"Alanna, darling." Mickey's voice in the night, clear and--Thairn realized with a jolt--utterly sleepless. "You don't really think I'd leave something compromising in a room with a spy, do you?"
Thairn froze still where she crouched in Mickey's closet, borescope partway inserted into a locked dresser drawer. She had been so careful to be silent, to block the closet light from passing through to the bedroom, and he'd still noticed her out of bed. Damn.
How to play this? He wasn't making any explicit threats. But, he wouldn't be speaking to her at all without a purpose--it would be so easy for him to just let her convince herself her search was complete and that she hadn't been caught. So, was this a veiled threat? A power play?
Thairn extracted the borescope, no longer fussing about silence. Stripped the covering cloth from the closet door and opened it. "You can't blame me, can you?" she asked. He responded well to shamelessness. "I am a spy, after all."
"Oh, not at all. You're not the only one taking advantage of tonight's opportunities."
A chill went down Thairn's spine. "You don't think I'd leave something compromising in my room, do you?"
"Mm, good, we've bested each other. Back to bed?" A yawn. "Or you can glamour yourself and return to your own room. You won't make it in time to stop my bodyguards from searching, but, you've no obligation to remain here."
"All done using me?"
"I certainly hope not. We use each other quite well. But I've no intent to trap you in here with me, if you don't wish to remain."
"You are a contradiction, Mickey Morley."
"Only as much as you are. I'm very fond of you, but, I know better than to trust you. That's all."
"And yet you trust your bodyguards to search my room, even though you're having me investigate Xavier?"
"Good point. Luke is with him, of course."
"But who's to say Luke won't slip? Or even favor Xavier over you."
"I do love how suspicious your mind is. Your proposal? Surely you're working towards one."
"For one, confirm with me anything they bring back to you."
Mickey laughed. "No."
"Fine, then. You'll actually favor this notion. When I get back, I'll discover some sign that they've been there."
"You likely won't."
"I didn't say it had to be real. Give me something to pretend I found in my room. Whatever's enough to fool Lucía."
"Interesting. I think I can see where this is going..."
Illa had done everything he could to assimilate seamlessly into American human culture. Even his handwriting. He'd worked on it for years, and, though he'd corrected his style far enough to pass to most eyes, there was still a looping touch to it. Not to mention the old schooltime habits in the way he wrote certain letters.
But, there were always habits he didn't notice, didn't know to change, because they'd always been so innocuously personal.
Illa walked into Gabriel's chambers for his morning service duties. Took off his shoes and pants. Placed freshly-conditioned boots on the shoe rack. Took the bag of warm laundry laying in the foyer to a table, and began folding.
Laundry was such a small, private thing. He'd nearly always just done his own, not anyone else's. He would have done Shandra's, if she'd asked. But, they hadn't lived together, and she hadn't. Thairn, perhaps Thairn could have known. She'd lived married in all but name to an American human for years. But from her stories of Don, he'd never sounded like the type to raise a fuss over the way she folded laundry. So, Illa did not think to hesitate, change or correct the way he folded long-sleeved shirts in thirds, then looped the sleeves around, making neat little bundles.
He felt Gabriel's presence as the man came near. That familiar hand reaching for his throat, promising violence. Illa leaned his head back, making himself vulnerable. Inviting.
And felt the sickening touch of a steel blade, held as threat against his jugular.
"I know what you are," Gabriel said. In Fan, the faerie tongue.
Shit. "Full stop," Illa said in English. Their "this scene needs to end right now" safeword. Illa raised his hands, like a human would to show surrender. "Don't know what you're speaking, Sir, but I asked for no knife-play."
"Not a game, Rhett," Gabriel said in English, voice taut with barely-controlled rage.
What would Rhett be thinking? "Don't know what Malachi's done today, Sir, but it wasn't my doing. I haven't talked to anyone."
"We'll see about that." And then, in Fan. "If you don't respond, I'm going to break your skin with this knife, and let the iron poison your blood." Which would likely kill a fae, this close to vital arteries, to the head and heart. Changed the risk calculation. Damn it all.
