You can feel hands on you, and you struggle toward wakefulness. Your head won't clear, but you think to yourself that you must not disappoint her. Your mistress has made that plain. You stir, trying to move.

"Hush, my bella dolorosa," someone whispers in your ear, cool breath ghosting against your skin. "Relax."

You take orders much better than you used to. You stop struggling. You drift.



The next time you wake, you're aware that you're floating. Movement still takes effort, but something in the back of your mind tells you this is wrong, so you try: you reach out, find the edge of a recuperacoon, pull yourself clumsily upward until you're half-clear of the slime. You have to stop there to wait for the dizziness to clear from your mind, and as soon as you can force yourself to keep moving you spill free of the recuperacoon entirely. Sopor glistens on your skin, cloying and thick; you try to wipe it from your limbs with your hands.

You've been stripped bare at some point since you first fell asleep. This isn't the first time. The Marquise likes to see you this way. But usually she wants to be there when you wake, and you're alone now.

The floor rolls under your feet in the familiar rocking cadence of the sea, and you can hear the creak of rigging above, but you don't recognize this cabin. Would your legs hold you, if you tried to get up to go investigate?

Before you can convince your body to make the attempt, a door opens behind you. You hear laughter, a low, masculine voice, and the confident stride of boots on the boards. "Sleeping beauty's already awwake, I see," your visitor says.

You let your head loll back against your shoulder, looking over at him: you recognize him first by the flamboyant captain's coat, and second by the shock of violet in his hair. "Sir," you say, your lips and tongue slow. Orphaner Dualscar is your mistress's kismesis, but her hatred for him is cordial in the strange way of highbloods, and she has insisted that you address him with respect. "Is my lady...?"

"Sshh," he says, coming over to stand before you. "Let's not speak a her right now."

Something is wrong here.

Orphaner Dualscar kneels on the floor in front of you and smiles, close-mouthed, without the threat of teeth. He cups your face in one jewelry-laden hand, wiping a smear of sopor slime from your cheek. "Howw about wwe clean you up an go havve breakfast?" he asks.

"Thank you," you say. Your voice comes out slurred, and you blush. You will shame the Marquise with your slovenliness. (You would shame yourself, if there were anything left of you, but since you lost Him and the survivors scattered there has been nothing else that could compare.)

"You're a gorgeous piece a wwork, you knoww that?" he says as he helps you up off the floor. "Nevver seen a landdwweller so pretty."

You think you want to argue; shouldn't he pay that compliment to the Marquise, his quadrantmate? But you don't trust your tongue, or the heaviness still lingering in your mind. You let him wipe you clean, then dress you in a delicate confection of silk and lace. The dress is unfamiliar, but it fits you perfectly.



He feeds you from his own hands when you can't shake the sopor slowness enough to take care of yourself. You apologize more than once, but he only gives you that gentle, no-threat smile and shakes his head. His eyes are rich as amethysts, and the jagged scars across his face are bright as coral. His fingers trace the line of your bottom lip as he feeds you.

"Why?" you try to ask at the end of the meal. Your tongue still feels heavy in your mouth. "Why would you be so kind to me?"

"Oh, swweetheart," he says, stroking your hair back from your face. "Isn't it obvvious?"

You try to think of the obvious answer. It escapes you. The room spins, and you swoon into his arms.



The pattern repeats. It isn't until the fourth time that you manage to claw your way back to lucidity enough to say, "You're keeping me drugged."

For a moment he pauses in the act of sponging sopor slime from your body. His hand fits into the curve of your waist, cool and strong. "It wwas the only wway to keep you safe," he says.

You shake your head, because that doesn't make sense. "Safe from what?"

Dualscar reaches up with his other hand and runs his fingers through your hair. "From yourself," he says. "Or I guess I could say, from wwhat she could make you do to yourself." He looks at you with such kind, sorrowful eyes. "I'vve seen it before, wwhen she gets tired a someone. Didn't wwanna see you wwasted like that."

Your bloodpusher is trying to beat more quickly, despite the sedation. "Seen what before?" you ask. "What does she do?"

