10. Chapter 10

Chapter ten

W e speed through the hallways of Buckingham Palace. Mabon sure can move fast when he wants to. It’s a struggle to keep up with him.

We reach his rooms and he barrels me into a sparkling white water closet. I’ve not been in here before. This must be his personal washroom. And I hate that it feels like a privilege to be brought here. A loo is a loo, for flip’s sake.

He tilts his head towards the porcelain toilet. The seat is gold. It’s probably real. Talk about decadent.

Mabon crosses his arms over his chest and fixes me with an expectant look. Apprehension coils through me. I have no idea how he is going to take this. The only thing I know for sure about Mabon is that he is unpredictable.

“I’m fine,” I confess.

He doesn’t look at all surprised. He opens his mouth to say something, but I beat him to it.

“Are you alright?”

His mouth snaps shut. He blinks. His eyes narrow. Silence coils around us. A weighted and heavy thing.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” he says, eventually.

“Because you were scared of that man!”

The words spill from my lips. Powered by outrage and frustration that I can no longer hold back. They have barely left my mouth when I’m thrown against the white tile wall hard enough to knock the air from my lungs and make me see stars.

Mabon’s hand is around my throat, just above my collar. He is holding me against the wall. His amethyst eyes are narrow and furious.

“What power is this?” he snarls.

I wheeze in a breath through my constricted throat. “No power! I felt you trembling through the leash!”

Mabon’s eyes narrow even more. With his free hand, he picks up my dangling leash. He runs the thin silver chain over his palm. The thoughtful expression on his face is giving me hope. He is going to believe me. Everything is going to be fine.

He releases me and I stagger a step forward while sucking in a huge breath of air. His hand rests on my shoulder and he pushes me down onto my knees. What’s happening?

“Be still,” he says.

An icy cold tingles all over me. My muscles lock and freeze. I’ve been turned as immobile as a statue. Is my heart still beating? I’m not sure. Are these my last few moments? I never thought I’d die like this.

I can still move my eyes. They are the only part of me that is working. I look up at him. His expression is terrifying. There is nothing but darkness in his eyes. I whimper helplessly.

He pushes my jaw open. His cold fingers seize my tongue. Silver glints in his other hand. A tiny dagger, the size of a finger, is approaching my mouth. It looks wickedly sharp.

I force my lungs to make the loudest, most pathetic noise they can. Thankfully, it appears I can still move them a little. I plead with my eyes. I beg. I show all my terror and all my desire to do whatever he wants just so long as he doesn’t do this.

He pauses with the blade inches from my exposed tongue. Some of the darkness leeches from his eyes.

“I suppose you could wear a ball gag in public,” he says.

I make the best positive and enthusiastically willing sounds that I can. Mabon stares at me for a long, long moment.

Then he sighs as if the weight of the world is upon his shoulders. He releases my tongue. The dagger disappears back into his robes. He clicks his fingers briskly enough to make his silver bracelets jangle, and just like that, my muscles are my own again.

I slide down weakly to the floor. Falling from kneeling, to on my ass.

Mabon flicks his long hair over his shoulder and strides out. Leaving me breathless and shaking. What the fucking hell just happened? Am I really still alive? I thought I was actually going to piss myself for a minute back there.

He went from considering murder, to deciding to take my tongue, to letting me go. A whirlwind of events. All furious and fast, and just like a summer storm, suddenly gone as if it was never here.

Mabon is beautiful and feminine and camp. But holy fuck, is he also deadly and terrifying and dangerous. Talk about power bottom. I think the term was invented for him.

I stagger to my feet and find him waiting for me in the next room with a glass of whiskey in his hand.

“Speak of this never again,” he says.

I nod so hard and fast I’m surprised my neck doesn’t cramp. Mabon gives one decisive nod and downs his whiskey in one swift, fluid move.

He is still agitated. I don’t need a silver chain to tell me that. His unease is clear in the lines of his body. Perhaps because we are alone in his rooms and he doesn’t need to hide it. Not from me, anyway. Because I already know, and I was stupid enough to tell him.

He is a prince. Of course he isn’t going to want a lowly pet knowing his secrets. Knowledge is power, and I shouldn’t have either of those things.

If I’m to gather useful intelligence and escape, I need to be cleverer than this. I need to play a twisting game of chess with a thousand constantly moving pieces. Letting my concern for Mabon burn through what little common sense I have, was a stupid thing for me to do. I cannot do it again.

