Ink Exchange

by Melissa Marr

“I am.”

  “You’re not.” He cupped her face in his hands. “I know everything you feel, love. You feel no sorrow, no anger, no worries. How is this a bad thing?”

  “It’s not real…. I can’t live like this. I won’t.”

  She must have sounded serious enough because he nodded. “Give me a few more days, and I’ll have a solution.”

  “Will you tell—”

  “No.” He watched her face with something almost vulnerable in his eyes. “It’s best for everyone if we don’t talk of this. Just trust me.”

  CHAPTER 32

  Irial had spent several days watching Leslie struggle with the urge to feel something of the emotions she’d lost now that he drank them through her. It was an unexpected dilemma. She’d stepped into traffic, provoked the increasingly aggressive Bananach, and interfered in an altercation with two armed mortals: the moment he relaxed his guard she was out endangering herself. She didn’t make sense to him, but mortals rarely did.

  Today she was exhausted—as was he.

  He pulled the door to the bedroom closed, tearing his attention away from his sleeping girl. She required so much careful handling, so much hiding of his true feelings. He’d not expected a mortal to change him; that wasn’t part of the plan.

  Gabriel looked up as Irial sat at the other end of the sofa and resumed the conversation they’d been having every time Leslie napped. “We haven’t had a good party with mortals in a while.” He held out an already open long-neck bottle.

  “That’s because they break too easily.” Irial took the bottle, sniffed it, and asked, “Is this actually real beer? Just beer?”

  “Far as you know.” Gabriel leaned back on the sofa, legs stretched out, boot-clad feet tapping in tune to some song that only he heard. “So, party with the mortals?”

  “Can you get some that’ll survive for a few nights?” Irial glanced at the closed door, behind which his own too-fragile mortal slept fitfully. “It’ll be better if we don’t need to replace them each week. Just gather the same ones up every few days until we see how it goes.”

  He didn’t add that he wasn’t sure how well Leslie would cope with channeling too many mortals’ deaths, fear, and pain. If there were enough of them and they were terrified and angry and lustful enough, she’d be so intoxicated that he doubted that she’d notice a few deaths, but if too many of them died at once, it could upset her.

  “A bit of war might be good too. Bananach is testing every boundary you set. Give her a small skirmish?” The fact that Gabriel had mentioned it at all was reason enough to worry.

  “She doesn’t have the support yet to get very far.” Irial hated that she was always there at his heels, looking for weaknesses, stirring her small mutinies. In time, she would wear him down. If he didn’t keep the court strong enough, she would rally them to true rebellion. It wouldn’t be the first time. He needed to lull her back to moderate rumblings of war, not give her reason to get more bold. First get Leslie situated.

  “Bananach tried for Niall again.” Gabriel flashed his teeth in his glee. “Boy still holds his own in a fight.”

  Irial would’ve enjoyed seeing that. Niall tended to go for logic before violence, but when he did indulge in a fight, he did it like he did everything: with singular focus. “He’s…well still?”

  Gabriel shrugged, but his gleeful expression wasn’t dimming. “He’ll come back sooner or later, Iri. You need to think long term, that’s all.”

  Irial didn’t—couldn’t—ponder what Niall would do just now. He had hopes, but hope wasn’t a solution. Gabriel was right: Irial did need to think long term. He’d been too focused on his initial ideas. It had been too long since he’d needed to truly plan. During the nine centuries Beira ruled unopposed, Irial had allowed himself to grow weak, to assume that their nourishment would always be so easy. The past few months of having a true Summer King and a new Winter Queen had shown him how quickly change could come—and he hadn’t been ready.

  “Tell Bananach to gather whoever wants to go and start a little chaos with Sorcha. I can’t nourish everyone long term. If the seasonal courts are determined to be uncooperative for now, let’s see what we can do with her royal tediousness. If anyone can provoke Sorcha, Bananach is our best choice.”

  Gabriel’s forearms grew dark with the details he’d carry to Bananach—and hopefully satisfy her enough that she wouldn’t be underfoot for a while.

