Chapter 3
Pip
I’d done mushrooms once, at a bonfire in Topeka when I was seventeen, and the whole experience had been soft edges and melting colors and a profound conviction that the grass was trying to communicate with me.
If this was a hallucination, it was not like any I’d ever had.
But also, if this was real, it would be terrifying, so I was holding on to my delusions with every ounce of willpower I had.
But I didn’t need to worry about obscure laws for royal audiences, because it was all a dream. Real life handed me overdue bills, club shifts, a passive-aggressive landlord.
Real life also did not hand me a six-foot-nine leather daddy with forearms like bridge cables and a bulge that made me want to drop and beg.
Perhaps I’d taken mushrooms and gone to sleep. That would account for the vivid dreams. And if my subconscious had gotten its shit together enough to produce something this detailed, I needed to figure out how to enjoy the hell out of it.
Aeldryc had to duck as he led me through the doorway into an interrogation room. Wow, men being so tall they had to duck was sexy. Why was that?
The torch caught the planes of his face, the cheekbones, jaw, the sharp tips of those pointed ears, and made everything look carved from warm bronze. Shit, I couldn’t believe I’d yanked on his ear to test if it was removable.
Good thing it was a dream.
He reached for a sheet of paper and what appeared to be an inkwell and quill. A quill. Like he was going to take notes about me with a feather. My subconscious committed to the aesthetic.
“Sit down,” he said.
I sat, eye-level with his dick. Maybe my dream interrogation would include being coerced into giving a sexy leather-clad man a blow job. I would not complain.
He sat across from me, putting the table between us, blocking my view of his good bits.
“State your full name,” he said.
“Pippin Thomas Crane.” I leaned forward, smiling just enough to make sure he knew I was up for whatever was about to happen. “But you can call me whatever you want.”
He wrote on the paper, handwriting precise and exquisite, quill moving in sharp strokes. His forearms flexed, tendons shifting under skin. I tracked it like a cat on a laser pointer.
“Where are you from?”
“San Jose. California.”
He looked up. “Is California the country?”
“No, the country is United States of America.”
The quill scratched again, another precise, elegant line appearing on the paper. “How did you arrive in Clovermere?”
“I told this story to the Queen already. There’s nothing different here except the sexier room.”
He paused. “This is an interrogation chamber.”
“Exactly.”
He stared at me. I stared back. I may have bitten my lower lip, just a little. And I may have winked. But come on, he was wearing leather.
“Who sent you?”
“Nobody sent me. Mid-twerk, Sky bumped me, I stumbled. Want to see it?”
“Sit. Down.”
The command hit somewhere south of my navel. I sat, because his voice made my knees weak. It was deep, resonant, vibrating through the stone room, the wooden chair, and the bones of my pelvis.
“Are you affiliated with any military or intelligence organization?”
“Of course not. Unless you count San Jose City College, where I’m theoretically enrolled, but can’t seem to land on a major. If only crochet was a major, right?” I propped my chin on my hand. “Do you interrogate people often? You seem like you’d be good at it. You’re so stern and commanding.”
A muscle twitched at his temple. “The Queen’s secretary believes you may be an operative from the Farewild. Sent to infiltrate Qoksmere using dark magic.”
A giggle slipped out.
“Pip, focus.”
“I could focus if you stopped saying Cock Smear.”
“Qoksmere. Emphasize the Q in the beginning. Qoksmere.”
“Ahh, a Q. So much better,” I said, keeping my lips straight and serious. Mostly.
“Are you or are you not planning an infiltration?”
“I don’t know what the Farewild is, and the only thing I’ve infiltrated recently is the VIP room at Club Onyx, because, well.
I’ve got what it takes, if you know what I mean.
” I stretched, arms overhead, letting my crop top ride up.
It didn’t have far to go. “Is it hot in here, or is it just the giant flaming torch on the wall?”
He set down the quill.
“You are aware,” he said, “that I am deciding whether you are a threat to the realm.”
“Mm-hmm. Not a threat.”
“And that the outcome of this conversation will determine whether you are granted asylum, imprisoned, or executed.”
“Are those my only options? Because I can think of a fourth one that’s much more fun.”
“There is no fourth option.”
“There’s always another option.” I closed the distance between us, near enough to see scars on his forearms, torchlight in his irises, the flare of his nostrils. “Are you going to spank me?”
