"Why the cuffs?" Vivian asked, her voice carrying a note of curiosity.
"Ether cuffs," Azalea corrected, his eyes staying on his book.
She squinted at him, then her eyes widened as it clicked.
He's not afraid of me manipulating his emotions, she thought, he's afraid I'll manipulate that girl's emotions.
Tch.
She should have acted the moment she saw the girl, because that aura had been a mess, rage and frustration and grief and confusion all tangled together in a way she'd never encountered before. It had stunned her long enough to make her hesitate, and she'd missed her window.
"Wait," she said, shifting her voice into something that suggested alarm, "doesn't this leave me completely vulnerable? What if your instincts get the better of you and you can't control yourself?"
The narcissism, right on schedule.
Azalea didn't react at all.
"Trust me when I say this, you don't ignite any form of lust in me," he replied, his tone flat. "You can sense emotions, can't you? Then you already know. You don't even register as one percent of the women I've seen in my life."
A lie, of course, but a necessary one to keep her from acting out.
He tightened the cuffs, then sat back across from her with his legs crossed and reopened his book.
"You could lie naked in front of me and I'd be more tempted to sit on you than touch you."
Vivian stared at him.
Then she roared.
"HOW DARE YOU SAY THAT TO ME! Do you have any idea how many men would beg just for a kiss from me?!"
He didn't look up.
The silence that followed made her skin crawl, because it wasn't the silence of someone holding back, it was the silence of someone who genuinely didn't care, and she hated it more than she expected to.
What did he mean, he'd rather sit on her?
Then she smiled, slow and deliberate.
He wasn't emotionless, he was just hiding it. That flicker of irritation she'd caught earlier had been real, she was sure of it, and if she could pull out even the faintest emotion, she could work with it. That was the game, that was always the game.
She slid across the seat until she was beside him, keeping her voice low and easy.
"Hey," she murmured, pressing her thigh against his.
He didn't look up. "What."
She took his free hand and guided it to her chest.
"You feel that?" she said softly, her lips close to his ear. "Just imagine what you could do with it."
He didn't move.
"Come on," she continued, "I'm practically throwing myself at you. Do with me as you please."
He looked at her then, just for a moment, and she felt the smile starting to pull at her lips because that was it, that was the crack she needed, just show her something and she could work with it.
"You don't say," he said, his tone completely bored. "So you're just a whore after all."
Her face went flat.
Not a trace of lust, not even disgust, just nothing, like she hadn't registered at all. She'd seduced royalty, warlords, and high priests, every kind of man there was, and even the cold ones always broke eventually because everyone had a trigger, everyone had something, all she had to do was find it.
But this man had nothing.
"You've got to be kidding me," she muttered.
No heat, no reaction, not even basic curiosity. It made no sense.
She stared at him for a long moment, then narrowed her eyes.
"Wait. Are you a woman?" she asked, genuinely uncertain now.
"No," he replied, brushing her hand away. "You just don't interest me." He raised his voice slightly. "Anna."
The carriage slowed to a stop.
Vivian's frown deepened. She was losing, and she knew it. Her greatest advantage was useless against him, and Anna was coming, and that was its own problem. The girl's ether pool was enormous, and with the cuffs limiting what she could channel, influencing someone like that was out of the question. But this man, he still had to have something she could use. Rage, lust, pride, anything. She just hadn't found the right angle yet.
I won't lose like this.
Her tongue shifted, moving the small capsule she kept tucked behind her molars. A failsafe she'd never actually needed before, an aphrodisiac strong enough to override resistance, and biological rather than magical, so no amount of mental discipline could stop it once it was ingested.
The carriage door creaked open, and she moved, letting just enough ether through the cuffs to boost her strength for a second, grabbing Azalea by the face with the pill ready behind her lips.
But before she could close the distance:
CHOP.
A sharp strike landed against her neck and her body seized up immediately.
"Ghk!"
She staggered back, coughing hard, and felt it happen before she could stop it.
She'd swallowed it herself.
Azalea clicked his tongue. "So the ether cuffs are garbage after all."
"Sir?" Anna was standing in the doorway, her hair a mess, her eyes carrying that quiet, unsettling energy that made Vivian's instincts tell her to stay very still.
"Take her to the back, gag her, tie her up, and lock her in the box. I don't want to hear her voice."
Anna nodded and dragged Vivian away without a word. Vivian didn't fight back, couldn't bring herself to, because she knew exactly what she'd just swallowed, and it wasn't something she could wait out or push through.
It was a very, very big problem.