I jerked upright and tiptoed tightly toward the indicated seat, not because I felt dainty, but because that’s what happens when you try to lock down your leg muscles to prevent your feet from rising and falling, but your body moves anyway. One resistant step after the next, I minced toward the chair. I reached it and collapsed into it like a rag doll. My throat muscles convulsed and I tried to force out words. “D-don’t . . . d-do—”

“You will not speak unless it is in direct answer to one of my questions.”

My lips sealed. I couldn’t believe he was doing this to me.

How ironic that V’lane had asked me to trust him today, I had, and he hadn’t betrayed me. I’d been ready to open up a little to Barrons tonight, tell him a few things, and he’d betrayed me. V’lane had muted his sexuality to preserve my will. Barrons had just stripped it away with a single command, no different from the Lord Master.

“Tell me what you saw the night you encountered the Sinsar Dubh,” he repeated.

Straining in my skin, nearly suffocating myself with my attempts to resist, I spilled every detail, every last thought, every perception. From the humiliation of lying in that vile puddle in my pretty clothes, to the various forms the Book had taken, to the look it had given me, to my decision about how to track it. Then, to make things worse, I volunteered my entire “intervention” with Inspector Jayne.

“Don’t move,” he said, and I sat ramrod-straight in my chair, unable to even scratch my nose while he pondered his thoughts. There was violence in the room with us, a killing violence. I didn’t get it. What had I done to piss him off so much? He hadn’t been half this angry last night, and he’d had every opportunity to grill me forcibly then. He hadn’t. He’d just driven off.

“Where did you go today?”

Sweat dripping down my face, I told him that, too. I wanted to speak of my own free will, to call him every name in the book, to tell him we were through, he and I, and that I was the one who deserved answers, not him. But he’d sealed my lips with a command, and I could only answer what he asked.

“Did V’lane tell you anything?”

“Yes,” I said flatly, biting it off there. I’d obeyed the compulsion to the letter. I didn’t have to offer more.

“What did he tell you?”

“That the Lord Master was once a Fae, named Darroc.”

He snorted. “Old news. Did he tell you anything about me?”