  “And Ani”—Irial paused to measure his words carefully—“bring Tish and Rabbit to stay with her. Have them move into the house where we took Guin. With Sorcha’s penchant for stealing half-fey, they’ll be too much at risk once Bananach starts her assault. Now that peace is here, Sorcha won’t keep the High Court in seclusion.”

  For a moment, Gabriel hesitated. Then he said, “You’ll be careful with my pups. Ani’s being able to feed off mortals doesn’t make her any less mine. Experimenting on—”

  “We won’t do anything she doesn’t consent to.” Irial lit a cigarette. He’d taken to smoking more frequently since Leslie had come to them. Worry, for her. He took a few drags before he spoke again. “Let Ani loose with the mortals, too. I want to see what she can drink off them. Maybe she’s what we need to sort this all out.”

  “That’ll mean two…parties…because I’m not going in there if my pup is.” Gabriel’s menace had vanished under his disgust at the idea of his pup loose in a crowd. “She’s a good girl.”

  “She is, Gabe. Pick a few Hounds you’d trust to mind her. Two rooms, the ones across the hall. We’ll see what it’ll take to fulfill me—and the court, before Leslie slips into a coma. We’ll watch her, keep track of her reactions, and stop when we get close to her limits.” Irial cringed at the idea. A few of the mortals seemed to suffer neural damage if they were pushed too far.

  “Gather up a few of Keenan’s Summer Girls too. They work well as enticement for good behavior. Prizes for those with the most surviving mortals come dawn.” Irial lowered his voice at the sound of movement in the bedroom. Leslie shouldn’t wake just yet, but she was too stubborn to sleep as she should.

  Irial held a hand out to Leslie as she walked into the room. She took his hand and curled into his arms.

  “You’ll take care of the party plans then?” Irial asked, absently petting Leslie’s hair as she nestled closer.

  Gabriel nodded. “Need at least two days, though.”

  “That works.” Irial turned his attention back to his girl then, pleased to hear the soft click of the door closing behind Gabriel. “If you can be patient for two more days, we can work on your feeling a little less trapped by this.” He motioned to the feathered vine that bound them together.

  “What are—”

  “No questions, Leslie. That’s the condition.” He kissed her forehead. “You want more freedom, room to roam?”

  She nodded mutely.

  “I just need you to stop putting yourself at risk. If you keep doing that, I won’t be able to give you your space.” He watched her face as he spoke, wondering yet again what she’d be like if she could keep some of her emotions, not all of them, but a few.

  “Will what you’re doing hurt?” She looked excited at the idea for a moment, interested in the idea of feeling the very thing from which she’d been seeking oblivion.

  “Did the first couple weeks with me hurt?”

  “I don’t remember.” She licked her lips as if she could taste his worries. She couldn’t because of their tie, but sometimes he felt the tug as she tried to reverse the flow, as if she’d steal his emotions. “I don’t have many clear memories of that.”

  “Exactly.”

  “You’re cruel, Irial.” She wasn’t angry, accusing, none of those things. She couldn’t be.

  And for a moment, he realized that they both wished she could be. My Shadow Girl. He kissed her before he made the mistake of saying what he was thinking.

  “I can be, Leslie. And if you keep trying to do damage to yourself, I will be.” He had a brief hope t
hat—even without feeling fear—her basic intellect would be enough to make her realize that this wasn’t something either of them wanted. But she sighed, as if it weren’t a threat but a reward, so he asked, “You remember Niall’s scars?”

  “I do.” She watched him carefully, staying motionless.

  “You won’t like me if I’m cruel.” He lifted her to her feet.

  She stood motionless, hand outstretched. “I don’t like you now.”

  “We don’t lie,” he reminded her as he took her hand and pulled her into his arms yet again.

  “I’m mortal, Irial. I can lie all I want to,” she whispered.

  He let go of her, hating that it was hard to do. “Get changed, love.”

