Crown of Whispers

by Isabella August

  Dorian shoved the fabric of her panties to one side. Beatrice breathed out shakily. “Please tell me you’ve got a condom,” she mumbled. Dorian slid his finger inside her, and she moaned loudly.

  “The wallet in my pocket,” he murmured, with a wicked glint in his eyes. “If you think you can make your hands work.”

  He curled his finger inside her, and Beatrice squirmed against him with a soft, exhaled sound. She snatched for his pocket, pulling out his wallet with trembling fingers. “You’re still talking in complete sentences,” she muttered. “On va changer ça.” Let’s fix that.

  Beatrice slid the condom from his wallet. She held Dorian’s eyes as she tore it open, rolling it slowly down his cock. He pressed the tip of his finger up against a particularly sensitive spot, and she hissed in her breath, lifting him up against her entrance.

  Dorian dragged his finger free with exacting slowness, making her tremble with every movement. Beatrice lowered herself down on top of him… and all suggestion of teasing fled his face abruptly.

  She was still just a little bit sore from the night before—but the feel of him stretching her out was even better than before. Beatrice settled her hands against the chair with a loud sigh of satisfaction, rolling her hips ever so slightly. Dorian groaned audibly, digging his fingers into her skin as she took him inside herself.

  Beatrice leaned down, hovering her lips only an inch from his. “Any other smart-ass comments, councillor?” she breathed.

  Dorian lifted his mouth to hers, capturing her lips in a hungry kiss. He tightened his grip on her hips, grinding her down on top of him. White-hot pleasure stabbed through Beatrice, and she pressed back against him, desperate to take him even deeper.

  It was different this time than it had been the night before—far more certain and far more purposeful. There was the feel of a mutual claim being made. Dorian murmured her name as he moved inside her, and Beatrice shivered with unexpected bliss. There was a casual adoration in his tone that promised a hundred more slow, lazy kisses, and a thousand more evenings asleep in his arms.

  “I love you,” she whispered again—because she knew he needed to hear it, that he might never hear it enough.

  Dorian dug his fingers into her hips again. His breath trickled against her lips. “I love you,” he murmured back. “I always will.”

  Beatrice shifted on top of him, taking him slowly in and out. The warmth inside her built, flushing through her body. Already, she was trembling with equal amounts of desire and exhaustion. Her nerves sparked and flared, climbing toward release.

  Dorian reached down to brush his thumb over her clit; the careful touch jolted her the rest of the way up that spiral, and she gasped, clawing at his shoulders. He rubbed there lightly in time with the next stroke—and Beatrice came with a hard gasp. Dorian pressed more deeply inside her; she felt him come after her as her body tightened hungrily around him. He let out a low, satisfied groan.

  Beatrice held onto him for a long few moments, struggling to recapture her brain.

  After an extended pause, she managed to mumble out the first thought that came to mind. “That was… new,” she breathed dizzily.

  Dorian laughed against her. “I like to think I’ve learned something in ten years,” he murmured. There was a relaxed tone in his voice that Beatrice hadn’t heard in a very long time.

  “Hm,” Beatrice agreed dimly. “Well… I think we both still need more practice.”

  Dorian pulled her closer, winding her in his arms. He pressed his chin lightly over her head. “I think it’s fair to say that we’re both perfectionists,” he agreed warmly.

  Beatrice didn’t make it to the bed before falling asleep… but she remembered the feel of being carried, and the absent brush of lips across hers.

  In spite of everything, she slept more deeply than she had in years.

  Chapter 14

  “So,” Zoe yawned, over a fresh mug of coffee. “What’s the plan?”

  Dorian shot his secretary a disapproving look as he and Beatrice joined her in the exhibit hall. “You’ve grown careless since becoming a warlock,” he told Zoe, as he eyed the cup in her hand. “Faerie coffee, Zoe?”

  Zoe grinned drowsily. “Oh come on,” she said. “I’m not getting any planning done without a stimulant. You’re the one who likes mornings, you weirdo.”

