Chapter 1

one

On paper,I’m already the perfect candidate for the job.

I entered West Point at age seventeen and gave the army eight years after graduating. I’ve been in diplomatic environments and war zones and my last deployment in Carpathia was spent guarding its new president and Carpathia’s beloved former First Lady Lenka Kocur from rebel attacks. There is a Distinguished Service Cross sitting in a box in my dresser next to a valor device and some metal oak leaves; all of it under a neat whorl of dress socks.

I’m trained in risk assessment, surveillance and countersurveillance, armed and unarmed combat, defensive driving, and advanced first aid.

I have no partner, no lover—just a handful of friends who no longer know how to talk to me.

I have no job. No direction. No point.

The email gave me an address, clear as day, but when I pull my father’s modest, American-made hybrid into the parking garage, I see the building I’m meant to go to is on an island in the Potomac. I park and get out of the car, buttoning my suit jacket with one hand while I get my bearings. There is a bridge—narrow, pedestrian only—arcing from the shore to a flat stretch of land. On the island is a building, five stories tall, its exterior clad in glass and its shape like something between a castle and a ship with a sharply angled roof and a prow-shaped front.

The sun glitters off the glass as I finish my survey of the parking lot—five cars, none of them nice enough to belong to my would-be employer, security cameras mounted to the light poles—and then I take the bridge over the water to where my new uncle-in-law works.

Lyonesse.

That’s what this place is called.

An island kingdom that sunk beneath the waves, according to Wikipedia. The ultra-exclusive home for the elite sinners of the world according to internet chatter. With the kind of guests Mark is rumored to entertain here, it’s no surprise this place is impressively secure.

A woman greets me from behind a low desk. I stride forward, reminding myself to smile, because for so long smiling hasn’t been part of the job. I used to smile a lot, I think, before I went over there the first time.

I can’t remember anymore.

As I walk to the desk, I clock the pertinent details of the space, the narrow doors set into the light-wood-paneled wall behind the desk—one leading to something mundane, like a coat closet, the other probably connected to a security office or something similar—and the metal stairs leading up to a glass-walled walkway. There is an elevator and some low, leather-clad benches.

The woman is wearing something almost like normal receptionist’s clothes, but there’s a latex collar wrapped just above the tie-neck of her purple blouse. My step hitches, my pulse gives a thready surge. Her throat is long and slender, and the gleaming latex is so smooth around it, and she’s wearing it so naturally, so casually. Like it’s something utterly normal.

Maybe it is here.

“I’m here for an interview,” I say, recovering. It’s not only the collar—it’s that she’s pretty, with soft hair and high cheeks and a silk blouse that would slip frictionlessly from her shoulders, and I’m still not used to anything silky or soft or tailored. I’m not used to lovely things, expensive things, indulgent things.

Carpathia was cold and muddy, our uniforms rough, everyone in helmets and MCEP glasses, our world shrunk down to dirt, plastic, and metal. When I’d walked down the aisle to join my father at the front of the sanctuary last week, I’d nearly fallen over at the scent of incense lingering in the air. At the reception, I stared at my slice of cake like I thought it was a lie, fairy food to trick the mortal boy into staying in fairyland.

I’m embarrassed at how easily my deployments broke me. Even if I’d never fired a gun, never trembled on freezing pine needles waiting for the shot that would kill me, I’d still have been broken by the sheer fucking monotony of it all. The boredom. The deprivation.

And they call me a hero.

“Of course,” the woman says, coming to her feet and leading me to the elevator in heels a mile high. I keep my eyes on those heels as we go, refusing to leer. We take the elevator up to the topmost floor, pass through a set of glass doors into what seems to be a waiting room. One wall is glass; the rest are pale wood. The floor is polished concrete. I catch reflections of myself all over, and I don’t recognize the tall, suited man as me.

“He’s ready for you.” The woman gestures toward a cracked door in one of the wooden walls. “And I’ll be in the lobby if you need anything. My name is Ms. Lim.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” I reply, and she smiles, like I’ve said something funny. Then she’s pushing her way through the glass doors, and I’m left alone to enter Mark Trevena’s office for my interview.

I smooth my jacket, take a breath. My father would hate my being here, but he’s on his honeymoon and can’t stop me. My mother would have hated it too if she were still alive—before she died, she’d been a respectable suburbanite with a city council seat and plenty of pet causes she volunteered for. No way would she have wanted her son tarnishing his heroic medals with something as tawdry as working for the owner of a kink club.