  They had a riot to attend. He hadn’t walked her through hospitals, sanitariums, or the like—yet—but tonight he’d take her to the feasts of anger. If he filled her up with all the darkness she could stand and channeled it out to his court, then he could let her breathe for a little while. It was either that or lose her, and right now, that didn’t feel like an option. He’d been trying to build her tolerance slowly, but her stubborn streak—and his desire not to destroy her—had made his timeline no longer workable. Not for the first time since the damnable peace had begun, Irial wanted nothing more than to walk away from his court, from his responsibilities—except now he wanted to take Leslie with him.

  CHAPTER 33

  Over the next week, he pushed her until she was so shadow drunk that she retched, but they didn’t discuss it.

  They fell into a routine she thought she could accept. Irial didn’t tell her what happened during the nights, and she didn’t ask. It wasn’t a solution—not really—but she felt better. She told herself it was progress of a sort. Sometimes, she felt brief tendrils of lost emotions when Irial kept the connection between them tightly closed, when the shadowed vine stretched like a sleeping serpent between them. In those moments she could lie to herself and say she was happy, that there were benefits to being cosseted so—then the weight of what she had become rolled over her until the cramps of need made her insensible.

  No different than any other addict.

  Her drug might have a pulse and a voice, but he was a drug all the same. And she’d sunk to depths that would make her dissolve in shame if such feelings were still in her reach. They weren’t, though: Irial drank them down like some exotic elixir. And when the awfulness reached its pinnacle, Irial’s touch was all that would assuage the maw that yawned open inside of her.

  What is it doing to me? Will the darkness consume me?

  Irial didn’t have that answer; he couldn’t tell her what it would do to her body, her health, her longevity—anything. All he could tell her was that he was there, that he’d protect her, that he’d keep her safe and well.

  Now that she was able to go out walking regularly—away from Irial—she knew it was only a matter of time until she saw Niall. Of all the people from her life before the ink exchange, he was the one she was loath to encounter. He’d been beside Irial once: he knew what the Dark Court was like, what the world she lived in was like, and that lack of secrecy was something she didn’t know how to deal with.

  She’d looked for him, and today he was there. He stood across the street, outside the Music Exchange, the shop where Rianne was most often found. Beside him was a man—a human—playing music that was foreign and familiar on a bodhran. Her pulse picked up the rhythm, the pace of the music settling in her stomach as if each touch of the beater were on her skin, in her veins.

  Then Niall turned and found her watching him.

  “Leslie.” His lips formed the word, but the sound was too slight to hear.

  Traffic on the street moved faster than seemed safe to enter, but Niall wasn’t human, hadn’t ever been human. He slid through gaps that weren’t quite there, and then he was beside her, lifting her hands to his lips, crying tears she wasn’t able to shed.

  “He wouldn’t let me see you,” he said.

  “I told him not to. I wasn’t in a place where I’d have wanted anyone to see me.” She looked away, watching the faeries watching them.

  “I’d kill him if I could,” he said, sounding crueler than Irial ever did.

  “I don’t want that. Not—”

  “You would if he hadn’t done this to you.”

  “He’s not awful.”

  “Don’t. Please.” Niall held her, silent but for the sound of his tears. He acted like it was her he wanted, like all that she thought he’d felt was real, but she wondered. That urge she’d felt before, that compulsion to touch Niall, to press closer—it was gone. Had it been an illusion? Was it there but swallowed down by Irial? She looked at Niall’s beautiful scarred face and felt a flash of tenderness, but there was no temptation.

  Along the street, the faeries watched with expressions gleeful and heinous. Chattering and murmurs rose as they speculated on what Irial’s fey would do, what Irial himself would do when he heard.

  Kill the boy. He will.

  Give him grounds to start a melee.

  Nothing. She’s not reason enough to—

  Is. Irial never took a mortal till this one. She must be—

  Irial hasn’t allowed us to strike his lovely Gancanagh in almost always.

  Torture him then? Make her do it?

