As soon as that thought crosses my mind, a neatly dressed guard appears in the doorway Amanda left open.
“Mr Robinson, it’s time for your debriefing with Mr Jones. If you would come this way, please.”
See? I knew it. A shit ton of questions. And I’m glad it’s happening now. I’d rather get it over with. So I nod and stand. Amanda takes my hand.
“I’m allowed to go with you for emotional support,” she says.
I squeeze her hand. That sounds nice. Really nice.
We are led through a maze of featureless hallways to a bland office. The man behind the desk stands and gestures at the two chairs set opposite him. He nods at the guard and the door shuts behind us. Amanda and I take our seats while still holding hands.
The man across the desk doesn’t look up from his notes. He is a middle-aged mousy man with glasses but something about him screams danger.
“What do the fey know?” he says softly, without looking at me.
“Nothing!” I protest.
He scribbles something on his paper. “Nobody expects you to have withstood torture.”
My spine stiffens. “I wasn’t tortured. I wasn’t asked anything. They didn’t know I was Resistance.”
More scribbling. A long, drawn out silence. Somewhere a clock ticks.
“Why were you taken?”
Prickly, itching heat spreads across my cheeks. “Mabon liked the way I looked. He claimed me as a pet.”
The silence is not as long this time. But he still isn’t looking at me. It is unnerving as hell, which is probably the point.
“To your understanding, what is a pet?”
I blink at the carefully worded question. I don’t know what I was expecting him to say, but it wasn’t this.
“A…a sex slave,” I stammer.
Amanda gasps and squeezes my hand tightly. I can’t look at her, so I stare down at my denim covered jeans instead.
“Were you sexually assaulted?”
His tone sounds like he is asking if it is raining outside. Casual. Only mildly curious. And I cannot tell if I hate it.
The silence drags, and I take a moment to realise that this time, I’m the one who has caused it. He asked me a question and I haven’t answered it.
“No?” I say, and it sounds like a question.
Maybe it is. It’s not as if I’ve had a chance to process everything that has happened. I don’t know how I feel about it.
“Were you coerced into having sex?”
I gulp. Amanda’s grip on my hand tightens even more. Was I? Is that what happened? I remember I had doubts at first. I don’t know the answer, but I can’t stand anymore silences.
“Possibly?” I blurt.
The pencil scratches across the paper. How on earth is the noise so loud? Is it a special type of noisy paper or something? He still doesn’t look up.
“Did you have sexual encounters with Prince Mabon?”
My cheeks are burning now. My knees are trembling. There is no wriggle room in this direct question. I cannot evade or deny.
