She slipped it into her pocket, and I let out a mental sigh of relief that neither she nor Fionn had looked too closely at it. There was no way to explain how a backwater dryad from Mag Cíuin would have an Acorn phone that wasn’t even on the market yet.
But she hadn’t noticed the delicate moonstone ring on my hand; or, if she had, it was unremarkable enough that she didn’t care to comment. Even without the phone, Robin hadn’t left me defenseless.
“She can go through.” Silke’s voice was utterly toneless now. She stood aside, her arms crossed over her chest and looking back out at the dance floor like she was bored out of her mind.
“Bitch,” Fionn muttered under his breath. Silke didn’t so much as twitch an eyelash, but I thought I caught a glimpse of a satisfied smirk on her full lips as he pushed the door open and dragged me in.
I caught a glimpse of her back, smooth and hollow, before he closed the door on her.
A sigh slipped out of me. I’d made it into the belly of the beast.
Then I realized what I was looking at under the low lighting.
Robin would lose his fucking shit when he saw this.
8
At first, the VIP room was even darker than the rest of the club. For the few seconds it took my eyes to adjust, all I saw was lumpy shapes in the dim light, piled around the red velvet couches.
A glint of light was caught in hair the color of burnished gold. I blinked, frozen just inside the door and willing myself to see, and realized it was the Prince.
Brightkin was sprawled across one of the couches, his head tilted back. His hair spilled over his shoulders, so bright and unearthly that even without light, he still seemed to glow a little.
His shirt had been torn open. The violet shimmer of evanesce coated the edges of his nostrils.
There were three human girls draped around him. Well, maybe draped was a weak word; one of them had her face buried in his lap over his unzipped fly, her head bobbing up and down.
The other two stared blankly into space, their hands running over him languidly. Evanesce was streaked across their noses and mouths, and as I watched, Brightkin reached over to a platter and picked up a slice of faerie fruit, as red as blood and dripping thick juice, and fed it to one of them.
I felt like a boulder had been dropped into the pit of my stomach. The girl ate the fruit out of his hand, sucking his fingers for the juice when it was gone.
She whimpered like she was in pain when even the juice had vanished.
Brightkin didn’t even open his eyes all the way when Fionn brought me in. He just curled his fingers in the hair of the girl sucking him off and pushed her head down lower.
“She’s a cutie,” he said. His eyes glimmered through the slits of his eyelids, the brilliant green of spring grass.
Fionn grasped my arm and pulled me closer to the couches. Every muscle in my body wanted to lock up tight, but I made myself walk. Pasted a grin on my face even though the dead-eyed girls made my skin crawl.
I sat carefully on the velvet couch, as far away from them as I could manage without being conspicuous, and beamed at him. My smile felt like it was going to split my face in half.
“Oh, my trees! Fionn didn’t tell me you’d be here!” I giggled nervously, which wasn’t too hard to accomplish right at that moment. “You’re, like, the actual Prince!”
Fionn hadn’t sat down. He passed behind me, running his fingers through my wild curls. Once he was gone, the soft clink of glass reminded me that he’d promised me a drink.
One of the human girls looked barely out of her teens. She was curled up against Brightkin’s side, staring at me with her hand inside his shirt. There was a touch of sunburn lingering on her cheekbones, a little scar in her eyebrow, and her nose was a little too long for conventional prettiness.
It was all those little things that made me feel even more nauseous when I looked back into her empty, glazed eyes.
I wanted to scream at Brightkin. She’s a person, a human, not a piece of meat.
But I said nothing.
The couch opposite me was set in deep shadows. I hadn’t realized it was occupied until the shrouded form in it leaned forward.
Short, curled horns rose over the stranger’s greasy dark hair. His thickly furred legs ended in dainty cloven hooves, but above them he wore a worn leather jacket that was opened to expose his potbelly and a vivid red tattoo of a thorned circle on his chest.
My first thought was Numa, then I realized this satyr was far uglier than even my hated boss. His face was a mire of pockmarks and poorly healed scars.
He looked me over with yellowish eyes, and finally grinned, exposing crooked brown teeth. “Mind if I light up, pretty thing?”
I shook my head.
The satyr conjured a cigar and trimmed it neatly, then lit it, taking several deep puffs and releasing the dense greenish billows into the air.
If it’d been hard to see before, it was nearly impossible now. I resisted the urge to cough or wave the smoke away, my eyes watering.
Fionn finally came back, holding a fizzing pink drink in a glass. He handed it to me and sat down, putting a blessed wall between myself and the girls.
I curled up against him, taking a surreptitious peek at the drink. Rose petals and a slice of bloodred fruit floated in the carbonated concoction, and it smelled like summer.
“Found myself a snack,” Fionn said, smirking at Brightkin.
I raised it to my lips, and the ring Robin had given me flared white-hot against my skin, causing me to miss whatever Brightkin had just said back.
It took every ounce of effort not to jerk and spill the drink everywhere, but I lowered it quickly.
“Something wrong?” Fionn asked, his brows drawing together.
I smiled at him, peeking up under my eyelashes, and tittered. “It’s just so sweet! We don’t have them like this back home. It’s all home-brewed there.”
Prepared this time, I raised the glass again, and the ring flared once more. It was only for a split-second, not long enough to really burn me.
But, if I was willing to make an educated guess, Robin had left out one important thing about the ring: it was telling me the drink was tainted or poisoned.
Fionn had likely dropped a roofie in it, along with the roses and cloying faerie fruit to disguise the taste.
I wanted to push his head back and make him choke on it, but Robin was counting on me.
“They’re more pliable, you know?” Brightkin was saying. His words were slurred, making him sound sleepy. “Like clay in my hands. Look at her.”
He put a finger under the chin of one of the girls, a brunette with a ring in her nostril. Barely moving his finger, he got her to raise her head and looked at the ceiling.
When he took his finger away her head stayed there, tilted back so far she could go no further. Brightkin giggled, a sound that grated on my nerves. “Let’s give her a drink, Fionn.”
The satyr shook his head. “Too mortal. I like those water nymphs, those nereids— already wet. Don’t have do nothin’ to get them going.”
I realized Fionn was looking at me, a little of the friendliness gone from his eyes, and made my choice. I couldn’t pixie out now, not without ruining any progress I’d made.
I sent up a silent prayer to the Blessed Branches, ignored the white-hot flare on my hand, and took a sip of the pink drink.