“No.” She shakes her head, and I fall quiet. “You have another question,” she states.
Her permission takes me by surprise. “Faeries understand that most High Fae can smell fear because sometimes…well, sometimes, we can smell our own. If it’s strong enough.”
“Metallic and sharp, like blood.” My mistress smooths out her skirt, her face hidden behind curls I styled. “Yours is the only full spectrum of emotions I’ve been able to perceive.”
The silence that follows is deep and unsettled.
Finally, I ask, “Is this why you picked me, my lady?”
“I picked the rot in you,” she says. “I picked you, for I do not like feeling as if it only exists in me.”
Silence again. We have crossed so many lines in this conversation, I do not know where we stand anymore.
“What is the rot in you, my lady?”
My mistress does not move, as if to do so would break the spell. She breathes and says so quietly I almost miss it, “That I look at other females.”
The words slice through the swamp of grief I’ve been drowning in. So we are both rotten in more ways than one. A faerie servant who can’t manage her pride and the Heart of Illusion who cannot beat for High Fae lords.
She has trusted me with a dangerous secret. One that, if revealed in the wrong light, could get us both punished. It’s harmless, cute even, when adolescents are simply practicing with oneanother for their husbands one day. It’s fine when males are allowed to leer, to cheer on and grope afterward. Yet a lady married to another does not create an heir, does not continue a legacy of wealth. A female faerie married to another does not produce a worker. A debt system only works if the owed and the owned both multiply.
I would not out another, even a High Fae. To do so is to risk their life. But Kassandra is about to meet the king for an evening tryst and tonight I am feeling curious and reckless.
Cocking my head, I ask my mistress: “Is that all?”
“What do you mean, is that all? It’s illegal!” She looks over her shoulder, profile rimmed in red light.
“It’s illegal to touch another female,” I say. “The law says nothing about looking.”
Her throat bobs. “Have you…do you look, too?”
I hate her. I hate that my service to her cost me everything. Yet I want to heat her blood. The closest I can get to spilling it—taking control from them as they have taken from me.
“I’m looking right now,” I murmur.
“Stop.” Her eyes flick over my thin cotton dress as a breeze picks up. Its coolness pebbles my nipples against the fabric. She looks forward again, crossing her legs on the bench.
“Avery.”
My heart thunders. “Yes?”
Then her body goes rigid, hand abandoning the loose thread of her skirt I will need to repair.
“The king is here.” She clears her throat. “He has company.”
The intimacy of the moment vanishes like the last of the sun’s rays. The garden falls into soft shadows. A rumble of air, then a figure materializes in front of Kassandra.
The king steps forward from nothing, an inverse of Jeremee’s death.
My mistress perks up at the arrival of my best friend’s murderer, extending a hand to be kissed. Once again, we are the player and the played, my safety like a pawn in those delicate fingers.
The king wears a loose white tunic and brown riding pants, casual but of quality. The luxurious leisure feels stark against the memories of kneeling on marble lined with pink grout, the glint of the Golden Whip, the crook of the crown.
The royal grins. “Kass.”
“Max,” my mistress breathes, a sultry façade that grates against me, as if we had not just been…lookingat each other. The pink flush of her cheeks and sparkle in her eye paint her as the perfect blushing bride. I ate from her palm like a bird, and once again, it is hard to tell what is an Illusion in this place. The thick floral aroma of the garden is sweet and heady and nauseating, like strong perfume sprayed in a confined space.
“Hope you don’t mind the presence of Death,” the king is saying.