He grimaces, as if it hurts him just to think of it. "Wwhen she runs out a patience wwith her toys, they off themselvves," he says.

"You think—she makes them," you say. There is a tiny crawling fear in the back of your mind, and you realize when you try to focus on it that it's the fear of betraying her, of believing him, and being discovered.

"I'vve seen howw she gets her fangs in people. I'vve seen howw you swwoon ovver her like you think you're her swweetheart instead a her slavve." You can barely look him in the eyes. "You tellin me that wwas all your idea?"

The world lurches around you in a way that you can't blame on either drugs or the ship. "I need some air," you say.



He allows you up on deck, but insists that he be allowed to come with you. He fears that he has triggered some implanted urge in your mind, and tells you he couldn't bear it if you were to throw yourself into the water. You agree to his terms. All you do anymore is agree to highbloods' terms.

When he brings you up on deck, he holds you, your hands behind your back, his hands curled around your wrists. His grip is strong enough that you don't think you could break it, but not so tight that you will bruise.

The water stretches away in front of you to the horizon, ink black, rippling with the light of the moons. The wind chills you through your thin dress. His body offers a suggestion of warmth, and you still feel dazed; you lean against him. You discover there is a part of you that wants to believe the Marquise's affections were genuine. There is also a part of you that wants to believe Dualscar's intentions are kind. But you are tired, not in your body but in your soul; you have little faith left to spare.



He drugs you less after you confront him about it, or perhaps you're simply becoming accustomed to the sopor slowness of your mind and limbs. He still feeds you choice bites from his fingers when you take meals together, and he still touches you often—always mindful of his claws and of his strength, as though you were something silken and delicate, something breakable. There is hunger in the way he watches you; now that you're somewhat more alert you can see it. But he bides his time, even though you are a slave and entirely at his mercy.

Eventually you ask him, "Why?"

Dualscar stops in the midst of stroking your hair. "That's a big one, lovvely," he says. "You got somethin specific in mind?"

There are too many ways you could mean it; you have to stop for a moment and try to untangle them in your own mind. "Why are you still taking care of me?" you settle on eventually.

He looks away from you, shrugging awkwardly; suddenly he looks young, unsure, and you don't know what to think of him. "Cause I wwant to," he says. "I ain't good at talkin about feelins."

You don't want to press the subject. If he doesn't declare his feelings for you, then you won't have to figure out how to respond to them. The idea of him having feelings for you—red feelings, clearly, or you would be already torn to ribbons—should be terrifying, perhaps even more so than Mindfang's. Orphaner Dualscar hates landdwellers without exception. To be the exception would be—

He cups your face in his hand, stroking your cheek. "You're driftin awway, lovvely," he says.

"M-my apologies," you stammer. You're blushing; his thumb traces the line of your cheekbone, smooth and cool.

"Wwouldn't wwant to think you wwere bored a my company," he says, and for an instant a dangerous smirk almost surfaces on his calm face.

"Never," you say. It's the only right answer.



You lose track of how long it's been since he—since you woke on his ship. You see no other trolls anymore; if he meets up with underlings to resupply the ship, he does it when you are cocooned in sopor and insensible. Cooking and cleaning are tended to by drones. There is only Dualscar, you, and the endless black water of the sea. The more your faculties return to you, the more you crave his company, longing for the stimulation of his conversation, the vibrancy of his presence.

You learn that he plays the fiddle, not sedate aristocratic melodies but lively dockside tunes; his eyes sparkle as he plays, as he drinks in the sight of you delighting in the first music you've heard in perigees. You try your best not to be captivated by the dance of his fingers over the fiddle's slender neck. You fear that you are not doing so well as you might like in that.

You grow accustomed to the solid strength of his presence at your back and the faint roughness of the boards under your feet when you stand on deck. At first it's a small price to pay for the chance to breathe the fresh air and feel the breeze on your face. Later it becomes almost a comfort, being able to lean into him, being able to depend on him to be there. He points out constellations to you, one arm around your waist, the other hand tracing shapes in the sky. His voice is a rumble against your back, thrumming under your skin.

Your world stretches from stem to stern of this ship, and he is lord of it all.