"I understand you," Illa said, in Fan.
The knife fell away from Illa's throat. Half a breath of rel--
Gabriel kicked his legs out from under him.
Pain. Blows. But, worse, rage, Gabriel's voice twisted to incomprehensible fury. Illa still had enough echoes of submission for that to feel wrong, wrong, wrong, to overload his mind with fear. Not of pain, not of damage, but of anger, his dom's anger. Illa cowered, hands gripping the brass collar, unable to fight back, only able to focus as much as possible on the hard metal, on those memories, I don't belong to him--
Until finally Gabriel slowed. Illa was bruised, but there was nothing broken that he could feel. The fear burning off in shivers. He risked looking up at Gabriel. There were tears in the man's eyes. Pain wrung into the man's face.
"Take off your glamours," Gabriel said, hoarse. "Before I take them off for you."
Illa had to force his hands to let go of the collar. To reach, trembling, for the hidden earrings at the tips of his pointed ears. "Glamour-burnt," he explained, before Gabriel could suspect treachery from their translucence. Everyone assigned to Human eventually lost opacity in their ear-tips.
The contacts. Difficult. Illa's hands still shook, and touching his eyes while at the feet of someone who could turn violent again at any moment made the fear sing all through his body. No harm came, fortunately. And no glamour burn to explain--the spell was on the contacts, not on his eyes.
Wings next, for all that releasing the shields screamed danger into Illa's mind. He kept his wings held tight to his body, so Gabriel wouldn't think he was about to cast. So they'd be harder to hurt. Unlike the ears, they still had full solidity. In some part due to precautions taken when he wasn't in deep cover--weaker glamours when it was safe to wear them, glamoured jackets when it was safe to cover them. In some part inherent--wings were far more resistant to glamour burn than the rest of the body. Only changelings, under continuous glamour from infancy, ever had them go fully invisible.
He reached into his underwear for the clever. One smooth sweep of his fingers from the center of his pelvis down, until he felt the ring press into his skin on the receiving end. His fingers felt nothing, of course. He pulled his fingers back slightly, spread them, and slid down.
The clever was off, and Illa felt a relief he hadn't been able to feel for months.
He slipped the ring from the leg of his boxer-briefs and dropped it on the floor with the other glamours. "That's all of them."
Gabriel shifted in a way that spoke of oncoming violence. But then the door to the room opened. Greg, who usually handled the laundry, and who was carrying a fresh-cleaned load of towels. He must have been the one to leave the laundry there, as he bustled about his duties. He took a glance at Illa, and then a longer look at Gabriel.
"Sir?"
"Boy. Get me cuffs--the leather ones. Chest harness. Gag."
"Yes, Sir."
Last chance to speak, then. Illa called to mind his back-up cover. "I'm here after information on the Morleys. They're your enemies, too. We could cut a deal."
"The hell you are. You think I'm an idiot?"
"It's true. We got word that Greta Holloway was meeting with Eric--"
"Don't give me that bullshit. You've had someone on the inside for decades."
What? Maybe Gabriel had heard about the attempt to replace Magdalena, all those years ago? "We had one person," Illa said, "But they died decades ago." It was on the list of information he was allowed to leak.
"How did they die?"
"What?"
"Tell me how they died."
"Steel pin through the heart. The Morleys sent us a photo."
Gabriel laughed. He laughed all the way until Greg came back.
"No deal, faerie." Gabriel fit the gag over Illa's mouth. "All you've told me is you don't know shit."
"Lucía, I need your help," Thairn said, when their tea would normally have come to a close.
Lucía looked Thairn over. Thairn, who had taken the steel spoon she always swapped to make the tea tolerable and slipped it beneath her own sleeve, pressed against her skin. Over the course of the tea together, she'd let the contact drain the color from her face, draw forth sweat and the sour scent of sickness.
"What happened?" Lucía asked.
"It's Mickey. He's had someone looking through my things."
"Do you know who?"
Point one against Xavier being Lucía's catspaw.
