Ink Exchange

He told the Hounds, "Don't speak to her other than to tell her that I forbade you to let her leave the room. Tell her you'll bleed for it if she goes anywhere. If that doesn't work, tell her Ani will."

They snarled at him, but they'd tell Leslie. Hopefully, it would inspire her to obey his wishes for a few hours while he cleaned up the latest mess.

Inside the first room the floor was strewn with the weeping mortals who'd survived the most recent round of festivities. They'd endured longer than the last batch, but so many broke in mind or body too easily. They were wailing as the madness of what they'd seen and done settled on them. Give them a few drugs, a little glamour, and some simple enticements, and mortals willingly dived into the depths of hidden depravity. Afterward, in the light, when the bodies of those who'd died were entwined with the still living, there were those who didn't know how to hold on to their sanity.

"Chela's found a few sturdy ones to replace them. They're enjoying the amenities over in the other room." Gabriel tossed a girl's handbag into one of the bins and then motioned at a corpse.

"Dibs." Two of the Ly Ergs lifted her. A third opened the door. They'd take her somewhere else in the city to leave her for the mortals to find. "She's ours."

"No posing this one," Gabriel snarled as the Ly Ergs left. The faery who opened the door lifted his hand in a dismissive gesture, flashing his bright red palm.

Irial stepped over a couple who stared blindly past him.

"She kept encouraging them to fight over her. Whatever's spliced with that new X made her violent." Gabriel emptied pockets and stripped away some of the shredded clothes, directing gri

"Tea?"

One of the Ly Ergs gri

A lea

Irial wanted to chastise them, but it wasn't any worse than most of the things they'd done for sport over the centuries. The Dark King doesn't require kindness for mortals. He tamped down his unease and said, "Maybe we should set up a stage over in the park by the kingling's loft. … A scene from Midsummer Nights Dream … or—"

"No. The other mortal that was scrawling plays then. What's the one with the parade of sins?" A Ly Erg rubbed his blood-red hands over his face. "The fun one."

"I like sins," a lea

One of Je

They were laughing.

"That's lust, sister. Gluttons have the extra meat on their middles. Like this one."

The surly Ly Erg repeated, "What's the play?"

"Faustus. The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus," Leslie said. Her voice was soft, but they all turned to the doorway where she stood. Her lacy pajamas were mostly covered by the robe she'd slipped on. "Marlowe wrote it. Unless you believe the theory that Marlowe and Shakespeare were the same person."

None of the faeries answered. Had it been anyone else, they'd have snarled at her or invited her to join the fun. With Leslie, though, they did neither.

She pulled a pack of Irial's cigarettes out of her robe pocket and lit one, silently watching as they gathered the newly mad mortals. When they approached her, she opened the door for them.

They crossed the threshold and extended their own glamour to mask what they carried. She saw it, though. She got a close-up view of wide-eyed madmen, a fresh corpse, and bare flesh. Her horror and disgust peaked. She didn't feel it, of course, but the rush of emotions she should feel swarmed to Irial.

Once the faeries were all gone, she walked toward him, flicking ash on the red-stained floor. Her bare feet were stark white against those stains. "Why?"

"Don't ask me that." Irial saw the fine trembling in her hands, watched her resist the backlash from the feelings he'd sought out.

"Tell me why." She dropped the cigarette and ground it out under her bare foot. The trembling became worse as waves of mortal terror surged through her.

"You don't want this answer, love." He reached out for her, knowing that despite her best intentions, the backlash would soon pull her under. She backed away. "Don't. I want to" — she stopped—"it's my fault, isn't it? That's why you're—"

“No.”

"I thought faeries didn't lie." Her knees gave, and she dropped to the floor. She knelt on a wide red stain.

"I'm not lying. It's not your fault." His attempts to be the King of Nightmares, the Dark King, all faded because she looked lost. It was him who faltered, not her.

She gripped the carpet, bloodying her fingertips as she tried to hold on to the floor so as not to reach out to him. "Why were they here? Why are they …"

She obviously wasn't going to stop asking questions, so he stopped avoiding them. "If I'm sated, I feed the court enough that you can have some freedom. The court starves a little, but not enough to cripple them … and as long as you stayed in the suite you didn't need to know."

"So we tormented them so—"

"No. You didn't torment anyone." He watched her grasp at the horror she wanted to feel, felt it slither into his skin. He sighed. "Don't overreact."

She laughed, a sound as far from humorous as a scream would be.

He sank to the floor beside her.

"There are worse things." He didn't tell her that those worse things were inevitable if the peace between the seasonal courts grew much stronger, that this was just one step in their path. She stared at him for several heartbeats, and then she leaned forward and laid her head against his chest.

"Can you pick criminals or something?"

Somewhere inside he was saddened by her acceptance of these mortals' deaths, but that was her mortal essence tainting his judgment. He pushed the sorrow away. "I can try. … I can't change what I need you for, but I would spare you details of it."

She tensed in his arms. "And if I can't take it? What then? What if my mind …"

He said it then, admitted his weakness, "I hadn't pla

"Then that's what you'll do," she whispered.

Chapter 35

Niall had stopped by the loft to gather a few belongings when Aisli

Aisli

"Has something happened?" he asked.

"Irial sends his regards." Her movements were as stilted as her words. She wandered away to stare out the window. Shadows danced in the air around her; he'd seen those same shadows dance in Irial's eyes, formless figures that leaped and spun on the edge of the abyss. Now they hovered around Leslie, a retinue of nightmare's handmaidens.

Niall didn't know what to do or say or think. So he waited.

"Can we leave?" She looked over her shoulder. "I can't do this here."

"Do what?"

She watched him, dispassionately it seemed. "What we talked about before."