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Well, if nothing else, now I knew where to direct my ire at missing out on finding information about Ambrose. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t be able to do anything to her tonight, but that would only give me longer to think of a punishment vile enough to match the offense.
Smiling slightly at that dark thought, I took a step toward Lonnie where she still lay on the floor. “Let’s go, rebel. Stand up.”
She made some sort of unintelligible noise, somewhere between a whine and a moan. Good fucking gods, this was going to be the end of me.
I reached for her, trying my best to touch only her clothing and not her skin. I noticed, with a wince, that the buttons on her pants were still undone, and half were missing, though mercifully, she’d pulled them back on so that at least nothing was showing. The only real evidence that anything had gone on, aside from her bruised lips and glazed-over expression, was the brutal bite mark on her shoulder.Fuck.
I pinched the skin between my eyes, keeping them closed as I asked, “Does that hurt?”
“Hmmm?” she hummed.
No, probably not, then.
For Fae, something like that would heal almost instantly. For her…well, I had no idea.
“I’m sorry,” I said, the words feeling foreign on my tongue. “I’ll look at it later, after you’ve washed the dust off.”
Of course, I couldn’t fix it, not really, but at least perhaps it could be bandaged once the Gancanagh’s Dust finally wore off. The idea of covering it made me oddly, irrationally angry, but I shook it off.
“Well, isn’t that precious,” a high, trilled voice spoke from the doorway. “Only one might ask themselves why such a sweet scene is playing out in such an inappropriate location?”
I stiffened. The timing could not have been worse, except, I supposed, if she’d walked in while I’d had Lonnie bent over the desk and—
No!I shook myself. I would not think about that. I was to act as though this had never happened.
I spun slowly, my face turning to stone before I faced the newcomer. “One might also ask themselves why there is an entire drawer of Gancanagh’s Dust in this office when the substance has been outlawed for some two thousand years.”
The tall, middle-aged Fae woman stood on the threshold and smiled at me in a way that I recognized as a peace offering. I remained unmoved.
To the human eye, Phillipa Blacktongue and I might have appeared the same age, but we were not. It was clear to me from the slight pale hue of her hair and the upturn in her eyes that she had a few hundred years on me, at least. By Fae standards, she was plain to look at, with unremarkable pale hair and a heart-shaped face. But then, I knew it wasn’t her appearance that most were interested in.
“It is not often I am honored by royalty, Your Highness,” she said. “You’ll have to forgive my lateness.”
I would do no such fucking thing. “If I were advising a smarter woman than you, I might suggest not reminding me about how long you forced us to wait.”
She let out a tinkling laugh that made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. “Unavoidable, I assure you. Now, what can I do for you, my lord?”
I racked my brain, trying to recall the story we’d invented. There was little reason to visit a brothel aside from the obvious, and I’d been horrified at the idea of either feigning interest in Phillipa or offering up Lonnie as some sort of pet. I’d intended to ask her something innocuous about guild politics, but now, all that came out was “How do I fix her?”
Phillipa looked at Lonnie, who still lay on the floor. “Oh dear…well, I daresay you can’t.”
I took a step toward her that may have been slightly too aggressive had I cared to control my behavior. “Think harder,” I growled, my fists clenched. “You do not want to know what happened to the incubus that I suspected may have even touched this shit.”
She laughed. “I am not afraid of pain, my lord.”
My lip curled. “No? Do you understand what happens to the mind of an immortal when it has experienced so much pain that it ceases to believe that the body still lives? The body may never die, but the mind will. It will rot and cease to exist, and what then? What happens to you if you cannot even return to the Source, as your body holds you hostage here, unmoving, unthinking, for all of eternity.”
The only sign that she’d heard me was the slight widening of her eyes. Phillipa was clearly used to being in charge; she’d let the fucking queen of Elsewhere stand unattended on her steps for nearly thirty minutes. It was no wonder Cross’s children had had difficulty with her. But that ended here and now.
“That might be…interesting to try once,” she said finally, clearly flustered.
I laughed. “I was not finished. We so rarely send anyone to Fort Warfare anymore I sometimes forget it is an option at my disposal, but I think in this case…it’s warranted.”
This time, she blanched, her face going slack. “Yes, of course. I see,” she stammered. “It will wear off eventually, but in the interim…” She looked at a loss. “There’s nothing to be done.”
“Then why am I not mindless?” I demanded. “I was also affected.”
She looked me over, confused. “I can honestly say I don’t know. Gancanagh’s Dust affects everyone equally. Mated couples are often spared, but I’ve never seen someone be affected only to shake it off.”