I don’t know how I feel about it either, honestly. When the email came from Mark a few days ago, inviting me to interview for the position of his new bodyguard, I nearly deleted it. I didn’t know much about him other than what my father had told me, that he was a murderer and a liar and a deviant on top of it. Not to mention that even the idea of a kink club made me feel like I couldn’t breathe.

But I didn’t delete it.

I reread it. I wandered around my father’s empty farmhouse much as I had wandered around it for the past few weeks—aimless, hungry, a shadow—and I wondered how many more aimless weeks were ahead of me. I couldn’t stand to be in the army anymore—not deployed, not behind a desk, not somewhere in between—but the shapelessness of civilian life was a slow-dawning horror. Not since before West Point had there been days upon days of nothing, with no routine, no discipline, no structure.

I needed?.?.?.?something. And something more than a job. Something more than hours of boredom followed by slack, empty nothing at the end of the day. Something more than a compressed vessel of civilian life with its small horrors and even smaller stakes. I needed something that would swallow up my time and my thoughts, keep me busy, give shape to my now shapeless life.

And everything in Mark’s email promised that.

Long hours, little autonomy. I’d be a shadow with a gun.

I decided to take the interview. I could always say no after, and I probably would. I didn’t care much for men like Mark, men who killed without facing their enemies.

Agent. Spy.

Assassin.

There were soldiers who cheered them on, soldiers who became them even, but I couldn’t respect anyone who killed without a fair fight, who deceived to get what they wanted, even if what they wanted was to serve the same country I served.

Where was the loyalty in that? How could you trust the fidelity or allegiance of someone without integrity, decency?

But also?.?.?.?what did it matter now?

I knew from my father that Mark had been out of the CIA for years; I knew from online gossip that Lyonesse was a BDSM club of sorts. He’d moved from death to sex, and Lyonesse was his. If he was going to be loyal to anything, it would be this world of his own making, and I could understand that. Maybe even trust that.

Still undecided, I walk through the door of his office, which is nestled proudly at the building’s prow. Sunlight lights the space—glass; concrete; pale, pale wood—along with two chairs and a large glass desk. The chair behind the desk is empty, the entire office is empty, and I hesitate for a moment, unsure if I should wait here or go find Ms. Lim again.

But upon a closer inspection of the room, I see a cracked door in the wall behind me and a hallway beyond. Deciding that I have little to lose by walking through it, I push it all the way open and step inside.

If I expected another, more interior office, I’m quickly enlightened—the doorways I pass seem to lead to suites of rooms. I get glimpses of wood floors and low-slung sofas, bookshelves. Maybe Mark lives here. Or wants people to think he lives here.

But it’s the door at the end of the hall that catches my attention. It’s held open without a prop, like it’s designed to stay open when needed. Stairs lead up to a glowing well of early spring sunshine. I take them and emerge onto the roof. There’s a shimmering pool at one end, and at another, there’s a large sunshade stretched over a table with two chairs. Underneath it sits Mark Trevena, my new uncle-in-law and my potential employer.

He stands up as I approach and extends a hand for me to shake.

“Tristan, good to see you again,” he greets me, his voice cool.

“Likewise, sir,” I say as I take his hand. His grip is strong enough that my nerve endings spark, and a strange heat lingers after he lets go. The breeze moves over the roof just then, and I can smell—

Clean skin and—

Rain, maybe. Fresh rain with thunder in the air.

The scent hits me harder even than Ms. Lim’s latex and silk, than the cake at the wedding. It’s so subtle?.?.?.?and yet?.?.?.

I try to shake it off as Mark gestures for me to sit and then returns to his chair with an easy, muscular grace, but it becomes harder, not easier, to keep my mind on business as I’m able to get a good look at him.

He is everything that I missed while deployed.

His suit, a casual blue, is tailored so perfectly that I can see the suggestion of powerful shoulders and biceps, the narrow taper of his waist. His tie is a silk that gleams softly, expensively, while his shirt is a creamy white that begs for someone to touch it. A large watch, the kind that would reflect light and get you killed on a mission, glints from underneath his jacket sleeve. Even the way he picks up a rocks glass of something cold and clear—it speaks of time. Luxury. Sensuous enjoyment.

And his face?.?.?.

I look down for a moment, at the table setting laid out and waiting for me on this rooftop, almost incredulous with myself. I’ve seen him before, at the wedding; I already knew about the dark blond hair and the jaw dusted with the same tarnished gold. The blue eyes and straight, thick brows and strong nose with a subtle bump, like it’s been broken before.

