of the executioner's axe. They clutched hands like little children, though there was nothing childlike in the way his thumb smoothed over her knuckles and her eyes found his face. This was it. They went now to be judged by the king, with Wink at their backs and a kingdom of enemies before them.

Brother? Nuala's voice, timid as a puppy that had been kicked a hundred times and still did not understand why. Beg Father's forgiveness and he will be merciful, I swear to you.

You do not even know what I have done, Nuala, he replied bitterly. He knew what his family believed he'd done but not…not the truth. They had no idea of the little ones, his little ones, nearly five months in the womb now. They had no idea that he'd married the enemy of his race because honor demanded it and because he…because he dared to love…

The doors loomed, gates to the hell that awaited the Elven prince and Dylan. Wink stood as a tall, dense shadow behind them. To Nuada's surprise, he felt Dylan's relief at Wink's presence. That had been happening more and more in the last three, almost four months in the sanctuary—a link forged from gossamer slowly morphing to iron. Every time they kissed, every time they touched, every time they made love, that link strengthened. Nuada felt it at the back of his mind tethering him to Dylan, mind to mind and soul to soul.

Are you ready? He asked. In the last month in the sanctuary, they'd almost given up speaking aloud to each other except in brief murmurs. Their connection was internal, shielded from the world by his magic and their growing mystic link.

Dylan nodded and smoothed her free hand over the sapphire silk gown and velvet kirtle in antique gold that Nuada had given her. Embroidered on the kirtle with tiny yellow diamonds, blue diamonds, and star sapphires was the crest of Bethmoora, the Eildon Tree. No leman or plaything was given such things. With that and the white-gold wedding ring on her finger, they knew no one would mistake Dylan for anything other than Nuada's wife.

The prince offered his wife his arm. She took it; he felt her shivering with nerves. He kissed the backs of her fingers.

Everything will be well. No harm will come to you this night, little one. I swear it.

She nodded. Sighed. Okay. Let's do this.

The doors creaked open and the prince of Bethmoora and his human wife stepped into the king's Great Hall.

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Author's Note: So what do you guys think of this latest Moonless chap? Hmmm? Let me know what you think! Of course I ended it on a cliffhanger. I do that a lot; it's a thing I do to torment you all because writers are closet sadists. What do you think is going to happen next? Loves to you all! Bye!

Oh, and the chapter title is a line from the song "Blue Caravan" by Vienna Tang.