“No,” he said.
“That’s disappointing. Because the Queen said thoroughly, and I’ve been trying to figure out what that means, and being thorough usually involves—”
“It means questions. It means I ask questions and you answer them. Thoroughly.”
“Are you sure, though?” I was ready to get to the sex dream part of my dream. Or whatever it was. Definitely not reality because that would mean I was quite close to being tossed in a very real dungeon.
He closed his eyes. The muscles in his jaw worked, his chest expanding on a long, controlled breath. He was centering himself. I recognized the technique—I’d seen bouncers at the club do it before dealing with particularly difficult patrons.
“I have interrogated warlords,” he said. “I have extracted confessions from spies who held out for weeks. I once broke a troll mercenary in under an hour. And you are more difficult to extract information from than any of them.”
I beamed. I couldn’t help it. It was, hands down, the nicest thing anyone had said to me all day.
“New approach.” He leaned across the table, planting his hands flat on its surface, boxing me in. His face was inches from mine. His violet eyes were even more unsettling this close.
“I am going to ask you three questions.” He was so close that his dangerous tone reverberated through every bone in my body.
“You are going to answer them. Directly. Without flirting, posing, stretching, or making references to my anatomy. If you do this, I will arrange for you to have a proper room with a bed and a meal and clean clothing. If you do not—”
“You’ll punish me?” I bit my bottom lip.
The air between us changed. I couldn’t explain it.
There was no visible shift, no flash, no sound, but the metal bracket holding the torch on the wall let out a faint, high hum, and the lock on the door rattled once as if something had passed through the room.
The man in front of me went still, like he was holding something in.
He held the position, staring down at me, and shit. How hard was he going to fuck me?
Then he straightened, walked back to his chair, sat down, and picked up his quill with the careful, precise movements of a man who was holding himself together through sheer force of will.
“Three questions,” he said again.
“Sure,” I said. “Hit me.”
“Do you have any knowledge of the Farewild, its agents, or its military operations?”
“No.”
“Did anyone—any person, entity, or magical force—instruct you to travel to Qoksmere?”
“No. Nobody suggested anything except Sky, who suggested that my twerking technique needed work, which is slander.”
He was watching me as I spoke. His fingers rested lightly on the table, pressing against an iron strap that bound the planks of wood together, as if feeling for something.
“Is there anyone in your world who would have reason to send you here? Anyone who would benefit from your presence in Qoksmere?”
“Nope,” I said. “Just lucky, I guess.”
“Let’s try again.” He opened his eyes. “Explain to me why a human with no magical ability, no knowledge of our realm, and no survival instincts—”
“Hey! I can survive!”
“—would be sent through a portal wearing nothing but undergarments and a smile.”
“These are not undergarments. This is a costume.” I smoothed the fabric over my thighs. “Like your costume.”
“This is not a costume,” he bit out.
“Oh, come on. Leather pants?”
He turned away from me, blowing out a slow breath like he was trying to control his temper. And those leather pants from the back were a revelation. I’d been admiring them from the front, but the rear view was a feat of engineering.
They were well-worn, molded to him, and as I examined the very real looking wear along the backs of his thickly muscled thighs, they didn’t look like a costume anymore.
They looked like a uniform. The sexy fantasy collapsed, the stage lights in my head shutting off one by one, leaving me cold and exposed.
“If this isn’t a dream, something horrible just happened to me. Something that was completely out of my control.” My voice cracked. “And you… you’re interrogating me like I’m a criminal.”
He turned back, his expression unreadable. “Is that why you are so certain this is a dream?”
“Of course! Because the alternative is insane!” I waved a hand at the room.
“Five hours ago, I’d just finished filming Tiktoks to hype the new club!
Now I’m in a stone dungeon being questioned by the hottest man I’ve ever seen, and everyone keeps mentioning execution.
” I leaned forward. “So yeah, let me pretend this is a dream, because if this is real, it’s fucking scary. ”
Something shifted in his expression. It was small, a softening around the eyes and a loosening of the rigid set of his mouth, but I noticed it.
“You are not dreaming.” He sighed and took a seat in front of me. “I understand this is frightening, but it is reality.”
“That’s exactly what a dream person would say.”
“It’s also what a real person would say.”
“Pip,” he said. “I need you to understand that this is real. This room is real. I am real. The danger you may be in is real.”