His mouth is shockingly full but also geometrically drawn. Hypnotic.

I’m grateful when someone approaches us, a slim young man in black trousers and a corset, his red hair pulled into a ponytail. He sets down salads before us both, leaves us with goblets of water, and asks if I’d like anything stronger. I refuse. Mark gestures for another of whatever he’s drinking, and the young man gives a graceful nod.

I pick up a fork on instinct—a soldier eats when he can—and pause. The salad is like nothing I’ve ever seen before, a green-and-purple-and-yellow creation designed to look like a butterfly’s wings. The dressing is painted in delicate lines to make antennae along the top. Chopped chives are scattered in arcs, as if emulating the wafts of air coming from beating wings.

There’s no need to have a salad this beautiful, this eerily lifelike, and when I look up, I have a moment when reality feels subtly unreal.

This is a job interview at a sex club, with a man known to be a killer. Everything about this should have been tawdry, cheap, and gritty. Instead, I’m sitting atop a glass bower, the low-slung view of the Capitol in front of me, the river all around, with a salad that is more finely worked than a piece of jewelry. And the man in front of me?.?.?.

It’s a mistake to look at him again. At the wedding, he’d been a figure in the shadows, only in the light once, to walk his older sister down the aisle to my father. I’d been my father’s best man, watching his new bride with whatever hope I was capable of mustering these days. It had been a good thing, that wedding. But I’d no longer felt good things the way I should anymore, and the moment I caught sight of Mark in his tux, his strong, tan neck above the crisp lines of his collar and bow tie, his long lashes framing eyes the color of night, I’d looked away until Blanche was in front of my father and Mark was gone.

I can’t look away now. This is an interview, and I need to focus.

I just—wish I couldn’t smell that rain scent of him. I wish the salad weren’t so beautiful. I wish my impression of this place weren’t now tied to light and water and air. It will make it harder to say no later if I want.

“I promise it’s not too pretty to eat,” says Mark.

I finally drag my eyes to his. The sunlight makes no secret of his strong features or the small things that mar them. The barely there gold stubble, the broken flare at the bridge of his nose. A thin scar disappearing into his hair.

“I didn’t realize there’d be food,” I say, trying to claw back a sense of normalcy. It’s strange that I should be unsettled by a man, a pretty salad, a far view.

It’s the years in scratchy canvas and cold mud that have ruined me.

“I thought this was an interview. Sir.”

“You can learn a lot about someone from the way they eat,” observes Mark as he lifts his own fork. With the side of a silver tine, he presses into one of the butterfly wings until there’s the crisp sound of it breaking in half. Something bright red oozes out. A sauce made with beets, I think. “Something I learned as a soldier.”

“You were a soldier?” This surprises me. My father had talked about Mark like Mark had sprung from the low-piled carpet of Langley fully formed. I know sometimes soldiers are recruited directly into the CIA’s paramilitary arm, but it hadn’t occurred to me that Mark might have been one of them once upon a time.

“I was.”

“And what were you after that?” I think I’m asking to make a point, or to separate us maybe. Make it clear that we are not the same.

Mark’s mouth moves as if he can guess what I’m thinking. It’s almost like a smile. “Something worse.”

It’s the honesty that unnerves me. And him, he unnerves me. Sitting across from him is like walking through the trees in Carpathia, my rifle at the ready.

I look down at my plate for something to do and readjust my grip on my fork. The butterfly wing crunches as I cut into it. I take a bite and bright flavor explodes on my tongue. The salad is crisp, tender, well dressed. The edible flowers mixed in are sweet.

I look up to see Mark watching me.

“I told you,” he says. He sounds satisfied.

“It’s very good,” I admit.

“Tell me about your duties in the army,” Mark says. He leans back to take a drink, his eyes never leaving my face. He’s watching me chew and swallow. I swipe a knuckle over my lower lip.

It suddenly feels like something more charged than a job interview, but I can’t say why. His face is neutral, his voice contained, polite.

But it is an interview. I have to answer, and so I do. I outline my four deployments as objectively as I can, their locations, their purposes. I don’t talk about the ARCOM from the second deployment or the Bronze Star that they’ve nominated me for from the last. Surely Mark knows all that. And anyway, it doesn’t mean I’m better at a job.

It just means I lived while others died.

