I move to the other side of the desk, unhurried, and look at the sphere from this angle. She tracks me without appearing to track me—I catch the slight adjustment in her peripheral awareness, the subtle shift in how she's holding the back of her neck. Truth-sight finds the seam of it easily, the thing she's managing underneath the performance: not just want, but the irritation of wanting, the specific dignity-wound of a woman who knows exactly what her body is doing and cannot make it stop. I find this considerably more interesting than fear would be. Fear is common. Wounded dignity with this particular flavour of stubborn—that's rarer.
"Tell me," I say, conversationally, "Miss Merris."
She looks up. Clara's face, attentive, professionally pleasant, not a crack in it.
"A woman of your background." I let my gaze move over her briefly, unhurried. "You've been to court before. Other courts."
"A few, my lord. In a trading capacity."
"Of course." I move around the desk slowly, watching her track me without appearing to. "And you've had occasion, I imagine. To meet all manner of people."
A slight pause—small enough that Clara might have taken it, so she takes it. "The work brings one into contact with a wide variety."
"Men," I say. "Human men, primarily. The trading circles your house moves in."
"Primarily, yes."
I stop beside her. Close—closer than the lesson strictly requires, which she knows, and which she will not acknowledge, because acknowledging it would require her to explain why it matters. Her scent sharpens immediately, the pre-heat spikingwith proximity, and I breathe it in with the patience of someone who has learned that patience costs nothing and impatience costs everything.
"I wonder," I say pleasantly, "if a woman like Miss Merris has ever found herself in the company of a Mist Court male."
The faintest stillness. Barely anything. She's very good. "I can't say that I have, my lord."
"No." I let that sit. "It's rather different, I'm told. From what a human man offers." I glance down, deliberate enough that she sees me do it. "Anatomically."
Her jaw tightens. Infinitesimally. I note it and continue.
"Two cocks," I say, in the tone one might use to discuss the weather—mild, faintly academic, as if this is simply information one shares with visitors. "Both capable of independent vibration at a frequency I can choose and adjust at will. The anatomical particularity of Mist Court males specifically." I tilt my head in polite curiosity. "I've often wondered whether a human woman could manage it. The sensation alone—quite apart from the size—tends to be rather overwhelming. I've had it described to me as losing the thread of one's own name. Which strikes me as rather sad, when you think about it. Or rather nice, depending on the woman."
The colour in her throat is extraordinary. She is managing it with a focus that would be heroic under other circumstances.
"I see," she says. Clara's voice, careful, neutral, the mild interest of a woman receiving information about foreign customs. "How interesting, my lord."
Six centuries of this and people still think the performance fools me. What is interesting is that she knows it doesn't, and she maintains it anyway, because what else is she going to do. I respect that. I do not say so.
"The Merris line—" I tilt my head as if trying to recall something from a ledger—"no omega blood, if I'm not mistaken.Which is a shame, in certain respects. An omega takes to Mist Court anatomy very naturally. The biology accommodates it. A human woman, though—" I let that trail off with a slight, regretful exhalation, the sound of a man gently closing a door on a room that doesn't exist. "The wanting would be there. The body simply wouldn't be built for it."
She looks at me. The performance is immaculate. Something underneath it has been screaming for some time and is now screaming slightly louder. I can see it in truth-sight the way you see heat rising from summer stone.
"I'm sure I couldn't say, my lord."
"No," I agree. "You couldn't." A pause. "Unless Miss Merris isn't entirely who she says she is."
She holds my gaze. The cover holds. I watch her hold it and feel a satisfaction that is less about winning than about watching something fine under pressure—the way you watch a very old mechanism still running cleanly despite everything time has done to it. I have not been genuinely interested in a person in longer than I'd care to admit. I am aware that this is information I should be careful with.
"I'm afraid I don't know what you mean," she says. Clara's voice. Smooth as still water.
"No," I say. "I don't suppose you do."
I move back to her side. The lesson. I set my hand beside hers on the sphere—not touching, the cold of me reaching her skin across the last centimetre of air—and watch the small muscles in her forearm tighten in response. Her pulse is visible in her throat. I watch it beat.
"Again," I say. "Don't push."
She breathes. She stares at the sphere. I have sat with worse silences in worse rooms and I can wait. Patience is not a virtue when you've had six centuries to practice it; it's just arithmetic.
Then I close my fingers over hers.
She goes very still. Her pulse jumps—one sharp spike in her throat—and she doesn't pull away, doesn't lean in, just holds herself in place with the performance intact and her jaw set.