“What demonstration?” she said stupidly. She’d debated so long in her head over whether or not to insist that she was an heir. Whether to try to stick with the others and share their fate. But pragmatism—something Niko had talked to her about, over and over again—had won the day.

But had it actually won the day? This man seemed not to understand what it meant. So she tried to explain it to him.

“My ransom would be sizeable,” she said.

He tilted his smile at her. “You saw my throne room. Do you believe that I need money?”

“People who amass money, in my experience,” she said, allowing scorn to creep into her voice, “are always seeking more.”

He shrugged. “That might have been true in the beginning, but with time, that urge has waned. Now I seek out unique things, because they interest me much more than money. You are not particularly unique—after all, the Empress has many heirs—and so I chose to expend you in a way that enhances another pleasure.” He looked back at Atlanta. “The fact that Niko knows that you are valuable, that normally I would have returned you to court life—that will eat at her as much as many of the other things I have set up. I believe in using the tools at hand.”

She stared at him. “You’re willing to sacrifice me and the ransom I would bring just because you think it would hurt Niko a little extra?”

“That is precisely what I am saying.”

He took a small sprayer from the pocket of his robe and stepped away from the were-lion at his feet. Thorn didn’t move, simply kept his head slumped and staring at the ground, where the blades of pseudo grass moved in the breeze from the floor vents.

Tubal Last took aim and sprayed him with whatever the atomizer held. Atlanta could smell it: a reek that twisted at her stomach, with undertones of rot and putrefaction. She gagged.

“Come.” Turo took Atlanta’s shoulder and pulled her to her feet and away from the center, out of the circle of flowering trees. When they were completely out of it, she was turned to see Thorn’s slumped figure.

Atlanta’s skin crawled with a sense of rising menace. “You don’t need to do this,” she said.

He outright laughed at that. “Of course not.” He bent to whisper in Atlanta’s ear, too close, too moist, “You find this a pretty place, do you not? The flowers, the trees?”

“I’ve seen prettier,” she said with a touch of defiance. He only laughed at that. Each exhalation stirred the hairs on her neck and pebbled her arms with goose bumps.

“Watch,” he said, and displayed a device taken from another pocket, a silver rectangle. He pointed it at Thorn and pressed a button in its center.