“Your Grace.” That was the functionary, who was proving remarkably resilient. Or maybe he was just used to his king.

But Aeslinn didn’t hear.

“Yet this cretin can’t bring him in! Can’t even seem to keep track of him!”

“It’s not about keeping track,” the functionary said, getting in a word while he could. “We have found him, several times—”

“Then where is he?” Aeslinn’s bellow echoed around the room, bouncing off the black walls, and coming back to the poor functionary’s ears, as if a hundred kings were yelling at him.

“My apologies, sire, but he is proving… difficult—”

“Bring me everyone who was on this ‘mission’ of yours. Bring them now!”

A set of double doors slammed open at the back of the room, almost before he’d finished speaking, as if the functionary had been expecting the order. Several burly fey came in, dragging large, stained bags. The bags left smears behind them that told me, even before they were opened, what they contained. But I guessed Arsen hadn’t been brought up at a vampire’s court, or spent entirely too long hanging around the Senate, because his eyes didn’t widen until one of the packages was dumped onto the floor.

And spilled a dozen heads across the gleaming surface, their glassy eyes staring, their tongues lolling, and a few with what looked like potion residue or scorching obscuring the features.

They weren’t all fey. In fact, I only saw a couple of pointy ears among them, and those were on a dark-haired head that didn’t look Svarestri. But Aeslinn did not seem pleased. He didn’t say anything, but his lips tightened, and the pale skin on his cheeks flushed.

“You said these were the best operatives available,” he hissed. “You said they knew Earth intimately—”

“Yes, sire—”

“You said they couldn’t miss!” And, suddenly, the quiet voice was a bellow again, making the functionary cringe and bow and look like he wished the hard stone of the floor would open up and swallow him whole.

For a long moment, all that could be heard were the fading echoes of Aeslinn’s roar, bouncing off the walls. Then his voice came again, perfectly pleasant and all the creepier for it, because normal people didn’t recover that fast. Normal people didn’t go from crazed, spittle spewing loon to pleasant in a nano second.

“I want him here. Now. Is there no one who can bring him to me?”

The storm-tossed eyes found Arsen’s, and I had to give my guy a point, because he didn’t so much as swallow. Nor did he hesitate. “No.”

“No?” Aeslinn inquired, still polite.