Our salads are replaced with charred duck breast and pickled celeriac. Crescents of pureed parsnips and potatoes, creamy and tender. It’s the best food I’ve ever eaten, and it’s on top of a glass palace built on debauchery. Maybe anything tastes good after so many months of DFAC food or MREs in a grubby outpost, but I don’t think that’s it.

Mark sips his drink as I finish telling him about my duties and assignments. He’s on his third and is remarkably steady. I get the sense that he must drink often, and I log that away for the conditional future. If I take this job, I’ll need to know his habits, his mental state. It’s easier to keep sober men alive—something I learned the hard way while on diplomatic escort duty.

After I stop talking and put down my fork, Mark assesses me. And then he sets down his drink.

“I’ll be brief. You are the only candidate. I need a new primary bodyguard, someone who can be with me almost constantly. There will be relief shifts, of course, and time off, but not as much as would be ideal. It will necessitate travel and living proximate to me.”

The server comes and removes our plates, but instead of presenting us with dessert, he sets a slim leather folio in front of me, and then hands a thicker one to Mark. A pen comes with mine. Expensive, gleaming, nothing like the pens I carried with me on deployment, which were cheap and plastic and came in boxes of twenty.

I open the folio as Mark speaks.

“This is a nondisclosure agreement before our conversation goes any further. It’s not an agreement to anything other than your silence; you’ll see the usual niceties there.”

Niceties. It is five pages of thinly veiled legal threats. On the other hand, being in the United States military has inured me to threats. When the stakes are being court-martialed, you get good at keeping your mouth shut as a matter of course.

I uncap the pen and sign, watching the ink bleed into the paper.

“Wonderful,” says Mark. He takes the folio from me, hands it to the server without looking at him. The thicker portfolio takes its place. I open it up and then I cough.

I’m greeted with words like anal hook and cock and ball torture.

I look up to Mark, who returns my gaze with a mild one of his own.

“I see why you had me sign the NDA first.”

“Surely, you’re not shocked by what happens in a kink club,” says Mark. “But either way, it’s best you acquaint yourself with the possibilities before you take this job. Being on my security team means you’ll be inside Lyonesse and my own?.?.?.?habits. I’ll need to know what limits you have when it comes to witnessing kink. I’ll also need to know how much flexibility there is to those limits. I cannot always predict, for example, what might be happening in the private rooms when we walk down a hallway. What you might hear or see through the windows. What might be happening in the booths around the dance floor.”

“And your?.?.?.?habits? Sir?”

“You would be my personal bodyguard,” says Mark, as if the problem is obvious. “There would be no one closer to me.”

“Do you really need this?” I ask. I look around us at the rooftop, the serene blue sky, the corseted server coming toward us with plates of something colorful and sweet looking. “This place is for sex, right? Why would you be in any danger running a place for people to have sex?”

Mark’s jaw moves the tiniest bit, like he’s pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth while he thinks about answering. Then he says, “Kink and sex aren’t always the same thing, firstly. Secondly, I think you must have a very charmed view on sex if you think the mere presence of it precludes danger. And thirdly, Lyonesse is in rather a special situation. We exclusively invite the famous and the powerful to be members, and we take their membership payments only in information.”

It takes me a minute to understand. When I do, I feel something between disgust and admiration. “Payment in information. And then you use it for what? Blackmail?”

Mark lifts his drink as the server sets the desserts down. I don’t take up my spoon just yet, watching Mark swirl the ice in his glass once and then take a practiced swallow. The server leaves, and Mark swirls his glass again.

“Yes, blackmail,” he answers. “Sometimes.”

“Sometimes.”

“Blackmail is an axe. No matter how sharp the blade, you can’t expect it to work as delicately as a scalpel. There are much better uses for my information than cracking apart logs.”

“But axes and scalpels alike can make enemies, sir.”

“Just so.”

I pick up the folio. “I’ll need time to think about it.”

“You have a week,” says Mark. He hasn’t touched his dessert yet either. “I want it to be you, but I can’t wait much longer than that. To my regret.”

I nod and stand. He stands as well and shakes my hand, and once again, sparks spray up my nerve endings at his touch.

Touch-starved—that’s what the combat stress counselor said after my last mandated session. Skin hunger. She recommended hugging my dad, getting a pet, and downloading a dating app. I dismissed all three at the time, but if I’m having to catch my breath after a handshake, then maybe it’s necessary.

“I’ll let you know, sir,” I say, and then I walk down through the glass fortress of Lyonesse with the folio under my arm and my mind replaying the crunch of his fork against the butterfly’s wings over and over again.