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“It’s because of Seridil, you know. He had Seridil do the most foul things for him. He claimed Seridil was his thrall, but in his bed chamber, Perl was the one who knelt. Perl, the favoured of the Queen herself. Until that, we had all hoped so desperately he wasn’t tainted by the rumoured circumstances of his birth, but that confirmed it. Kneeling for a mortal. Is that the foulness he wishes to draw you into?” Vane touches Kerik’s cheek with a beringed-hand, pressing against the flesh there so it rubs against the sharp jewels of the ball inside his mouth. “Fae blood. How did he lure you here? Did he promise you’d learn to use your magic? If that were discovered you’d both be killed for it.”

Kerik desperately wants to say something. Make some kind of snarled threat to let Vane know exactly what will happen to him if he betrays them.

He forces himself to make no sound, but his will must be written on his face, because Vane says, “Oh, don’t worry, mortal. I will not be the one to betray you. I enjoy knowing your little secret far too much. But you saw how easy it was for me to unveil you. Surely you must be asking yourself how well that foul creature can protect you if that is all it would take to condemn you?”

Vane smiles a nasty smile. “You know, if I became your Master, you wouldn't be the first of Perl’s cast off thralls I’d taken on. I’m sure you’d be obedient to me. Perhaps you’d even tell me his secrets. Is your presumptive Master following his father’s obsession with the Bellator? Is he trying to entrap you in that nonsense?”

The bell rings suddenly. A sound so sharp it seems to break the air into shards. But it is a welcome one.

Kerik looks over to Perl on the dais. Perl shakes his wrist and the iron cuff vanishes. He leaps from his seat, races to the platform and pulls the ball from Kerik’s mouth. It comes away with the thin mixture of spittle turning pink from the blood where it has cut Kerik’s cheeks.

Kerik gasps. He waits as Perl removes the high collar. Then stands, Perl steadying him with a hand on his elbow.

His legs shake. His muscles ache. His jaw aches. Everything hurts. But as he stands he sees Vane, still on the platform, still smirking at him.

Kerik twists in Perl’s grip and spits in Vane’s face.

Vane doesn’t move. He doesn’t even wipe the pink flecked spittle from his cheek. He just stares at Kerik in shock.

Perl simply says, “Oh.”

Kerik can feel Perl’s grip on his arm tighten.

When Kerik looks at him, Perl has dark circles under his eyes and his expression is as shocked as Vane’s. Kerik is shocked too. He can’t quite believe he just did that. Although he does not regret it.

Vane’s voice is brittle, cold as ice. “I trust you will flog your thrall for that, Perlash.”

Perl turns to Vane, moving so his body is between Vane and Kerik. “I will deal with him in private.”

“You will not,” Vane spits back.”I insist you punish it before all. If you don’t, I shall assume it is because you’d rather it was you being whipped. I suppose I could ask Seridil about that. It told me once that you enjoyed the lash in bed.”

Kerik sees Perl suck in a breath, before he lifts his chin, and says, “This creature is my thrall and I will do with him as I wish, Prince Vane. Now get out of my way.” Perl drags Kerik down from the platform and right out of the hall.

Behind him, Vane snarls, “Then I will have to ask Exeinil to declare this test voided and have your creature sent to the pit.”

13

PERL

When Perl takes his seat upon the dais, there is a moment where he lets himself imagine what his life would be if he abandoned his mission. If he took what Exeinil is offering him to stay. A place in her inner court. A place, once more as her favoured.

But that feeling does not last long.

While Kerik endures his first test, all Perl can do is watch. He is bound not to interfere and the iron cuff stinging on his wrist ensures he cannot aid Kerik with any kind of spellcraft. He may not step upon the platform until the bell.

So he watches. Kerik seems to be bearing this test. It bodes well, although silence is a basic test meant to determine if the thrall has any obedience to his presumptive Master at all.

Although like any fae test it is laced with extra cruelties. Perl knows that ball in Kerik’s mouth is growing subtly larger, that the jewels on it will get sharper. That his mouth will be cut and bloody when the thing is done.

It makes him twitch.

Perl has always been perversely fascinated by the thralls of the Ice Court. The kneeling, the obedience to a Master, even the punishments. His dark fantasies about it have been with him as long as he can remember. Even, on occasion, he has fantasised about the pit, hard in his hand, biting down on his own wrist as he roused himself to visions of the unimaginable cruelties of that place where thralls go and return with dead eyes and unquestioning obedience.

When he was young and foolish he had tried to act on these desires, but that was long ago, when they sent him wild. He has long since shut them away.

And he has the scar around his neck to remind him of the price of such transgressions.

He is chaste now, has been chaste for more than a hundred years. It is better to tell himself that such things will never happen. But watching Kerik complete this test, the heat of those long buried desires burns in him as bright as they did when he was young. He finds himself imagining he is in Kerik's place, displayed, humiliated, forbidden from speaking by a powerful Master, a Master who would punish him if he disobeyed.