2.26. The King and Queen of Courtesy

Seth lounged on the carriage’s seat, trying for casualness despite the picking-up of his pulse. “What happened to dragging me into a closet, huh?”

“Well, it’s no closet, I know. Lacks the seedy appeal somewhat. But the night is young.” Lisa produced a merlot-colored box from beneath the folding table. “I love our carriage. Don’t you?”

“I really do,” he said, as she unwound the black twine that kept the box shut. “It’s starting to feel like home.”

She beamed and patted the seat by his hip. “While we’re at the Necropolis I think I’ll have this seat retrofitted to raise up. And that can be your space, if it pleases you. A bit tricky to get into, but I’ll require the twins stop piling their shit on the bench. And we can find a lock for it so you can keep all your things secure.”

“Why would I worry about security?”

“Not worry, my love. But you like having little places only you can reach. We’ll build one in. So there’s no question about where you belong.”

He gleamed inside.

“Belonging was why I needed this time with you, in fact.” She unbuttoned her breeches. “That and to change into my dress.”

Seth’s vision darted away on instinct. But of course she wanted him to look, and he did. “We need to change?”

“You don’t.” She bent at the waist and peeled her breeches off. The black lace beneath them told Seth how meticulously she had planned this. “But as an Exark it’s afforded to me, and expected of me.”

“And here I was excited to switch into my other suit,” he said. She chuckled; his two suits were both new and both looked exactly the same.

“You could wear whatever you like if you married me,” she said. His casual affect dropped to the floor and cracked.

She straightened up again with a breeziness as if she hadn’t just shot a cannon into his stomach. “Now, Seth. What’s that look you’re wearing?”

He scoffed to keep his blush from rising further. “Like you don’t know what you’re doing.”

“Surely you don’t mean to marry a woman twice your age within a year of meeting her.” She undid the shining buttons on her waistcoat, one by one. “Why it’s something out of a gossip rag or a tawdry book.”

“I would hate to be tawdry,” he said.

“That’s us.” She slid the coat off and, with exaggerated care, unlaced the tunic below, one delicate knot at a time. “The picture of taste.”

“The king and queen of courtesy.” He folded his hands in his lap as she opened her tunic and let it slide down her unfairly big arms. The bra underneath matched. “Is this why I’m in here, just to watch? I’m not complaining.”

“Not just to watch.” She adopted the crisp tone of a schoolmistress. “We need a heart-to-heart.”

She bent to retrieve the dress, and gravity took glorious custody of her chest. Her words had disconcerted him, but Seth’s heart upon hers suddenly bore great appeal.

“You’ve been a divine companion to me on the road.” Lisa lifted from the box a length of fabric that shimmered like a moonlit river. “But you’re in the Necropolis, now. And while you’re here—and especially while I am here with you—a reclarification is in order.”

Seth swallowed. “Reclarification how?”

“Firstly.” Lisa unfolded the garment fully—a sleeveless dress, with a precipitous slash down its thigh. “This stealing habit of yours. I think sometimes, when you are uncomfortable with a person, you feel the need to take from them. Don’t you? To regain something.”

“I—um.” The brace coin he’d taken from Rafi, the one he hadn’t given back, felt four times its weight in his back pocket. “Sometimes.”

“Oh, dearheart.” She sighed apologetically at the look on his face. “Don’t feel poorly about yourself. I won’t stop you from your little lifts, Seth.”

“You… won’t?”

“It’s how you find your way,” she said. “We just have to control it, you and me. To make sure it’s as harmless as we can make it.”

His face burned. “I can stop. I can.”

“I don’t want you to stop, Seth. I want you the way you are. You’ll always itch for it, when someone glares you down or makes you feel as though you’re worthless. Dear Raf may not have quite deserved it, but he does come on rather strong, doesn’t he?” Her scintillating skirts rustled as she shimmied into them. “Zip me.”

He stood, and zipped her broad back into the dress and fumbled the silvery clasp shut. Such a delicate thing to sit on the rippling muscle of the killer wearing it.

“Thank you, doll,” she said. “Now it’s all well and good to do it on the road. There was only the one theft that came back for us. And I know you’ll watch yourself around magic daggers from now on.”

He could still smell the smoke from that roadhouse sometimes. “Saints, yes.”

“But here in the Necropolis, you must only lift when you’re very sure, because I’ll have trouble protecting you if you’re caught.” She sat on the faded, pilling fabric of the carriage bench and slid her sandals on. “That’s all I want. To protect what is mine. To keep you safe. You took responsibility for me. I’m taking responsibility for you, too. Come.” She tapped the top of her pale thigh where it swanned out of the sea of fabric.

He sat next to her. “Nope,” she tutted affectionately, and pulled him into her lap. “Would you promise me something?” And suddenly her voice was hushed and close and urgent. “From now on, if you steal, you must show it to me, all right? And if I order it, you’ll put it back where you found it. Can you do that for me?”

“Yes,” he hurried to say. “Of course.”

“Good boy.” Her exhale was so heavy and humid on his neck he could barely tell if she was breathing on his skin or licking it. “You are such a good boy, do you know that?”