  The source of the mysterious coffee did not remain a mystery for very long. One of the mirrors rippled as the Lord of the Looking Glass stepped forth, blinking distantly over a chipped coffee mug of his own. His golden eyes focused on Beatrice, and he smiled sheepishly. “Uh,” he said. “I can go get another cup if you want.”

  “Nah,” Beatrice sighed reluctantly. “I’ve been high-strung enough already. I don’t need to make things worse right before I walk into the Labyrinth.”

  “The Labyrinth?” Zoe tilted her head. “Is that the Lady’s realm? But I thought we didn’t need to go there anymore.”

  Beatrice grimaced. “I’ve got some useful dirt,” she said. “But if I want to turn it into anything helpful, I’m going to have to take a risk or two.” She paused, then dug out the silver dollar in her blouse pocket. “Speaking of which—catch.”

  Zoe blinked as Beatrice tossed the coin toward her. She leapt for it in a rush as the motion registered belatedly in her brain. Zoe caught the coin with the very edge of her fingers, fumbling only a few times before she managed to clasp it in her palm.

  “I need you to hold onto that,” Beatrice told her. “I left the secrets I really needed unlocked in my head, but the last thing I want to do is hand a bunch of other secrets over to this faerie for free. If the absolute worst should happen, you might be able to trade the key to her for some concessions.”

  Zoe narrowed her eyes. “You’re talking like I’m not going with you,” she said. “Just so you know—this isn’t my first rodeo. I stole Simon right out of Delirium. I’m not thrilled to repeat the experience, but I can do it.”

  “I don’t need you to do it, though,” Beatrice said reasonably. “I’ve got all the magic I need in order to pull off what I’m planning. You’re more useful to me if I fail miserably and need someone to bail me out.” She jerked her chin toward the coin. “Start thinking how you’ll bargain that into something helpful if you’ve got to.”

  Zoe shifted uneasily on her feet. “You ought to take someone with you,” she said stubbornly. “If one of those faeries catches you again—”

  “Dorian is coming with me,” Beatrice sighed. She shot him a wry backward glance. “Or am I wrong?”

  Dorian shook his head. “You are not wrong,” he said. “There is nothing you can say to convince me otherwise.”

  Beatrice didn’t bother pursuing the matter. She knew she would have done the same in his position. “I need into the Labyrinth,” she addressed Gabe instead. “That window you opened—can you do that again? Can I actually walk through it?”

  Gabe let out a long breath. “I can,” he said. “But you remember I can’t help you once you step through? I can’t go in there without an invitation.”

  “I’m fully aware,” Beatrice said. “I don’t need your help once I’m inside… but I could use a distraction, if that’s something you can do.”

  Gabe raised an eyebrow. “Distractions are basically the best card in my deck,” he said. “Did you have something specific in mind?”

  Beatrice shook her head. “Anything that might convince the Lady of Whispers that I’m nowhere near her realm,” she said. “I don’t need a lot of time to make this work, but I do need at least a little wiggle room.”

  Gabe scratched at his nose with his mug. “Uh… yeah, that’s doable,” he said. “Give me a second.” He turned and tapped at the glass next to him. “Yo! Adrian!” The window’s image wavered and disappeared—and shortly, it was replaced by the sight of a tall, pale man in a faded t-shirt and jeans. His long, dark ponytail held a hint of silver that seemed out-of-place against the relative youth of his face… but it was the bright gold
flecks in his eyes that marked him as something definitively otherworldly.

  “Uh,” said the other man in the mirror. “I was just leaving.”

  “Totally fine,” Gabe assured him. “No change of plans there.” He gave a half-smile. “I just thought you might consider leaving as someone else.” He gestured vaguely toward Beatrice.

  The man in the mirror—Adrian—looked her up and down with a calculating expression. If Beatrice wasn’t mistaken, he let his gaze linger just a bit too long on her hair, with a slight grimace on his lips. The faux-hawk probably wasn’t his preferred style.

  “Just so I know,” Adrian said. “Is some sort of eldritch monstrosity going to attack me when I turn into Miss Bubblegum?”

