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My insolence flicks a switch in him, but not the kind that triggers a rage. He swings the opposite way and falls so still that I hear birds hopping between branches. His next words are spoken in a tone so soft it sends a shiver down my spine.
“Did your upbringing omit protocols surrounding appropriate address?” He takes a threatening step toward me. Something cracks—his knuckles at his sides. “Do you require education?”
The predatory thrill in his eyes prevents me from answering. For the Knight Inquisitor, I can only imagine what “education” means. Interestingly, he doesn’t seem bound by the same rules of pleasant vocabulary etiquette as everyone else. I suppose a dog like him would have a looser leash.
“How did you do it?” he asks abruptly, surprising me.
“Do what?”
Faster than I can blink, he fists my shirt at the collar and wrenches me closer. My boots scrape along the ground as hemoves me with the ease of a doll. His breath heats my face—Absinthe, tobacco, something heady and sweet. The raspy note in his voice must come from smoking.
If I only had my dagger, I would sink it beneath his ribs and pierce that black, withered heart. But again, I want to test his limits. Need to.
How far has Titania clipped his wings?
Surprise flickers in his eyes at my lack of reaction. He glances down at his fist—Tinger’s pendant. My sharp intake of breath betrays my panic. If he’s broken it, I’ll murder him.
He lowers me to the ground and bites the gloves from his fingers. Wary, I watch him like a hawk. Peablossom removed her gloves before glamouring me. In Elphyne, we don’t need to touch someone to cast spells, but maybe it’s different here.
A flash of blue in my peripheral draws my eye to the faerie in question, watching from the wings of an archway. Dread dawns on her face as Emrys’s surprisingly graceful fingers delve inside my collar and pluck out my pendant—Tinger’s singular manabee sparkles proudly inside the tiny glass vial. Relief courses through my body. He’s safe.
But then rage slams into me. He had no right to fish into my clothes.
“Give it back.” My fingers clench into a fist. The pendant is still attached to my neck by a cord. The last thing I want to do is snatch it and break it.
“Where did you find this, little moth?” Emrys’s husky murmur is hard to distinguish as he stares intently at the vial.
His quietness alarms me the most. Nero was like that. The worst killers, the most practiced of them, don’t allow emotion when it’s time to work. Maybe they have none to begin with. A Knight Inquisitor sounds like someone who would go quiet a lot.
I try to answer, but my words catch in my throat. He has no right to Tinger’s final moments. That private pain is mine alone.
When Emrys’ long lashes lift, something unsettling flickers in his eyes. It’s not the promise of death like I expected. But I don’t know what it is.
At my continued silence, his tone becomes impatient.
“Puck said you are a Nightmare, that your face was as putrid as the shit he scrapes from beneath his boots. Did you harness this to glamour your face?” He holds out Tinger’s manabee.
“I . . .”
Peablossom’s missing eyebrow, her forced bravado, and the memory of how she wilted under Puck’s dominance when I first arrived flash in my mind. She was petrified of the consequences of my tardiness. If anyone should receive a punishment for my behavior, it’s me.
“Did you steal it?” he presses. “Are you a thief?”
“Yes,” I reply. That excuse will do. It’s not exactly a lie. In fact, I stole the glass vial he holds.
“And so you traded a wisp for a glamour?” He watches me expectantly.
A wisp? They must call manabeeze wisps here.
“I used a charmed stone. I did it myself.”
He tucks it back into my shirt and then puts his gloves back on while studying me with unnerving scrutiny. He takes my upper arm in a punishing grip. Bruising pain crushes me, but I refuse to show I’m affected. With rough, unceremonious steps, he hauls me back to the arena. We pass Peablossom. Her shaky “Is all well?” falls on deaf ears.
I feel like I’m seven and back in Crystal City, dragged through the dining room filled with the elite oligarchs who mocked and humiliated me when I ate with my fingers at the table. My parents showed me manners, but my wolfish part always won.
Ants crawl over my face. Alarm zips through my veins. Has Emrys done something worse to me? But the moment fear hits, I remember I’m already ugly.
He can do his worst. It won’t change a thing. It won’t bring Tinger or Rory back. It won’t make me feel any worse for spending half my life at the whims of other people. When he places me in the first unit of Nothings, I briefly lock eyes with Geraldine two rows back.
