Immortality

Chapter Nineteen - Return to the Bordello

Chapter Nineteen - Author's note: I'm sorry. This took an incredibly long time because this is a very, very dark chapter, and I found it tough to write. This chapter is extra long to make up for how long you guys had to wait.

Amartya took Nightingale back to the hovercraft, muttering something about how he needed her to have a final checkup from his physician, that she would be back, that he just needed a few hours, and though the triumvirate seemed wary, Trevor waved them off with a smile.

"We like that you've agreed," he said. He was smiling at Nightingale, his bright eyes keen and incisive. She was shaking. "And I look forward to having her back as soon as she's ready."

Amartya tugged Nightingale out of the room. He continued to pull her along until they got into the hovercraft.

Nightingale had fainted before, of course, but not since she was very young. When she had done it as a three-week-old girl, she had earned a beating. She remembered Bobby then, still new to the Inamorata trade, had left a bruise in the shape of his foot on her ribs. He'd still made her work after it, and the next client she fucked had looked at it in horror.

It was then she learned to smile, and to blunt herself to the man's cruelty. She had smiled, and told him that she was clumsy - that she'd rolled off the bed one night, and hurt herself.

"I'm clumsy like that," she'd said, and then she'd taken him in her hand and stroked him until he was hard. "But not like this."

Then, she had become the Queen of the Bordello, strong and fearless. But such a gentility had come over her now, the product of the feather-soft love of her husband, and of her freedom from pain, that she felt as though she were new to it once more.

That past Nightingale would have been ashamed of her for fainting the moment she was on board the hovercraft, and there was enough of that Nightingale still alive that when she awoke, she shoved Amartya away with a snarl.

He had been carrying her, and they were descending from the hovercraft. They were back in the hangar. Amartya set her down and she shook herself.

She had enough time only to sway once more before someone caught her. They were slender, strong arms that held her, and long hair brushed against her cheek as she was lowered into the embrace of a woman.

"Easy," said Caroline's voice in her ear. "Easy, Gale. Easy. I've got you."

Nightingale gave a ragged sob and buried her face in Caroline's neck. Caroline stroked her hair, growling.

"Not so strong as you expect, are you?" asked Caroline, and it would have been a hideous thing to say had it not been spoken with such forceful pity. "None of us is. You don't have to pretend to me."

Nightingale had a single second of clarity, as she lifted her head and met Caroline's stare. She found her own eyes looking back at her. It was with the same motion that she and Caroline turned at the sound of shouting.

"You lying sack of fucking shit-" came the shout from David. He grabbed Amartya by the throat and slammed him into the side of the hovercraft. Amartya, smart as he was, went limp instantly and did not fight David. He would not have won. There was only one person in the room would could have beaten David in a fight, and it was not Amartya.

"If you think for a single second you'll let someone fuck her again against her will-" he began, his voice terrible.

"Not against her will, she knows what is entailed in this case, she agreed-" began Amartya. His voice was not pleading. It was rational. David was as close to hysteria as he could venture. Amartya was not. He stared David in the face, his gaze clear and calm.