“Submit and release your control over me.”She used the booming voice again.
“Is this faithum your specific fae power?”
In her regular voice, she said, “My magic is none of your business.Obey me or I’ll charge you with assault on a soldier of the empire, as well as everything else.”
“Fine.”I withdrew the thrall over her blood but didn’t take my eyes off her.“Just go away.I’m not going anywhere with you.”
She shook her limbs out.“Are you resisting arrest, then?”
“You claim an emperor as your authority.There is no emperor, and even if there were, you’d still have no authority over me.I need to go to the palace of Zaraga immediately.”
“Well, isn’t this just your lucky day?That’s where I’m taking you.”
“To the palace?Why?”
“My gods, you really are playing up the ‘incapacitated by bloodlust’ angle, aren’t you?”After the air quotes, she slapped her hands to her hips, then spoke exaggeratedly slowly.“I’m arresting you and taking you to prison.The prison is at the palace.You’re going down for murdering two humans.”
I could have told her right then and there who I was, and did all the commanding from then on.But a squirming unease restrained me.My loss of Teo was by far the worst, but it wasn’t the only thing that was off.A sense of wrongness marched all over my skin like an entire colony of ants.
I suppressed a shiver.“I won’t allow you to put me under arrest.But I am heading to the palace.”
She smiled annoyingly wide.“Great.I can just as easily arrest you there.”She thumped her little palms against her chest as if that settled that.
I stood.Instantly, the creature zoomed with a blur of buzzing, translucent wings to hover near my head.
She wagged a finger at me.“Don’t go getting any ambitious ideas.”
Purposely looking only at the ocean and not at her or to the left where the bodies were, I stalked toward the water.
She trailed me.“Hey!What are you doing?”
“Washing the blood off.”
“You mean, washing theevidenceoff.”
I kept walking, the fine sand hot enough to sting against the soles of my feet.
“That’s okay.You have my permission.I already got everything I need from the scene before I woke you up.”
For the briefest of moments, I hesitated, but then waded into the water anyway, shoving away memories of discovering myself in an underwater tomb.Even so, I made quick work of scrubbing my skin and hair as clean as salt water were going to get them, then emerged.
The creature eyed me.“We’ll need to get you clothes.”She glanced toward the bodies.“The female was a couple sizes larger than you.Her dress won’t fit.”
“Isn’t her dress evidence?”
She shrugged.“Done and processed.Now it’s just in the way of the pygmy ogres.They don’t eat dresses.”
I blinked at her.The ants swarmed my body.“Are you a … pygmy ogre?”
She blinked back, then snorted a laugh, before hastening to arrange her features into what I suspected was intended as professionalism.She was back to speaking too slowly.“No, I amnota pygmy ogre.Pygmy ogres are like a thousand times my size.”Another snort, another subduing tug on her features.“I’m a … parvnit?”
“Is that a question?”
“No.I mean yes.I mean,Iknow I’m a parvnit.But I’m not sure you do.Though how you wouldn’t is beyond me, and I’m supposed to be able to figure out what eludes others.”
I wrung the water from my hair.“Never heard of a parvnit before.Never heard of a pygmy ogre either.”
The creature’s wings buzzed while she hovered in place, her eyes trailing all over me.“What…?You’re a sänglure, yes?A vampire?”
