Ink Exchange (Wicked Lovely 2)

“So block the doors.” Irial grimaced. He wasn’t the only one swayed too much by his bond with Leslie. His weakness for her flowed into his whole court: they all had an unreasonably hard time doing anything Leslie disliked.

I weaken them. My affection for her cripples them.

The only way to work around it seemed to be keeping her from asking his faeries to do anything asinine. The alternative, breaking her irreparably, wasn’t a path he wanted to consider.

Could I? He suppressed the answer before he let himself go further in that thought. Handing Niall over to his court had been horrific enough that he still dreamed of it. For centuries, he’d dreamed of how Niall had rejected him afterward. Weak kings didn’t thrive. Irial knew that, but knowing didn’t undo the ache when Niall chose to go to another court. That was a long-dead pain.

Being tied to Leslie, indulging in parties with the mortals as he and Niall once had, these things had brought long-silenced memories back to the surface. It was yet another proof that her mortal influence had tainted him, changed him. It wasn’t a change he liked. The vine that stretched like a shadow between him and his mortal grew suddenly visible in the air before him as his agitation increased.

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 grinning thistle-fey as he went about the grisly task. “They’ve been posing the ones they like. They set tea for several yesterday.”

“Tea?”

One of the Ly Ergs grinned cheekily. “We got them proper things, too. They’d have been naked but for the hats and gloves we nicked.”

A leannan-sidhe added, “We painted their faces, as well. They were lovely.”

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 Night’s 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 leannan-sidhe murmured.

One of Jenny’s kin picked up a corpse. “We’ve got our gluttony right here. This one serviced every willing faery in the room.”

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.