  They chortled and carried on until Leslie turned her eyes to the shadows and shot a pleading look at one of Gabriel’s Hounds. In less time than it would’ve taken to speak, the Hound cleared the crowd, sent them scurrying by threat or force, hefting a few of them like misshapen balls and launching them down the street. Horrid splattering noises and shrieks resounded until even the man with the bodhran paused for a moment, looking about as if he heard some slight echo of the horrors he couldn’t quite sense.

  “They listen to you?” Niall asked.

  “They do. They are good to me. No one has hurt me.” She touched his chest where she knew his scars were hidden. Those scars told the answers to so many questions about him, about Irial, about the world she now called her home. She added, “No one has done anything but what I’ve asked of them….”

  “Including Irial?” Niall’s face was as unreadable as his voice. His emotions, though, she felt those—hope and longing and fear and anger. He was a tangled mess.

  Leslie wished she could lie, but she didn’t want to, not to him, not knowing that he couldn’t lie to her by word or emotion. “Mostly. He doesn’t touch me without asking, if that’s what you mean…but he made me this without asking, and I’m not sure anymore what’s my choice and what’s his. When I…I need him or I’m…it kills me, Niall. It’s like starving, like something eating me alive from deep inside. It doesn’t hurt. I don’t hurt, but I know it should. The pain isn’t there, but it doesn’t stop me from screaming under it. Only Iri makes it…better. He makes everything better.”

  Niall leaned close to her ear and whispered, “I can stop it. I think I can undo it. I can get what I need to break his tie to you.” And he told her that Aislinn would give him sunlight and the Winter Queen would give him frost, and he would burn and freeze the ink from her skin. “It should work. You’d be free of him. All of them.”

  Leslie didn’t answer, didn’t tell him yes or no. She couldn’t.

  “It’s your choice.” Niall cradled her face in his hands, looking at her the same way he had before, when she was not this. “You have a choice. I can give you that.”

  “What if it makes it worse?”

  “Try to think what you’d choose if you weren’t under his sway. Is this”—he paused—“what you would have chosen?”

  “No. But I can’t unchoose it either. I can’t pretend I haven’t become this. I won’t be who I was before…and if the feelings come back, if I can leave, how do I live with what I’ve—”

  “You just do. The things you do when you’re desperate aren’t who you are.” Niall’s expression had grown fierce, angry.

  “Really?” She remembered the feeling, that moment when she l
ooked at the ground and knew that even if Irial caught her the first time she jumped, there would be other times when she felt that desperation. The emotions she could just barely touch in that moment were a part of her as well. She was the person who chose this route. She thought back over the signs and warnings that something was amiss. She thought of the shadows she’d seen in Rabbit’s office. She thought of the questions she hadn’t asked Aislinn or Seth or Rabbit or herself. She thought of the shame she’d bottled up instead of seeking help. That was who she was; those were parts of her. They were all choices. To not act is a choice too.

  “I don’t think so, Niall,” she heard herself say. Her voice wasn’t soft or afraid. “Even under the addiction, it’s me. I might not have had as many choices, but I’m still choosing.”

  She thought again of standing in the window of the warehouse. She could have chosen to jump. She hadn’t. It would be giving up, giving in if I actually jumped. Isn’t it better to endure? The person she was under the weight of her addiction was stronger than she’d realized she could be.

  “I want a choice that doesn’t hurt Irial or me,” she said, and then she left him. Her choice would come—maybe not now, maybe not the choice Niall held out, and she wasn’t going to let Irial or Niall or anyone else make it for her.

  Not again.

  CHAPTER 34

  The moon was well overhead when Irial crept across the room. It wouldn’t do for mortals to see doors opening and closing on their own, so he stepped into the hall wearing his mortal-friendly facade. Several of the Hounds were standing guard outside the room, invisible to any mortals that might pass. There weren’t any in the hall, though, so Irial let go of his glamour and shut the suite door behind him.

  “Keep her inside if she wakes,” he told the Hounds. “No wandering tonight.”

  “She doesn’t cooperate so well. We could just follow, keep her safe and—”

  “No.”

  Another Hound objected, “We don’t want to hurt her…and she’s so unhappy if we stop her from going out.”