“Humans are marvelous canvases,” he agreed. “But they have their limitations. Beyond the need to take such care, they also heal so slowly that my creations are static. I may as well be drawing on the wall.”

“Why don’t you? It doesn’t bleed.”

“But you offer some intriguing possibilities. You heal fast, but not too fast. I can see a landscape. It would change with the seasons over the course of an evening as you slowly healed. The centerpiece at a party, perhaps.” He looked around at the gathering crowd, people drifting over from other entertainments in twos and threes. “Like this one.”

“Too bad I’m all booked up.”

He tugged my T-shirt off over my head. “We’ll have to see if we can clear your schedule,” he told me gently.

“You’re not worried about reprisals?”

He looked at me innocently as he unhooked my bra. “You came here uninvited and fully armed. And you are dhampir.”

“I came here to talk,” I said sharply.

“But I had no way of knowing that.” He pulled the scrap of cotton away from my body and tossed it carelessly aside. It landed on the floor with the crumpled shirt, like rags I wouldn’t need anymore. “And I had to defend myself.”

“I’m warning you. Let me go, Geminus.”

Instead, he suddenly pressed against me, a line of heat down my back, and without warning grasped my breasts. It was a firm grip, but not rough, designed for humiliation rather than pain. It was a domineering stance: his clothed groin against my bare ass, the slow glide of his hands over my motionless body, his fingers plucking at my nipples, compelling them to hardness. He was saying without words that he could do whatever he liked with me, that I was no match for him, just a canvas to be molded to his will.

He rested his chin on my shoulder while his hand continued to lazily stroke my breast. “For someone so powerless, you have a big mouth.”

“And for someone attacking a representative of a fey princess, you have a lot of nerve.”

My voice didn’t shake, but I was becoming seriously disturbed, not least because his men were watching. They had crowded close on all sides, clearly relishing the newest diversion their boss had designed. Their thoughts skittered across my skin like grasping hands, making me cringe with just the echoes of what they planned to do to me. I’d been too angry to be afraid before, but some of those images had my heart hammering in my chest hard enough to hurt.

“I don’t know any princesses,” Geminus told me, sounding amused. “But next time she’s in town, do tell her to stop by.”

The crowd seemed to think that was funny. I wasn’t feeling so amused. I’d assumed my chances with Ming-de were pretty low. She was powerful enough that even the fey were going to think twice about challenging her, particularly when there was no evidence that she’d done anything more than place a bid. But I’d had higher hopes for Geminus.

He was a senator, not a consul, with far less personal power to draw on. And his own Senate wasn’t likely to protect him over a power play gone wrong. I’d thought that there was at least a decent chance that he’d panic at the thought of facing the fey and cough up the rune.

Only he didn’t appear to be panicking.

“You may not know her, but you know something about a piece of her property,” I said. “You were at the auction—” An unseen hand suddenly clasped me around the throat, restricting my air. Not enough to truly choke me, but a definite warning.

I hadn’t planned to mention Naudiz, hadn’t even wanted to bring up the fey, especially not in front of an audience. But I wasn’t going to stand there and be drained—or whatever else he had planned. Let him explain what the fey wanted with him.

After a moment, the pressure eased a bit. “What princess did you say?”

“Read the note. Left- hand-side pocket of my jacket.”

He picked it up off the floor and felt around the pocket. He took enough time to read the note two or three times, before he finally moved away. The power holding me broke at the same moment, so abruptly that I went to one knee.

“And what does this princess want with me?”

“To do you a favor.” I got my back against the wall before I even pulled up the jeans.

“I like favors from pretty women,” he told me easily. “Come.”

I jerked the T-shirt back on, not bothering with underwear, grabbed my jacket and followed him through a door on the far side of the room. We passed down a long corridor, which gave me a moment to get my breathing under control and remind myself that I wasn’t allowed to kill him. Yet.

We eventually stopped at an office. Or, at least, I guess it was supposed to serve that function. It was so stuffed with weaponry that it was a little difficult to tell. I shoved an antique shield off a chair and sat down, as Geminus got behind the desk.

“What is this princess going to do for me?”

“Her name is Claire, and she’s half- human,” I told him shortly. “She grew up here and only recently claimed her heritage when she agreed to marry a Blarestri prince. But she’s never really gotten used to the way the fey do certain things. She’s a vegetarian pacifist, for instance; she hates unnecessary violence.”

“I’m fascinated.”

“You should be. Anyone else would have just turned you over to her family for punishment.”

“I don’t recall angering any fey. Not of the royal kind, at any rate.”

“They tend not to like it much when you steal from them.”

“Then I am fortunate, for I have stolen nothing.”

“You were seen at the club, right before the fey ended up dead and the rune went missing.”

It was a lie, but I thought it was worth a shot. But he didn’t take the bait. “Was I?”

“And you’re certainly strong enough to take out a fey warrior.”

“You flatter me.”

I glanced up at the wooden sword mounted over the fireplace. It was old and crumbling, barely held together by some stained twine, but carefully preserved behind a glass case. Two thousand years ago, Geminus had gotten his start as a gladiator, one of the few ways for poor young men of the time to rise to fame and fortune. He was rumored to have been fearless, despite a seer prophesying that he would die on the arena sands. He hadn’t, instead winning the sword and his freedom after successfully defeating numerous opponents.

By all accounts, he’d been doing the same thing ever since.

“I don’t think so,” I said simply.

He laughed. “Strong enough but not stupid enough. No relic is worth that kind of trouble.”

“Not even if it gets you control of the Senate?”

“But I do not wish to control the Senate,” he told me easily. “Let them bicker and squabble and plot and plan. My interests lie elsewhere.”

“You expect my employer to believe that you just shrugged off what happened at the auction? Come on, Geminus. That’s not your style.”

“Of course I didn’t.”

“Then what did you do?”

He sighed and kicked back against the wall, one foot propped up on the desk.

“After Cheung did his fiddle with the auction, I was… annoyed. It was obvious that he’d never intended to give the stone to anyone but Ming-de. I don’t like being played, so I had my servants to do some checking. They discovered who the sellers usually used for authentication. And fortunately for me, the little bastard was swimming in debt.”

“You’re talking about the luduan.”

“Yes. I offered him a deal. I’d pay his debts if he switched the rune for a fake when he examined it.”

“And once the fey found out and tracked him down?”

“That was his problem. But he could always deny it. There was no way anyone was going to know where, exactly, it went missing.”

“Why were you at Ray’s, if you already had a plan in place?”

This time, he didn’t budge. “I wanted to make sure he didn’t double-cross me. The stone was worth considerably more than I was paying on his debts. I didn’t trust him.”