"Xavier. At least, I assume Xavier's working for Mickey. I spent the night with Mickey, and, when I came back in the morning, I found this." Thairn proffered a cufflink in the shape of a stylized octopus. A gift Lucía had openly given Xavier to congratulate his nomination to the succession, and to unsettle Mickey.
Lucía took it in hand, examined it. "That's definitely the one I gave Xavier." She pocketed it. "I told you to expect this. That Mickey's using you."
Thairn-as-Alanna flinched and gave a weak nod.
"Was there anything for him to find?" Lucía asked.
"No."
"No? You're sure."
"There wasn't anything. I memorize everything you tell me. It was... a useful skill, as a servant. It's what kept them from finding out my escape plans."
Lucía scanned Thairn again, all calculation. And, in a voice that might have sounded empathetic in a better actress, spoke. "You've done well, then. I should thank you. You've been risking your life to try and stop Mickey."
"My life?" Thairn asked. Following where Lucía guided.
"Your life. Even if you didn't realize it. He's a deadly man."
"Then... with him having his guard rummage through my things..."
"You're in danger."
"H-he wouldn't."
"He would."
A hard swallow. Thairn visibly steeled herself, gripping the cup. "How do I stop him?"
"He invites you to his room for drinks?"
"Yes."
"Then, listen carefully. Here's what you do."
Illa's best guess was that he'd been locked in this cage for at least two days. His sleeping pattern had lost coherence so quickly, he wasn't actually certain. The cage was iron, even at the bottom. After the initial strip-search to make sure he hadn't hidden any additional glamours from Gabriel, he'd been given back his clothes. But his hands and wings were bound with the cuffs and chest harness, his gag made it hard to sleep, and there was nowhere for his head to lie that didn't fill him with iron-contact nausea.
The floor dropped out of the bottom of the cage. His body smacked against the iron as he fell to the ground, bruised pain blossoming along his ass and thighs. Gabriel had taken a meat tenderizer to them at some point during this blur of time. Illa had to wonder if blood wasn't seeping through his slacks from the wounds reopening. At least Gabriel had been careful not to expose those wounds to the metal. Otherwise, they'd be infected with the iron sickness already.
Illa heard footsteps and knew them by their heavy cadence--Gabriel. Who grabbed Illa by the collar to drag him roughly along the floor. A strange relief to it, not to be surrounded by iron. But the concrete tore at the shirt Thairn had picked out for him, and something about that nagged at Illa in a way that shouldn't have gotten through the haze of beatings and the days caged.
He found Rhett's voice, that stupid confidence that was just going to get him hit again, but it made it alright somehow. "Don't tear up the shirt too much, will you?" The words came through the gag in a muffled, spittling mumble.
Gabriel smacked him.
There was a part of Illa's head that could reimagine this as a scene. The collar was still on him. Gabriel had put it back on after the strip search. Who did Illa belong to, then?
On the dungeon floor. Laying in his binds on the ground. Gabriel flailing fists and kicking him. Some of those blows hit just right, and Illa couldn't help but laugh beneath the gag.
Gabriel didn't like that laugh. That had scared Illa, hadn't it? An angry dom? No longer. Maybe Illa was still Thairn's, after all.
There was a knife. Rhett had told Gabriel no knives. But it wasn't iron or steel, so that was okay by Illa. The cuts felt like sharp clarity, his concentration narrowed down to each line. He watched Gabriel, distant, almost fascinated. Gabriel noticed Illa's gaze, Illa's calm, and that sparked pale perturbance.
Gabriel twisted that distress into a burning rage that seared sobriety into Illa's brain, pulled him fully free of the drugged feeling of the iron cage and hard into solid reality. Needed to think, to shift his body to protect himself--
A crack when Gabriel kicked Illa's arm. Another kick, harder, and that crack turned into a snap, and everything went to sickening red.
Illa came to, only to feel his body being dragged into another room, then shoved at the feet of Percy. Gabriel's personal necromancer. A burly, silent man, with short-shaved, salt-and-pepper hair. Illa hadn't interacted with him much--Percy didn't spend a lot of time around the living.
