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The others were watching us with avid interest, Healer standing behind Falcon, caressing his neck. I just loved being the floor show. A headache throbbed behind my eyes. So much for all that expensive healing.
Darling chirruped and Rogue nodded in my direction. “Lady Lillibeth, we’d best complete the proceedings.”
“Only your service to Lord Darling remains, Lady,” the pink woman—Lady Lillibeth, apparently—reminded me.
I was exhausted. What else did I have to give? “Okay, what bargain does he offer?”
“Ask him,” Rogue said, not looking at me, but rather up to the shadowed depths of the vaulted ceiling.
“What? How?”
Falcon slammed his hand on the table. “Enough with playing dumb, foreign sorceress. Let’s get this done with.”
Darling sat on the table in front of me. He blinked at me sweetly, swelling a purr. I saw him in a classroom with me, riding on the back of a horse during battle, then standing at my heel.
“He wants to be my Familiar?”
“Agreed,” Lillibeth said.
The cat rubbed his cheek against my chin and padded back down the table. I wanted to ask exactly what I had agreed to, but my thoughts slipped away. Falcon and Healer wandered out of the hall, arm in arm, heads bent together as they laughed merrily over some private joke. Scourge rose to leave.
“Remember what I’m owed, Scourge.” Rogue lounged back in his chair, the indolent lord of the feast. “I expect my merchandise returned in appropriate condition.”
Scourge stilled. Then gave Rogue a curt nod and left.
“Lord Puck, you will miss the festivities, but you’d best convey your charge to her new home,” Lillibeth said breezily.
The bowed-head lads pulled my heavy chair away from the table. Even looking up at them, I couldn’t quite get a glimpse of their faces. Was I supposed to stand now? Rogue and Puck pulled me to my feet, so I supposed so. Puck pulled my wrists behind my back, fastening them together by my silver bracelets, then did the same with my feet. I couldn’t seem to resist. Why couldn’t I think? I teetered there while Rogue steadied me.
“The wine?” I finally got out and Rogue touched my face in that way of his that seemed to be tender.
“Magic can’t touch you while you wear silver, but it can touch something you then touch. You could never have protected yourself against it.”
“It’s better for the journey,” Puck added. He clipped a leash to my collar.
For the first time, I really processed that I was going somewhere else, in someone’s custody. Damned if I would cry again though, despite the aching emptiness in me that was the loss of everything I’d ever known.
“A moment, please, Lord Puck,” Rogue said.
He held me by the shoulders, looking down at me, gaze inscrutable on the placid unmarked right side, intense, almost harsh on the left.
“A deposit on my debt,” he said, then pulled me hard against him, one arm sliding around my waist, the other hand cradling my head. His lips touched mine, a soft brush at first. Then moving deeper, parting my mouth with a burning heat, soft and hard at once. Cinnamon, sandalwood and something more. With my hands chained behind my back, inclined against him, nearly off my toes as he held me up by the waist and skull, I had no power to pull back from him.
I couldn’t return the kiss. Tried not to.
Tried and failed.
The edges of me blurred and I became the kiss.
I became a goblet held in his arms that he drank from, while the longing in me throbbed, pounding in my breasts and between my legs, melding with the horrible keening loss that also grew.
I knew then, profoundly, that nothing was under my control. Maybe never had been.
Rogue released my lips, eyes fulminous, like the blue flame of a Bunsen burner. He seemed about to say something. Then didn’t. Through my haze, I caught roiling regret. He set me down, giving me a little push so that Puck caught me.
Puck tossed me over his shoulder. Upside-down and through the blur of drugged wine, I saw Rogue striding off toward the dancing.
Part II
