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“Gancanagh’s Dust,” he repeated, dropping his high-born dialect a bit to more closely match mine so it sounded more like “Gan-can-na” rather than “Gon-con-nah.”
I smiled in spite of myself at his brutally bad attempt at a northern commoner accent. “What is that?”
“One of the most vile substances my kind has ever come up with. You’ve probably heard of it before…fairy dust?”
I blinked at him blankly. Of course I’d heard of fairy dust in passing, but I still didn’t understand what he was trying to say. “Bewitched sand?”
“No.” He shook his head. “It’s not really dust at all. It’s the skin of marrows and blood of succubi combined with ground-up moondust leaves.”
Suddenly, my skin felt like it was crawling, and I desperately needed to take another bath. “That’s horrific.”
“Yes, and it makes one wonder how the mixture was discovered since moondust leaves are so poisonous. It was once used often, mostly to drag unwitting humans away from their homes to be pets and prisoners. I assume it was not hard to convince them, as the dust causes insatiable lust that, once ignited, is impossible to control.”
My face burned. He certainly didn’t have to tell me that—I knew all too well what he meant. “Why would anyone think of that?”
He laughed without humor. “Haven’t you noticed? We Fae are obsessed with love. We don’t understand it in quite the same way that you mortals do, but we can see it. We want it. All of our best inventions are born of trying to force love upon those who will never willingly stay with us.”
My heartbeat picked up, and for a moment, I almost forgot to be embarrassed—forgot why we were having this conversation at all.
But it only lasted a moment before I had to look away again.Gods, why?
Scion bent down, crouching so he was nearly eye level with me. Nearly, because even on the floor, his stature was so much larger than mine it was hard to be exactly nose to nose. I tilted my chin up to make up the difference.
“This is all to say,” he said, “that no one could have resisted that. It doesn’t have to matter.”
Why was the only time he’d ever been nice when I wanted to wallow in self-pity?
“You resisted it,” I pointed out mulishly.
“Only by a hair.” He barked a real laugh that was half humor, half bitterness. “I will be honest, I have no idea why that was. I don’t even want to speculate.”
My fingers flew involuntarily to the throbbing bite mark on my neck. It hurt a little, but not nearly as much as I would have expected. I touched it, and a tiny shiver ran down my spine.
“Instinct,”Bael’s voice screamed in my head.
I tore my hand away. “Yes, best not to speculate, and I think it would also be best to pretend this never occurred.”
“Alright.”
I let out a dejected sigh. “Now, can youpleaseleave me alone.”
He was quiet for a moment, watching me, his eyes tracing searing paths over my skin. It was more than long enough for me to sink deeper into self-loathing. Oh my gods, how was I ever going to—
“You know,” he said, interrupting my thoughts, “if I had been gifted with sight, I might have reframed my assertion yesterday.”
“Which one?” I asked in spite of myself. The dirt under my fingernails had become highly fascinating as I traced my fingers over the pattern on the carpet.
“I might not have said that the next time you came to my bed, you would beg…it was, in fact, a desk.”
I bristled and looked up at him, sudden rage sparking in my chest. “You fucking prick. What happened to ‘I couldn’t have controlled it’?”
He smirked and straightened up, looming over me. “There you go, rebel. There’s that rage that should undoubtedly have gotten you killed long before now.”
I stood as well, fully aware that I was taking his bait and unable to leave it. “Should have gotten me killed?”
“Undoubtedly,” he replied blandly. “I often wonder how you have survived as long as you have with all your limbs intact when you are unable to tolerate even the most minor insult.”
“So you would have killed me if we’d met palace,” I said angrily, recalling his earlier refusal to answer my question.