I take a deep, shuddering breath. Time to pull myself together. I need to disperse this strange and heavy tension and show Mabon I really can move on and never speak of his secret ever again.

Once things have calmed down, and when I am alone, I will try to puzzle out why he is scared of the duke, and why he is so furious for anyone to know. Then I will try to figure out if any of this is useful information. But all of that is for later. Right now, I need to prove myself.

“So, Llywelyn is not the brightest,” I state.

It is the best I can come up with. Something completely innocuous would be far too blatant to work. Something vaguely bitchy seems like it would be Mabon’s style.

Mabon whirls to face me with blazing eyes. “You do not get to speak ill of my brother. Any of my brothers!”

My body stumbles back a step and I raise my hands in surrender. Okay, that was clearly the wrong topic of conversation. I thought the way Mabon had smirked at me over his brother meant he’d enjoy moaning about him.

I try my most charming smile. “All right. I’m sorry. But just so I’m clear, who are your brothers?”

Mabon huffs at me but seems to calm down a little. “Rhydian, Llywelyn, Tristan, Selwyn and Dyfri.”

I blink at him. “That’s a lot of brothers.”

“I know,” he agrees, with the very faintest of smiles on his lips.

“As an only child, you have my condolences.”

Mabon snorts and his purple eyes sparkle. Tension slowly drains out of the room. The air feels lighter now. Easier to breathe.

“I think I’ve only met Tristan and Llywelyn?” I ask.

Mabon calmly pours himself another drink. “And Dyfri.”

I give him a questioning look.

“You nearly ran into him in all your naked glory,” Mabon says, and he tips back his drink.

The dark-haired fey that I nearly scared to death is Mabon’s brother? I don’t know why that is surprising, but somehow it is.

“I don’t think he likes me very much,” I say wryly.

Mabon’s expression darkens. His eyes flash with something that makes me shudder.

“The man who made him a rhocyn was a half-orc, and big like you.”

Mabon’s tone is conversational. Almost idle. But I’m not stupid. I don’t understand any of what he just said, but I know it is bad. Far more than someone simply being intimidated by my size.

I watch Mabon carefully as he pours another drink. He is not scared of me. Quite the opposite. His appreciation for my build is the whole reason I’m here. He liked what he saw and decided he wanted to keep it. Just a new way for my size to get me into trouble. Being big has honestly been the bane of my life.

Mabon hands me the drink he just poured. I take it automatically and stare at him in surprise. Giving someone a drink is a rather civil gesture.

“You helped me,” he says calmly.

“I did,” I agree warily. I thought we were to never talk of this? Is he testing me?

“What do you want in return?’

A thousand stories flash through my mind. Fairy tales, movies and books. Making deals with the fey is woven into human culture. I never thought in a million years I’d be actually doing it.

“Um…my freedom?” I try.

Mabon laughs. A clean, joyful sound with no malice in it. “No,” he says simply.

Well it was worth a try. And I’ve amused him, so it’s all good. A step in the right direction. Hopefully, we will reach stable ground and this tempest of emotion will soon be behind us.

Mabon walks over to a cabinet. The grace of his movements is truly mesmerising. I’d love to see him dance. I bet it would be incredible.

He glides back to me and stares at me intensely for a moment. Then he takes an earring out of his ear and replaces it with one he retrieved from the cabinet.

He holds out a simple gold earring, the one that was just in his ear. “Your payment.”

I take it with numb fingers. “I only have one pierced ear.”

I’ve got used to the silver feathers and don’t feel their weight anymore. But I know the earring is there, translating for me. I imagine Mabon thinks it is more useful than this simple gold ring.

Mabon rolls his eyes, snatches the gold earring back from me and steps up close. His intoxicating scent floods my senses. Citrus? Jasmine? Maple syrup?

A sharp jabbing pain in my unadorned ear makes me yelp. Mabon steps back, places his hands on his hips, and admires his handiwork.

Gingerly, I feel my ear. The bastard pierced my lobe. With brute force by the feel of it.

He nods sharply, as if satisfied, and then abruptly turns on his heels and marches over to his desk. He opens his laptop and seems to be immediately absorbed in his work.

I guess that means I’m dismissed?

I shake my head and feel my new earring move.

He goes to kill me, then to cut out my tongue. Then he gives me a gift. And now he is ignoring me.

Mabon is one confusing son of a bitch.