"Fix him up," Gabriel said. "Then send him back to the cage."
Percy left in the gag while setting Illa's bone, and Illa bit it to keep from screaming. There was a flow of magic, but it didn't feel right, nothing like Thairn's healing, as if ice had set inside Illa's marrow. The arm ached even after he was returned to the cage, in a hollow, alien way. Almost enough to distract from the iron.
Lucía, being the awful person she was, had planned Mickey's poisoning for the end of the longest damned day so far this semester. Mickey was scheduled tail to tip with cross-class projects, teachers' meetings, tutoring hours, his own class, and the most interminably dry dinner he had ever attended. All without a drink in sight, for all he'd never actually intended to play along with that part of the plan.
But then, finally, Alanna, beautiful Alanna, sidled up to him in the hallway and whispered sweet nothings in his ear about going to his room to chat, and what did he think about a nightcap?
The first snifter of brandy went down over a dramatic retelling of the afternoon's evocation class, which had been going just fine with hardly any explosions right up until the wisps in the garden got too curious. He brushed his thumb against the surface of the liquid as he told the tale, before so much as a sip. No feel of magic. She hadn't poisoned him yet.
Drink two, burning and brilliant, came as they picked apart Jenna's latest slew of bizarre questions. Mickey's fingers idly pushed magicless drops around the rim.
Time to get ready for the show. Mickey sent Luke out to seek some complex cocktail, something that would take a while. Lucía's instructions to Alanna had been very specific about drugging Mickey on drink number three.
Alanna poured Mickey the last of the brandy. Mickey couldn't even tell she was dosing it. But then, this show was for Xavier.
Whose iron grip snapped around Alanna's wrist. Whose shadow magic wrapped around her throat, strangling.
Crap.
"Ease up, Xav."
The man did, but only a fraction.
"What is it?" Mickey asked.
Xavier pried loose a thin vial from Alanna's palm and handed it over. It looked the same as the one Mickey had given Alanna to use in place of Lucía's poison. The spilled drops that moistened Mickey's fingertips had the correct pull of magic.
They'd both passed his test. Excellent.
"Don't worry about this one, Xav. Alanna and I were just planning some fun."
"She slipped it into your drink."
Mickey delivered a sensuous smile. "It's kinkier that way."
Xavier's shadows retreated from Alanna's throat. His grip on her loosed, though he wrested the drink from her hand.
Alanna's body language had gone stiff, her breathing too carefully controlled.
"I forgot to warn Xavier," Mickey lied for Xavier's benefit. And then, with some sincerity: "Apologies if that frightened you, dear Alanna." Was she alright?
"I'm fine." Alanna did not sound fine. "I can't blame your bodyguard for protecting you. Being drugged when you don't want to be..." She squeezed together her scarred hands. Playing to character.
Mickey held his hand out to Xavier to retrieve the drink.
Xavier didn't hand it over.
"It's alright, Xav. You can taste-test it if you're so paranoid." Which Xavier wouldn't, obviously, wasn't in his job description. Mickey reached for the glass again.
Xavier raised it to his lips and took a sip.
What?
The bodyguard waited, long enough for the effects to kick in. Pinched himself. And only then handed it off to Mickey.
Mickey took the drink. Let the surface of the liquid linger against his lips just long enough to check the magic one more time. Still the right drug. He drank, and tried not to let any expressions reach his face. He wasn't sure what would land there, if he did.
"Are you alright?" Mickey asked Alanna, after. She'd regained some composure, more once they were alone together. But then, she was ever enigmatic to read. Or rather, so easy to read that whatever she was showing couldn't possibly be the truth. Spies. Had to love them.
"If your silver tongue had slowed a second," Alanna answered, "I'm not sure I'd be here for you to ask."
"I couldn't let you down. Especially not after you completed the help you offered me so brilliantly. We not only know that Xavier's loyal, we have a bottle of whatever it is Lucía wants to poison me with." Overflowing with joy. Plans going well, and better, Alanna hadn't poisoned him. He could maybe even trust her now. Inasmuch as you could ever trust a spy.
"Now's for your end of the bargain, then."
