“I want to know my drone is functioning before this”—I gestured at the blood splattered on the shiny floor—“whatever this is, continues.”
Wordlessly, fully healed and wrapped once again in illusion, he took me to Sota. Subdued lighting implied it was resting hours on Calicto, and we only passed a couple of Arcon’s late-night employees on the walk to Sota’s room.
My drone woke the second I touched his outer shell.
“Sota?” I peered into his single red eye. He didn’t answer, but the lens moved, contracting and then shifting to the side. “It’s okay.” I attempted to reach him through our neural link but met a wall of silence.
“What have you done to him?” I snapped at Larsen. “You said you wouldn’t harm him.”
“I modified a few things.” He lifted a hand, stopping my objections. “Nothing untoward. I may even have improved him.”
He had modified my drone? Improved him? I turned my back on Larsen and pressed my palm to Sota’s outer shell. “Talk to me.”
“I…” Sota stammered like broken code. “I am s-sorry, Kesh.”
None of this is your fault. He couldn’t hear my thoughts. Larsen had done something to our link, probably severed it for good. He might even have replaced it with his own. “Sota, look at me.” The drone’s eye swiveled to fix on me. He didn’t have many expressions, but sadness rolled off him in static waves. “Whatever he did to you, I’ll fix it.” I’m the one who’s sorry.
Larsen loomed to my right, encroaching on my personal space. “Ask him if he wants to be fixed?” the smug-ass fae inside a human disguise asked. He crossed his arms and nodded, already knowing the answer.
I bared my teeth in a snarl. “So, you rewrote his code.” Larsen shouldn’t even know how to write code. Fae didn’t know such human things. Tek things. “I don’t care. I’ll write it back again.”
Sota’s single red eye buzzed brighter. Hotter. He was arming his weapons. I straightened and backed away, alarmed to see his shell crack open, revealing two firing ports.
I swallowed and lifted my hands. “Sota?”
Larsen patted the drone’s top panel. “It’s okay,” he said, echoing me. “She can’t touch you without my consent.”
He’d stolen my drone. He hadn’t just taken him away, he had reprogrammed Sota. A hard, stupid knot tightened in my throat, and my vision blurred. I had created Sota from nothing. I had given him life. He was mine. He was all I had. And Larsen had taken the first and last thing I owned away.
Sota’s motors whirred. The drone rose into the air. “Cease all aggressive action, Kesh Lasota,” he ordered, sounding like the tactical drone he had originally been. There was a threat to his master in this room: me.
“Kesh…” Larsen warned, glancing between me and the drone. “Tell the drone you don’t want to hurt me.”
I didn’t want to hurt him. My thoughts weren’t nearly as neat as that. I wanted to destroy him. I turned from the room and strode away, hearing Larsen telling Sota to power down. The fae followed, his fake-heavy human footfalls racing with the sound of my heartbeat.
I whirled, grabbed Larsen by the neck and slammed him into a glass wall. Cracks sparked behind his head and shoulder. Indignation flared in his eyes. He gripped my arm but stilled when I leaned in. “I’ll kill you for this.” Tears wet my cheeks. Useless tears. “You turned him against me. I don’t care who you are or what you’re doing here. I will cut you open and spill that fae blood and magic all over Arcon. I will ruin you and this fantasy of yours, you crazy, fucked-up Faerie reject—”
Larsen brought his elbow down on my hold, buckling me under him, and in a blur, I was the one with my back against the glass and my feet dangling off the floor. He cocked his head, the fae-like movement odd when coupled with his human face. Parting his lips, he ran his tongue across his pearly teeth. “You’ve been a ghost for so long I wondered if the Wraithmaker was even in there. I see her now.” He drew closer, so close his lemony scent filled my head and his fae-gaze burned through his illusion. “And I see the fire our queen so admired.”
More tears fell. I hated them. I hated him. I hated everything. I hated that just the mention of the queen twisted my insides into knots.
“K-Kesh…” The marshal’s voice broke through my thoughts. “Kesh, can you hear me?” The comms tickled.
Larsen’s gaze shifted from intrigue to suspicion. He moved in closer, his cheek against mine. Had he heard Kellee too?
I couldn’t let Larsen discover the marshal. I needed Kellee on the outside of all this. I needed his help.
Larsen’s cool breath brushed my cheek. I turned my head toward him, my lips brushing the corner of his mouth. “I will ruin you,” I promised, and then swept my tongue across his lower lip, tasting where I’d wanted to since I’d seen him drink the water. His entire body tensed, but his grip on my neck softened, lowering me to my feet. His mouth followed mine, wanting more, but not daring to commit. What he was doing—desiring a saru—went against his upbringing, his life, his rules. He likely hated me too.
I teased my mouth over his, tentatively asking, seeking. I imagined it was Kellee’s smart mouth I provoked. Imagined it was the marshal’s firm hand resting on my hip and easing higher. Larsen released my throat and drove his hand into my hair, holding me rigid as his mouth smothered mine. The kiss turned brutal and hungry, as though Larsen were starving. I dragged my hand down his waist and around his back, finding the corded tension there. I pulled him close, feeling every stuttering breath, every tight shift, every hard inch of him. I hated him, hated everything about this, hated how I arched closer and how every inch of my skin sparked alive where his hand rode up under my top, hated how I sounded, snatching at breaths the same way my hands snatched at his clothes. I ran my palm up his waist, watching his human illusion spin apart and the fae become real. He shouldn’t feel so good. I shouldn’t want to touch every ripple of muscle and explore the rest of him with my mouth. But it had been so long since I’d tasted them, so long since I’d loved them, so long since I’d lain with them.
“Kesh… did he hurt you?”
The scorching lust faltered at the sound of Kellee’s voice. The madness waned. I pulled my hands back, closing them into fists, and turned my head to the side, shutting Larsen down.
A woman stood at the end of the hallway, stacks of used cups in her arms. She gaped at the glorious black-haired fae from thousand-year-old legends pressing me up against the wall. Larsen’s hand brushed my thigh. Just a small, hapless touch, but it ignited an aching desire. A groan escaped me as I imagined that hand roaming inward. I didn’t want to want this. He didn’t want to want this.
“Oh,” the woman squeaked.
Larsen’s touch vanished. He stepped back and threw out a hand. His magic flared and the poor woman’s entire body fell limp, her eyes glassy like a doll propped up by an invisible hand. She dropped her cups. They exploded across the floor into hundreds of jagged pieces.
He frowned at the interruption. It was a lazy look, the kind of dismissive expression I had seen on countless fae as they regarded their saru slaves, considering their fate.
“Don’t kill her.” She didn’t need to die. Nobody would believe what she had seen. “Glamor her. Make her dream. Spin an illusion. You have the power. She doesn’t need to die.”
An otherworldly heat burned in his eyes. The same heat I’d seen in so many of them. He had the power to make the woman dance, make her love, or make her die.