“No I’m not. I’m weird inside. That’s why I’m a thief. I’m—”

“Ah-ah.” Her touch tightened on the back of his neck. Her thumb nudged across his cheek, to the edge of his lips. “You’re a good boy, Seth. A broken boy, but we’re all broken, and we break more and more as time does what it will, until we find the ones who know how to mend us. It’s not your place to decide what you are, anymore. You gave that to me. Do you understand?”

His knees were tight together. Her good boy was stirring in his stomach. “I don’t know if I do.”

“This is the other bit of reclarification we need, you and me.” She adjusted him in her lap; no longer sitting sidesaddle but little-spooned against her, his legs atop hers. “When I am Lisa, you must remember that you belong to me.”

She’d said such things before, of course, but never with the strange intent that she now vested into each word. He grinned uncertainly. “What do you mean?”

“I mean exactly what I say, lovely boy. You’re mine.”

“I’m always yours.”

“Ah, but you say it in the way that a lover means it. You see the confusion?” The tip of her nose brushed into his hair. “And I do, too. But I also mean it another way. A decidedly more literal way.” The fullness of her lips made a softened sound as she shut them and parted them again. “I caught you, Seth il Gutierre. Don’t you remember? And I’m afraid I’m far too greedy to ever free you.”

Her legs drifted apart, opening his along with them. Her fingers spread across his chest, his stomach, their span so massive that he felt as though a cage were closing around him. “Are you calling me your prisoner?” he murmured.

“Of course not.” She laughed, low and sweet. “Whatever debt to society you had, little fox, you paid it willingly. And that was before you blew that seraph up. I don’t own you because I want to punish you. That’s a prisoner.”

Her hand slid slowly up his chest.

“And I don’t own you because I require anything of you. That’d be a slave. You’d die before you were a slave.”

It crept past his collar bone.

“I own you,” she whispered, “because I love you too much not to. Too much to ever allow you leave. Do you know what that is?”

It was cupping his throat now.

His head was swimming. “What?”

Her laugh shifted her chest against his back. “Guess for me.”

“Are you just—is this your way of turning me on?”

“Well, I hope it turns you on.” With her other hand, she gently undid the green sash at his waist. “It turns me on. Shhh, don’t squirm. No squirming yet. Remember what I told you our first night together? You’re caught. It’s too late to escape, even if you tried. Try it.”

He strained a laugh through his tight throat. “What do you—”

“Go on.” She loosened her hold. “You may squirm now.”

He moved to stand up. Immediately the corded muscle stood out under her tattooed skin and she bound him to her, crushed him close against the ample motherly softness that drew him deeper and deeper into her embrace. The steel lay beneath it like a lioness at watchful rest. He could not move an inch.

“Do you see?” Her huge hand slid up into his hair and it was like a helm housing him, it was so big and unshakable. “You’re mine. I’m bigger than you, and I’m stronger than you, and you’re the only thing I want in this whole crumbling world, and now I’ve taken you.”

The hand at her stomach unbuttoned his black trousers and slid into the loosened space. He gasped sharply.

“Shhh,” she whispered. “Be good.”

His breath thickened, as did the place where Lisa’s dextrous fingers caressed. “What’s good right now?”

“Good is being quiet enough that the stablehands don’t knock,” she whispered. “That’s all. You’re being very good. Now try and guess. You still have to guess.” The caress was transforming, from simple tracing to a slow but snug pull. “Here’s a hint. It’s something Annalise calls you, sometimes.”

“What—Fox?”

She clicked her tongue. “I call you fox. She got that from me.”

He racked his brains. Love, Sethy, wee bastard… “Pet,” he breathed. “Pet?”

She hummed. The hand at his neck was closing. Not tight enough to restrict his airflow, but he felt the drum of his pulse on the webbing of her thumb. “It’s short for petal, you know. It’s an Orwinese nickname.”

“I—” He squirmed. She held him fast. “I figured it was just, like… an affectionate thing.”

“It is, of course. I’m only giving you the etymology. But Aunt Lisa, her donor wasn’t Orwinese. So if I were to call you my pet, Seth…” Her voice dropped into a predatory contralto. “What would you say?”

He swallowed. His adam’s apple glided past her thumb. “I—I dunno.”

“Think hard.” She was so close to his ear that on the th of think her tongue brushed the tip of his helix. “You’re Annalise’s pet. Do you want to be Lisa’s… pet?”

“I thought I—thought I didn’t have a choice.”

“You did have a choice.” It was as though her words were emerging from his own mind. Like a new hexentat branded on him. “You made it. Now it’s too late. I am not asking your permission. I am asking if you want it. And as you belong to me, you must do as I say, my love, and tell me.” Her necklaces tinked against one another like a music box. Her hand was snaking up his jaw; her forearm followed it, closing thickly across his neck, tilting his face upward in a feather-light chokehold. “Even if telling me won’t change a thing.”

Still she exerted no pressure; still he found himself desperate for air. His vision tunneled, as though there was a soft-focus spotlight on Lisa’s perfect, symmetrical face.

“Do you want,” she said, “to be my pet.”