"I have been helping you."
"Yes. And we'll both continue to ask more of each other, I'm sure. But I have a specific request."
"Oh?"
"If we handle my failure to poison you wrong, I'll be ejected from Lucía's confidences."
"We've already found the answer you got into those confidences to find. Xav's loyal to me. The follow-up we planned isn't needed."
"Mickey, darling, I am here to spy. She has comprehensive information on all the potions the Morleys use against the fae. I haven't even uncovered the antidote to Wing Rot yet. Of course I need to stay in her good graces."
"Fair, fair. Do you know what the drug was supposed to do to me?"
"Not kill you, allegedly. But, make it so Alanna 'won't have to worry about Mickey anymore'."
"Vague. So, we shouldn't pretend someone's been dosed with it. She was specific that it had to be on my third drink, with no other drugs, right?"
"Right."
"Then the easiest answer is to say I snuck an extra shot of alcohol in before you could dose me, plus a fang of deathwish, so you'll have to try again. That will buy time to analyze it, and excuse you continuing to spend time with me."
"Doable, yes. That should suffice. Though I can't say it counts as 'help'--you won't be doing much."
"My help will come later. We'll figure out whatever the drug was supposed to do and fake it, so she thinks you've poisoned me. Then you'll be solidly in her confidences. She probably won't even care that you're fae, at that point."
Alanna laughed, a beautiful sound, always. "That will do just fine."
"Now, I've a question, and none of it is business."
"Oh?"
"You mentioned kink the other night, and I just so happen to have taken this drug that makes pain feel pleasurable."
"You'd trust me for that?"
"I won't exactly be having you hold a knife to my throat, darling. Nothing too dangerous."
"What do you have in mind, then?"
"Oh, a little biting, a little scratching. A little slapping me in the face and making me do things, if you'd like. I can be flexible." All innuendo, that last bit.
"Bondage?"
"Mm. Maybe another time? I'm only so foolish."
Alanna snorted at that. Gave him quite the considering look. "How compromised are you? You're certainly intoxicated."
"Not much more than usual, I'm afraid. I am a person of many terrible habits."
"To hear Lucía's ranting, that's apparently kept you alive."
"Well. I didn't say they weren't for good reason."
"How compromised will you be if I hurt you?"
"If you don't damage me, darling, I should be fine. What exactly were you expecting?"
"I've seen people go past the ability to consent to anything, once I lay hands on them."
"Magic?"
"No. All mental."
"Mm. I doubt you'll have that effect on me. I've certainly never experienced it." A grin. "But I suppose if I start begging you to break or tear something, you should say 'no'."
"Noted."
"How dedicated are you to planning this?"
"I just like to make things clear, first."
"And if I asked you to go with the flow with me, to trust that I'll tell you when something isn't what I like?"
"Then I'd try that."
"Good." His voice husky. He bent to Alanna's ear. "Because I want to see what you do to me."
"I could scarcely turn you down, then." Thairn's long fingers wrapped around Mickey's throat. Not squeezing enough to damage or even enough to choke. But to threaten, yes. To take control of Mickey's head, and drag him down to kiss. Long and lingering.
Thairn bit Mickey's lip, sharp, tugging. Mickey whimpering, body edging towards Thairn.
Thairn loosed her teeth and shoved Mickey down to his knees. Mickey sat back against his heels, drew his hands smooth and sensuous down his body. Staring up at Thairn in a way that wasn't at all like Thairn was used to seeing from Illa. It was lust and invitation and naked longing to be done to.
Thairn threaded her fingers through Mickey's hair and pulled, hard enough to make him gasp, to force his head back. She bent to him and grazed teeth over his bared throat.
"Mm... like that, harder..." Mickey's voice high and soft and pleading.
Thairn sank her teeth into his skin. Ravaged that bared throat with her mouth and her long, manicured nails.
"Please, don't stop, gorgeous, please, that feels so good, I want it..." In a continuous stream that kept losing coherence, stuttering and stumbling over pleasure, until he was covered in red marks and still begging her to do more to him.
