“Not quite.”

“You don’t exist.”

“Touch me, Katarina. Tell me I don’t exist.” He brushes my cheek with a kiss and I shiver. “Turn your head for me and I’ll kiss you as a woman should be kissed.” He waits, his mouth brushing my cheek, for me to turn ever-so-slightly, part my lips and take his tongue. I shiver again. This man would not kiss me as I like to be kissed but as he does. His way is too hard, demanding, dangerous. His way is not love. It is passion and it burns. Incinerates. It leaves only embers as surely as the IFP his men tethered at my abbey last eve.

When I pull back, he laughs and drops his loose embrace. I give him a level look. “Thank you for sending your men to tether the fragment of Faery. They spoke of payment. We do not have much. What can our abbey offer in return for such generous aid?”

He smiles faintly. “Ah, so that is how we are to be. You speak eloquently for one who spoke no words at all until she was nearly five.”

I will not be rattled. So, he knows I was without voice for years after I was born. Many know the story. The pain of the world’s emotions overwhelmed me upon birth. I was a terrible baby, an awful infant. I cried incessantly. I never spoke. I curled in a ball and tried to escape the pain of the world. They called me autistic. “Thank you.”

“Until Rowena came and offered your family a deal.”

“I did not come to speak of myself, but of how I may repay you.”

“She would draw you from your autistic shell, but at eighteen years of age you were hers. You would come live at the abbey. Your parents leapt at the opportunity. They despaired of ever silencing your weeping.”

Sometimes, even then, Sean had been there. Sometimes in the delirium of my pain he had curled beside me and said, “Girl, why do you cry?” I remember moments of silence then. He would put his chubby arms around me, and for a short time the pain would go away.

“How would they make a grand alliance with larger and nastier criminals if their only marriageable daughter was defective?” I say dryly.

He laughs. “There you are, behind that eternal serenity. The woman that feels. Funny thing is, I, too, thought I was in this room alone. Until you said that. The dearth of emotion here is not mine alone.” His smile fades and he looks straight into my eyes with a stare so penetrating, direct, and uncomfortable that I feel I am an insect pinned to a board, prepared for dissection. “You owe me nothing further.”

I blink. “But I haven’t paid you yet.”

“You have.”

“No, I haven’t. I’ve given nothing.”

“The price was not required of you.”

I get a chill and almost can’t get my breath. This man is dangerous. Clever. Terrifying to me. “Of whom was it required? I am the one responsible. I am the one who failed. I am the onewho should have led them to safety, therefore it should be me and me alone who pays a price!”

“Funny thing about payment is that it isn’t the buyer of the goods or services that gets to set it. It’s the seller. That’s me.” His face is hard and cold now.

“What price did you set?” I school my breath slow and even, waiting for his reply,

He moves to my side, guides me to the glass and directs my attention below. “I have had difficulty staffing lately. My servers keep dying on me.”

The skin of my spine begins to crawl.

“One club in particular is hard to keep staffed. The Tuxedo Club is constantly requiring replacements.”

It is the subclub where the servers dress in tight black leather pants and bow ties, and serve topless.

“Your Sean was good enough to fill in for a time.”

Bile rises in the back of my throat. “My Sean does not belong here.”

“Perhaps. But even you have to admit he looks good in the uniform.”

I look where he’s pointing. The back I admired on my way up the stairs has known my hands on its shoulder blades as he moved inside me. I have tickled it many nights as he drifted to sleep. I have massaged it when he worked the nets overlong. I have kissed each and every muscle and curve. It is, indeed, a beautiful back.

“How long?”

“I haven’t decided.”

“Don’t do this to me.”

“Why.”

“He is …” I stop and sigh. This man would understand nothing of what I would say.

“Go on.”

“Sean is my soul mate.”

“Soul mate.”

He mocks me. He mocks God. “Such things are sacred.”

“To who? Your god may love soul mates but man does not. Such a couple is vulnerable, particularly if they are fool enough to let the world see how shiny and happy they are. Their risk rises tenfold during times of war. There are two courses a couple in such circumstances can chart: go deep into the country and hide as far from humanity as possible, hoping like hell nobody finds them. Because the world will tear them apart.”

He is wrong. He knows nothing of soul mates. Still I cannot help but ask, “The other?”

“Sink up to their necks in the stench and filth and corruption of their war-torn existence—”

“You mean behave like common criminals. Would you prefer us ruthless animals? Why are you doing this?”

“I mean look at it, Katarina. See things for what they are. Drop your blinders and raise the sewer to eye level; admit you’re swimming in shit. If you don’t acknowledge the turd hurtling down the drain toward you, you can’t dodge it. You have to face every challenge together. Because the world will tear you apart.”