When the broker vanishes inside the yacht, Dorian extends his arm towards me, the pearled hairpins resting daintily in his bulky upturned palm.
"Dorian, I don't—."
"Don't. