Page 177 of A Sanctuary from Shadow
“I know I can’t save her, but she’s capable of saving herself.” She had to. “That’s why I’ve been training her. As you just noted, she’s powerful enough—and she’s agreed to help me kill Gentian.”
Sedge’s fathomless eyes rounded. “Have you gone mad, man?”
He sounded beyond mad. He sounded idiotic.
“You’ll get both of you killed! Then what of your grand plans?”
“We’ve got to try, Sedge! Change requires action. And someone must do the acting.” Pete shrugged, his gaze sweeping Shorty. “Might as well be us.”
“Us,” Sedge repeated. “Has she become one of us?”
“No, and I don’t want her to. That’s the point.”
“You’ve grown too attached to her.”
Something in Pete’s chest panged. “No.No. I—”
“If you fall in love with her, Gentian will scent it on you the next he sees you, then black eyes or not, he’ll realize you’ve managed to overcome the death poppy. Demons lack the capacity for love, Pete.”
“I’m aware.” Pete glowered. “Which is why I’m currently sitting here bickering with you instead of plundering her treasure trove.”
A trace of humor wormed through Sedge’s mouth.
His eyes falling shut, Pete inhaled a cleansing breath—what he’d always done before gracing the confessional as a mischievous youngster. “I’ve been fighting her allure for a time now, all right? Tonight was the only buckling of my resistance, and it wouldn’t have happened without the Incubus’s influence. You’ll no doubt be pleased to hear that after I found her in town, I informed her the rapport between us can go no further. That the impediments to us becoming—whatever it is we’d be—are too numerous, too immense.”
A small pool of blackness welled within him. The demonic scourge rebounded at more than just anger. Gloom had the same effect.
The gloom he now faced at turning from the suns finally shining on him.
“She agreed,” he stressed bitterly.
Though he nodded in approval, Sedge understood the weight of Pete’s sacrifice. “On the bright side, if you manage not to get the both of you slaughtered—andifyou somehow succeed in dispatching the Shadow Prince to the underworld—then you’ll be free to pursue her in any vein you so choose. With my full support.”
Pete offered his friend a weak smile for the attempt at optimism, but he knew Gentian’s death would make no nevermind in his association with Shorty. He was human, she, Danann. Fae mores were rigid—neither the two should mix.
Amy
“No,Iagreewithyou,” I corrected Sedge the next day. Our cart jolted down the road out of Shanerie, now en route to the Summer Court. As Pete and Sedge strolled on either side of Bob, I knelt in the wagon with a panting Sionna and Kit, the latter of whom had a chewing compulsion and was currently working on an Incubus femur.
Pieces of the Incubus’s body lay scattered throughout the bed for Kit’s hiding and seeking entertainment. Its grotesque, decapitated head sat in one corner—a souvenir of his kill, Sedge claimed. He thought bagging a parasiticwight, as he termed it, a profound accomplishment. Trophy or not, though, I did my best to stay away from it.
“Prostitution should totally be legal,” I continued, pushing out all thoughts of the head joggling feet away from me. “If people want to make money by selling their bodies, it’s their decision. No one else’s business—literally. There must be restrictions onotherpeople seeking to make money off sex workers. Like brothels shouldn’t be legal. And sex trafficking—no way should that be tolerated.”
Sedge considered me, jabbing his walking stick into the sandy path. “Is a brotheler’s enterprising spirit any less essential than anyone else’s? Why should their potential profitability be scuppered?”
“Because their potential profitability hinges on exploitation.”
“Not necessarily.”
I snorted. “Not necessarily—but realistically—come on now.”
Pete grinned at his friend, who’d now be traveling with us until we reached the Shadow Palace. Although I hadn’t heard what role, if any, Sedge would play in Gentian’s demise.
Sedge’s black, triangular brow arched. “You’d have whores each running their own affairs? What if they’ve no mind for business? If they did, I’d wager they wouldn’t be whoring.”
Both males chuckled at this.
I rolled my eyes. “If they’re smart enough to realize they’ve got a product that costs them nothing but their dignity to offer, then they’re probably smart enough to take an accounting class.”