Heavens, the feelings that awoke in her. The need to make these beautiful sounds keep emerging from his throat. To feel his body succumb to her.
She'd always assumed her need for this centered around Illa. But here, feeling the rightness of it all, of being responded to like this... maybe it was hers, too.
She forced him flush against the floor, held his hands down. Left him thrusting helplessly against the air, subsumed with sensation.
"Off my hands a bit, darling," Mickey said, in a low voice little like his pleading. "They're starting to fall asleep." Good. He was able to keep his head.
She let go his hands and parted his buttons instead, barely resisting the urge to simply rip his shirt open. Until enough of him was exposed that she could drag her nails down his ribs--one of Illa's favorites, low-damage and high-pain. This was nothing like it was with Illa, but heavens, it felt so good to do.
That produced a keening, glorious writhe. "Alanna..." Beautiful and frustrating all at once. Heavens damn her, but she longed to have her fae name on his lips instead.
She bit his chest even as her nails dug in, hard and twisting. His whole body convulsed.
"Please," he begged, "I want to fuck you--"
And, heavens, part of her was aching for it. But sex would return her focus to her own body, when what she wanted was to sate this fixation on his sounds, his pain-pleasure, his helpless pleading.
Slapping him and ordering him around was what he'd asked for, right?
This had to be done carefully, so as to not injure him.
"Smile for me pretty, then," Thairn said, "if you want it so badly."
He did, brilliant and cocky.
Good. Smiling would make sure his jaw was set correctly. She caressed the side of his face with her fingertips, feeling out the soft cushion of his cheek. Her fingers carefully stretched back, so the nails would not scratch unwanted.
She popped him with the pads of her fingertips, sharp and swift. He jerked back. But she grabbed his chin, forced him to look at her. His breath came in quick puffs, his pupils full-blown as he met her eyes. That desire heady to read off of him, dizzying her with her own response to it. She wanted.
She leaned over, almost as if she were going to kiss his cheek. But instead, she hissed in his ear. "I choose whether and when we fuck. You just get to take it."
Oh, he shivered at that. "Yes, mistress?"
She nipped his earlobe in warning. "It's 'my lady' to you."
Mickey bit his lip. "Yes, my lady--ahh--"
She bit her way down his chest, his side. Enough to leave him trembling, whispering my lady, my lady in a constant drumbeat of desire.
He begged beautifully, so she let him touch himself eventually. Declined anything for herself. Interested instead in continuing to hurt him, to draw those pleas for her mercilessness from his lips. Until, at the end, she was sated without sating.
She adored this, and yet she also longed to have Illa here, his absence an ache beneath her breastbone, in the space between her breaths.
When Mickey woke in the midst of the night, Alanna was still sleeping sound. No late-night snooping this time.
He was something like alone, then. She? Mickey never had understood what pronoun applied to her own self. It only felt safe to even think about when she was alone. A lot of times "he" felt right, anyway, so, it wasn't like it made any sense. Maybe Alanna would understand, if Mickey told her.
Her body ached. It would hurt even worse in the morning--right now it was still a blend of pleasure and pain, echoing off each other in a strange, intoxicated medley.
She stared at her hand. She could still remember the tingle of the magic against her fingertips, when she'd taken the vial from Xavier. The power of knowing, for once, truth from lies, trust from betrayal.
Xavier had no such advantage, and yet he'd taken a sip anyway. Bet his life on Mickey. Why would he do that? He had a path to power now, a way out of this awkward arrangement of intentionally-bred family employing unplanned by-blow.
Was there actually someone Mickey could trust in this mob? Someone she didn't have a single shred of blackmail on? And what did that mean, if there was?
At least what to do with Xavier was easy. Dear Great-Aunt Greta was up to something--because there was no one, no one in this family worth trusting, except apparently now Xavier. So, Xavier was the perfect man for the job. He was an expert at tailing, all kinds of skill at erasing his presence. Mickey would give him the assignment in the morning.
For now, to try again to sleep. Or, at least, to lie on her side and contemplate Alanna, and what it meant that the faerie had also passed the test.
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