  “Almost certainly,” Gabe assured him. “But I’ll be right next to you.” His form twisted and blurred as he spoke—and by the end of the sentence, he was speaking with Dorian’s voice. The jeans he’d been wearing were now neat slacks; his shirt had been replaced with a button-down and tie. Gabe glanced over toward Beatrice with Dorian’s serious gray eyes… and grinned in a very un-Dorian-like manner. “How’s the outfit?” he asked.

  “Creepily accurate,” Zoe responded for her. The secretary stared at Gabe… then pursed her lips. “Hey… can you say the words I owe you a raise, Zoe?”

  The other Dorian blinked. “I… owe you a raise, Zoe?” he said questioningly.

  Zoe turned toward the real Dorian with a sleepy smirk. “See?” she said. “That’s what those words sound like. You can practice them now, if you want.”

  Dorian let out a long-suffering sigh. “If I return from the faerie realm of secrets,” he said, “I will surely consider possibly giving you a raise.”

  Zoe wrinkled her nose. “Lame,” she said.

  Gabe-as-Dorian straightened again. His gray eyes flickered gold for a moment. The window in front of Beatrice yawned into darkness, spiralling into a recognizable corridor.

  “I’ll leave the connection open,” Gabe told her seriously. “But you should wait a little bit before stepping over the border. Give me a chance to draw some attention first.”

  Beatrice nodded with a certainty she didn’t feel at all. “I’ll take my time,” she said.

  Adrian’s figure blurred in the mirror in front of Gabe… and Beatrice caught a glimpse of herself, standing in a very different posture. “I could have played the lawyer,” she heard her own voice murmur, as Gabe stepped through to the other side. “I am an academic.”

  “I’ve never worn a tie before,” Dorian’s voice filtered back. “I thought I’d give it a try.”

  The mirror shifted and twisted back into a window behind them, cutting off their conversation.

  Beatrice, Dorian, and Zoe were left alone, standing at the center of the Looking Glass.

  Beatrice waited perhaps a bit longer than she should have.

  It was one thing to say she was going to walk into a hostile faerie realm… and another thing entirely to actually do it. Exploring her own head had been bad enough—and that technically belonged to her.

  Beatrice stared into the twisting hallways of the Labyrinth.

  “You are afraid of me.” The false Lady’s words echoed in her mind. “You cannot get away from me.”

  “You don’t need to do this,” Dorian murmured, next to her.

  “No,” Beatrice said. “I definitely do.”

  She stepped past the boundaries of the mirror—and crossed into the Labyrinth.

  The reality of it was anti-climactic. The hallway was bland, and lightly carpeted beneath her feet. The air was still and silent, like an office building in the middle of the night. There were no windows, other than the one she’d just stepped through.

  Dorian soon stepped in beside her, and Beatrice turned to look at him. He was mostly unchanged, in his professional suit and tie—but his gray eyes twisted like smoke, and a faint otherworldly presence became clear about him.

  He breathed in deeply. “Unfortunate,” he murmured.

  Beatrice froze. “Quoi ça?” she asked carefully. She kept her voice down to a whisper, though there didn’t seem to be anyone else around.

  Dorian glanced her way. “This feels like home,” he said quietly. “I’ve never had that feeling before. C'est malaisant.” It’s uncomfortable.

  Beatrice relaxed at that, though a stab of empathy went through her. She reached out to squeeze at his hand. “We don’t always get to choose our homes,” she told him softly.

  Dorian threaded his fingers momentarily through hers, tightening his grip on her hand. But he let her go in the next moment. “We should be quick,” he said. “Do you know where it is you need to go?”

  Beatrice nodded grimly. “There’s a special vault at the center of this realm,” she said. “It’s where she keeps all of her most valuable secrets. You left me the memory of it specifically.” She licked at her lips. “Normally, it would take me days to walk to that vault from the outer edges of the realm… but you can get us there more quickly. Do you still know the way?”

  “I… do,” Dorian said slowly. “I don’t remember it, but I feel it.” He hesitated. “There will be many defenses,” he said. “I’m sure you know that.”

  “I’m not interested in opening the vault,” Beatrice said. “I just need to get there.”

  Dorian nodded reluctantly. He turned down the hallway, looking over the doors there. Like the doors in his head, these also had copper-plated labels. Beatrice flicked her eyes across the names there with uncontrollable curiosity—but none of them were particularly familiar.