“Yes,” he whispered, through the heat haze overwhelming his brain. “Saints help me. Yes.”

She buried her face in his hair. “Thank you.” Her voice trembled with emotion. “Thank you, Seth.”

He craned his head around, trying to kiss her. She bent forward to give him access to her neck. “No marks, pet,” she whispered. “Not where they can see.” He nodded his head as his lips closed around her warm skin. The piquant salt of her sweat. Her hand left his pants and caught his wrist fast. Her forefinger and middle tapped a rhythm; her mouth was moving.

He felt a twinge on his skin. He jerked his arm; might as well have been trying to move a castle wall. His kiss left her neck and his brain started working again. “Are you casting something?”

“Hold still,” she commanded.

“Lisa, hey.” He squirmed again. Her legs slid forward and bound his together. “What the hell are you casting?”

“Nothing you haven’t seen before. Just the same thing that let me pretend to be your aunt, once upon a time. A handy little temporary trick. To help you understand our arrangement.”

Her grip slid up his forearm, tugging his sleeve back to show him.

The panicky jolt she’d given him at the realization of her cast had spiked his heart rate; it was still hammering fast, but the reason was changing. His voice constricted. “That’s—”

“Passkey Standards.” Her thumb stroked the fuller of his arm, where radius and ulna met wrist. There was a tattoo there now. A closed shackle, embellished at the edges with softly petaled flowers. “Your favorite, my love. I looked them up to make sure I got them right.”

Her casting hand slipped back down his pants. He was so hard it hurt.

“You’re to wear it tonight,” she said. “Under your sleeve, so it’s nobody’s business but ours. Show no one. Remember it’s there.”

He ought to have felt vandalized, or violated, or anything besides impossibly, flopsweatingly horny. He ought to have said something besides “Yes.”

“Say yes, Mistress,” she whispered. She was nearly panting. Her voice was as strained as his.

“Yes, Mistress,” he whispered back, and a feathery moan gilded the back of Lisa’s throat, and he felt like he’d opened a third-ring lock into a chest full of gold-rimmed jade. Some higher part of his mind was bewildered, asking what is happening? What is she saying? What are you saying? Is this a mistake? The supermajority of his body did not give a fuck.

Any pretense of simple touch was gone from her now. She was pumping him with tight, purposeful speed. He tilted his hips forward to give her easier access. “Now that you’re my pet, Seth,” she crooned, “I have a reward for you.”

He couldn’t say anything but “Uh-huh?”

“I’m going to teach you your first spell. Would you like that?”

The honeysuckle haze filling his brain allowed him an aghast laugh. “Now?”

“Don’t worry.” Lisa’s gleaming teeth were close enough to bite his throat out, if she wanted to. Saints, he was helpless. She could obliterate him. In the blink of an eye she could. She could squeeze him until his bones broke. He was so close. “This one is phenomenally simple.”

“You put a fuckin’ cuff on me and now you’re teaching me magic?”

“I’m wearing the head of a psychopathic blood mage.” Her chin hooked over his shoulder, to better watch what she was doing to him. “I don’t have to make sense. What’s your favorite flower, pet?”

“I don’t know. Uh…” He writhed under her touch. She tightened the arm buckling him in place in her lap. “Those, uh. Those white ones. The clustering white ones we saw on the road by Vanta.”

“Those are called meadowsweets,” she said. “They’re so lovely, aren’t they? A lovely choice.”

He felt the pressure rising in his belly. “Lisa—I can’t—this suit, my other clothes are all at the house—”

“Here’s the spell.” Lisa didn’t release her grip, didn’t even slow down. “Say meadowsweet.”

“Meadowsweet,” he gasped, and her arms released him. She sat back, inanimate. His stammering heart found its footing against his ribs. He managed another laugh. “What the fuck are you doing to me, Lisa al Ydris?”

“Nothing at all,” she said. Her lips were the only part of her moving. “When you cast meadowsweet on me, I’ll stay as still as a sepulcher statue. For, oh… let’s say sixty seconds. Or until you say it backward.”

He blinked further clarity into his brain, and chased the gleeful submissiveness back into its shaded corners. He was beginning to understand what Lisa was doing. The game they were playing. “Teeswod, uh… does it have to be backward? Can I just say it again?”

“Teeswodeam?” she tried, and broke off into a giggle that found a sympathetic frequency in Seth’s. “Ah, forget it. Forward again is fine. You’re a mighty enough magician without the word games.”

“Very well,” he said, magnanimously. “Meadowsweet.”

“Thank you, my love.” She returned to motion and smoothed her scintillating skirt out. “Tuck yourself in, now. Before they wonder where we’ve gone off to.”

His body throbbed as the release it had been poised to deliver sank back down his spine. He fumbled his erection back into his pants and stood as he buttoned them. “Why’d you, uh…" He thought he knew, but asked regardless. "Why the spell?”

“To give you a chance.” She rose with him. Her smile was radiant with love.

“A chance at what?”

“A chance to escape what I intend to do to you tonight.” She opened the door into the workday din of the carriage house. “Come on now, petal. Let’s party.”