Did he want her to be so unhappy?

At least give her the choice. Tell her you made a mistake, and let her decide whether or not to stay with you.

He turned himself human again and set out to track her across the city. He’d gotten halfway there when it occurred to him that Kett was almost certainly going to ask him how he knew he’d made a mistake, and sooner or later Marisa was going to come up in conversation. He cringed, automatically covering his groin. Well, maybe if he told it carefully…

She drugged me, right, and I woke up in bed and she was sucking my cock-

She’d still never believe it, even if it was the truth. Maybe if he took Kett back to the inn and introduced her to Marisa, then…then Kett could threaten Marisa and the truth would come out. Kett loved threatening people. Happy ending for everyone.

He found her at a brothel-which slightly confused him, but then she’d said she was on business for Chance, who had once been a courtesan-and followed his nose past the scents of sex, cigarettes and alcohol to a room on the upper floor. Squaring his shoulders, taking a deep breath and preparing to look as sorry as he damn well felt, he opened the door.

The place was filling up now, more and more beautiful men and women negotiating the price of their affection with a crowd who seemed to treat prostitution with the same casual attitude as an after-work drink.

Kett had been in the bar for several hours, her glass never emptying. Like Bael’s tankard, she thought miserably, only this time no one was pouring sleeping powder into it. Currently she was drinking a highly toxic local spirit that had once, apparently, been introduced to a lemon, and then corrupted it horribly into a drink so potently alcoholic that a single drop made the bar surface steam.

Kett knocked it back in one and rested her head on the bar. She still didn’t feel drunk enough yet. Depressed as hell, yes, but not actually drunk.

“Signora,” said the bartender, and she lifted her head. “Something else?”

She focused on him. “You’re not Giacomo,” she said.

“No, signora. He takes clients in the evenings. I am Rocco.”

“Fill ’er up, Rocco,” Kett said, holding out her glass. “Whatever’s next.”

What was next was a horribly sickly concoction, also apparently made from lemons (how did they do it? They were halfway up a mountain, it was freezing, how did they possibly grow lemons here?). Kett took a sip and made a face, but the bartender had already moved on to serve a large group of men in business wear, apparently fresh from work and ready to make trouble.

Time was, Kett might have joined them. The first thing she used to do on arriving in a new town was check out the bars, and who frequented them. She rarely went home alone. A different man every night.

She didn’t even know how many there’d been.

Now she looked at them with some revulsion. Loud, brash, rude. One of them pinched the backside of a waitress and they all guffawed. Kett rolled her eyes. They were in a fucking brothel, and pinching a woman’s butt made them giggle like schoolboys.

Turning her attention away, she saw Giacomo, shirtless and cool, sitting at a table with a composed older woman. Kett knew her type, the neglected wife looking for some thrills.

Standing up, Kett picked up the glass of vile sugary lemon and carried it to Giacomo’s table. Her footsteps were steady. She didn’t waver once. Kett didn’t know whether she’d inherited the ability to hold her drink from her father or whether it had just come of long practice, but she should have realized that even two hours of drinking spirits wouldn’t have gotten her drunk.

Setting down the small glass, she caught Giacomo’s eye then walked away. Five minutes later, Giacomo got up, let himself behind the bar and set out a bottle of wine and a large glass in front of Kett. He left, saying nothing.

Kett tried a glass of the wine. It was good, at least by her low standards. Probably not local.

She drank it all, watched Giacomo leave with the well-dressed woman then poured another large glass.

It warmed her in a way the spirits hadn’t. Maybe the Sisilians were on to something here. But it still didn’t make the hurt go away. Kett wasn’t a stranger to pain, but she’d never felt guilt like this before.

When the bartender caught her attention and said, “Signora, Signor Giacomo has finished with his client,” Kett nodded, gulped the rest of the wine and got up before she changed her mind.

Giacomo was waiting for her in a large, pleasantly decorated room upstairs. He was naked, handsome in the low lighting, and Kett wordlessly stripped as he stood still, watching her.

“Signora,” he began, as she moved to the bed.

“Kett,” she said.

“Kett.” He inclined his head formally. “Are you sure?”

She looked up into his dark eyes, calm and utterly foreign. He was nothing like Bael.

“Make it go away,” she said.

Giacomo nodded, joining her on the bed and taking her into his arms. He kissed her, stroking her arms and her back, making no comments about the thick scars he encountered. Kett supposed he must have seen much worse than a few scars.

His body was hot and hard, and smelled pleasantly of some woody scent. He touched her with strong, assured hands, stroking and caressing with expert skill. He kissed a hot, wet trail down her body, tongue tracing erotic patterns on her skin.

Kett had felt more aroused during medical exams.

She was just about to suggest he give it up as a lost cause when the door opened-and her eyes slammed open to see Bael standing there.

In about a second, his expression went from tortured and sorry, to disbelieving, to shocked, and then cycled up through the stages of anger until he got to absolute fury.

And Kett had nothing to say.

Bael didn’t shout. He didn’t fight. He didn’t even say a word. He just turned and walked away, the door slamming shut behind him, and Kett lay there with a stranger, tears burning her eyes like acid.

Night fell. Bael stormed back through the city, intending to find Marisa and beat the shit out of her, but she was nowhere to be found and no one at the tavern had even heard of her. Bael threatened the bartender for five minutes solid, but it didn’t help.

Even if he never found her, even if he’d just imagined it, he couldn’t possibly have imagined Kett and that-that man-whore, for gods’ sakes! She was fucking a damn whore! Shallow, meaningless sex; not even an affair, not even a relationship-no, she was paying for sex with someone else.

If that wasn’t a rejection, he didn’t know what was.

Bael flew west to his house in Galatea, intending to get very, very drunk.

He was gone when she got back to the tavern. She’d slunk in disguised as a cat, just in case, but the only trace of Bael in the room they’d shared was his faint, lingering scent.

A scent laced with tears and anger.

He’d left her things exactly as they were. Hadn’t thrown them around or torn them or even touched them. His scent was nowhere near them.

Kett wanted to cry, to scream, to howl. She needed to do something constructive or she’d end up doing something destructive instead. She’d go back to the cave in Nihon and look around, use some of her animal senses to see if she could figure out anything else. She’d talk to the local kelfs and see if they knew anything. She’d run all the way there, exhaust herself, because maybe if her body was aching and tired she wouldn’t notice the pain in her heart as much.