Chương 139: Chapter 132

Siobhan Oh, Sweet Lady above. Cale Arcanus was a god-tier man, and I say that as a lifelong professional judge of the species. I am delighted to report that he did exactly as he was told and got a haircut. Yes, I understand that Ellara is a delightful little sister who had a great deal to do with that. I am not complaining, because by the Twelve, did she do a good job.

Blue-black hair, finally brought to heel, thick and glossy as anything I have laid eyes on, practically begging for the copper-haired beauty beside him to run her hands through it. Yes, those would be my hands. Do keep up. His eyes were just as criminal. Stormglass violet, the kind you only find on a cinestar, or on one of the bespoke pleasure-companions the middle planes turn out, where enough cosmetic Arcanum and Sanatio reformation can grow a gorgeous creature to spec.

Sweet Lady, the man looked like he had been grown in a specialty Sanatio Clinic. He had not been, which was almost rude. I say this with a certain amount of arrogance, because let us be honest, you do not walk around as much as I do without clothes and stay humble about it. I have built an entire career on coming across beautiful and whimsical, because that is what I am, both beautiful and whimsical. I can turn serious when it suits me, but most of the time I prefer the whimsical side of myself.

It is a great deal more fun. That being said, few men have ever made me pause and look more than once. There were pretty men. There were strong men. There were rich and powerful men. There were a rare few who managed more than one of those at a time. Through all of it I have prided myself on holding a certain amount of control. And yet, even sitting there refusing to look straight at Cale Arcanus's profile in the seat beside me, I had to admit my legs had gone a little weak.

Alright, more than a little, when he opened that crooked front door and looked at me. It was like a prince stepping straight out of a storybook. Except this prince had the eyes of a dragon. Oh, yes. Mommy likes. I'd love to say that's the end of it. But the side grin was the worst of it. Small, constant, faintly uncomfortable, the grin of a man who had no idea what to do with the evening and had decided to enjoy himself regardless. I found it unfairly attractive. Maybe the whole plan would be no hardship at all.

Love-bomb the mystery. Kiss him into submission. Maybe let him explore the outer reaches of my body. Turn a legend into a boy who fetches my wrap. I laughed under my breath. Some sacrifices a woman simply makes for the betterment of both society and our own standing. It's amazing how benevolent I am sometimes. After a very pleasant conversation with his adorable sister and strangely beautiful grandmother, we returned to my MMV, and I drove. I am a magnificent driver. This is not up for debate.

Some men might find that emasculating. Cale just looked interested in the vehicle itself. My big brand spanking new Kholvar tore along the riverway, low and quiet and frankly obscene. Four wheels, hand-forged lines so clean they would sit a dwarven tech down and set him weeping into his tools, a mana-core tuned by some hold-master until the whole machine ran quieter than my own breathing. You do not drive a Kholvar so much as wear it.

And I watched him the entire time out of the very corner of my eye, because looking straight at him would have handed him the point, and I am in control here. That is the brand, the entire brand. He caught me not looking and smiled at the window like he had read my mind and found it charming. The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation. Fine. Two of us could play bold.

I changed gears, and I moved my dress with the same hand in the same breath, and one long pale leg slipped free of the emerald slit and into the dashboard light. Now, I know what you are thinking that I'm somehow trying to tempt poor Cale Arcanus and suddenly invite him to stare at the long expanse that is my gorgeous leg. But I assure you it was completely accidental. I will not have any of you calling me some sort of scarlet woman. Though I am, clearly. Heheheh jeez, I'm hilarious. Good Lord, I love being me.

I caught the exact moment he noticed my gorgeous leg, the small still beat of it from across the car. I kept my eyes on the road, grinned where he could not see it, and gave him nothing at all, which is exactly how you keep a man asking himself whether he imagined the whole thing. Then La Falle came up out of the water, and the night stopped being about my legs. A genuine loss, if you ask me. La Falle, or the Keep, as everyone who cannot manage the first name calls it. It did not just sit on the shore.

It rose from it, a mass of pale stone standing on its own island of rock, ramparts and turrets. It had a single lit causeway thrown back toward the world like a drawbridge that had forgotten how to lift. Mana-lamps burned blue-gold along the battlements. Brass gleamed at every seam of old worked stone. Sky-lanes threaded between the towers, and the black basin held the whole fortress upside down in its water.

Old money built to survive a siege, and it would still, I promise you, bring you three perfect bites of something and call it supper. At the foot of the causeway was absolute chaos. Here is the thing about La Falle, the thing that makes it what it is. No projection lens crosses that threshold. Oldest rule of the house, older than most of the families who eat there, and the exact reason frequent this establishment. Inside those walls you are no one's content.

The doormen will take a capture construct off you faster than they would a blade, and they will do it to everyone from adminstrator to prince. Privacy is the dish La Falle actually sells, and the price of it would feed a district. Which leaves one place in all the planes to catch a soul arriving at La Falle. The causeway. A hundred measures of lit stone between a MMV door and the great doors, and every image-hunter on the island knew the maths of it as well as I did.

Most nights they came for dukes, cineflicks starlets and Western Bloc darlings. Tonight they came for me. Me, in the flesh, unfolding out of a machine worth a small war chest, in a dress built to start one. And the gods had been generous to them, because the rumor was already loose on the Lattice: Siobhan Morrigan had a man tonight, and Siobhan Morrigan had refused to put him on her feed. You have to understand what that does to a stringer.

I had taken my own date and made him the one image in all the world that could not be had. The only glimpse of Siobhan Morrigan's mystery man would exist for exactly the length of this causeway, and every last one of them had come to carry it home. It's going to be, at least for now. The roar went up as the MMV rolled into the light. Siobhan Morrigan. Siobhan Morrigan, HERE. Siobhan Morrigan, WHO IS HE.

Capture constructs lifted off a hundred shoulders at once, a swarm of little glinting eyes rising into the lamplight, straining against the soft line the house guards held. A wall of sound and wanting, and it was, I will be honest with you, the second-best feeling I know. I put a hand on Cale's arm before the light could reach his side of the car.

"Two rules for the next hundred feet," I said.

"Smile like you are keeping a secret from every person here, which you are. And do not speak. Not one word. Your voice belongs to me tonight, and this lot does not get it."

"That seems like a lot of rules for simply walking. But sure, I'll play along. What do I do when they shout at me?"

"They will not. They do not have your name." I checked a lipstick that needed nothing.

"They will shout mine. Loudly. All of it." He glanced at the wall of light.

"Siobhan Morrigan."

"Siobhan Morrigan is what the world bought and paid for." I let him hear the small distance in it.

"Siobhan is what my mother calls me, when I have been very good or very bad." Then I leaned in, close enough that the stringers would lose their minds over an angle they could not read, and gave him the one thing on that causeway that was not for sale.

"You get Sloane. Nobody else calls me that. Not one soul on these planes. You get it tonight, Arcanus. And if you play your cards right, you get a great deal more." He gave me that adorable eye roll. And I seriously considered just kissing his beautiful face right there and then. But no, that was his reward for a job well done for helping me in my time of need besides the show was about to begin. I squared my shoulders. Alright, stupid ex-boyfriend. Get ready to see what you cannot have.