  That makes sense, she thought. All of the valuable stuff is at the bottom of the Labyrinth, after all.

  Dorian took a step forward and reached out to press his palm against the wall, just between two doors. As he did, Beatrice realized that there was another door beneath his hand—one that she’d completely overlooked. Black whispers hissed away from the new door, and she noted that, unlike the other doors, this one had no copper placard.

  The door opened to Dorian’s touch. Beyond it was a set of plain concrete stairs that led down into an uneasy darkness.

  “That might already have caught her attention,” Dorian murmured. He stepped in front of Beatrice, onto the first step. “Let me go ahead. The things here probably won’t attack me.”

  Beatrice nodded. The panic in her stomach had begun to surge—but she reached up to tug on one of her aluminum earrings. One more time, she thought. Come on, Punk Corporate Trixie. We’re not afraid of anything.

  The mask surged, settling comfortingly against her skin. As before, it was stronger—almost physical in its substance. It covered up her fears with a thin façade of bravado and competency. Beatrice straightened, and followed Dorian into the darkness.

  The stairs twisted downward in sharp, geometric turns. As they went, the little bit of light from the hallway above dwindled. At first, Beatrice reached for her phone to turn on its flashlight—but a thought occurred to her, and she pulled out the golden loonie Dorian had given her instead. Orange, electric light sparked against the coin in her palm, casting stark shadows against the stairwell.

  The light highlighted Dorian like a dark spectre, ahead of her. His entire form had begun to blur at the edges, melting into the shadows around them. For the first time, Beatrice found herself unnerved by the sight of him. This deep within the Labyrinth, there was no ignoring his inhuman nature—it escaped the veneer of his humanity in wisps of smoke and whispers.

  It doesn’t matter what he looks like, Beatrice thought. I know who he is. She dredged up a hundred little memories. The smile he wore sometimes when they were alone. The brush of his fingers through her hair. The scent of hot chocolate that clung to his body like an embarrassingly guilty sin.

  Dorian paused at one of the turns in the stairway and turned back to offer out his hand. There was now no hint of white remaining in his eyes—only that wavering gray smoke remained.

  “There are things up ahead,” he told her softly. “I think I can hid
e us. But you’ll need to get rid of your magic.”

  Some deep, anxious part of Beatrice quailed at the sight of him. But Punk Corporate Trixie doused the electric orange light and reached out to take Dorian’s hand without so much as a hint of hesitation. His skin was still warm and familiar, and the feeling of that warmth eased some of her subconscious concerns, even as gray whispers rose up around them in a literal veil.

  Those whispers clung to Beatrice like cobwebs as Dorian pulled them around the corner, still holding onto her hand. In the absolute darkness, she couldn’t see the creatures he was talking about… but she felt them. The stairs were relatively narrow, and she couldn’t help but brush up against something as Dorian pulled her behind him. The creature ghosted across her shoulder, as light and insubstantial as silk. Beatrice jerked away with a sharp breath—but the creature ignored her entirely, sweeping past her for the top of the stairs.

  “It’s fine,” Dorian whispered back toward her. His voice sounded strange in the darkness. “We’re nearly there.”

  Beatrice clung to his hand like a lifeline. Another soft, silk-like creature swept past her. She remembered the blurry man that had stood across from her in her own mind, demanding answers. She’d never touched him with anything other than her magic—had he felt this way too?

  Another interminable silence followed, as Dorian helped her deeper and deeper into the Labyrinth. A low hissing sound began to rise around them—a hundred thousand whispers, all clamoring at once. Even Punk Corporate Trixie froze at that sound; her heart hammered in her chest, and her stomach churned with nausea.

  Dorian stopped abruptly, and Beatrice swallowed.

  “It’s here,” he said. He sounded vaguely uncertain, though… or was that just the strange undertone of his voice in here?

  Beatrice took a deep breath. “Can I… use my magic again?” she asked carefully.

  “I don’t know if it will draw attention at this point,” Dorian said honestly. “But I suspect you will have to use it either way, for whatever you are planning.”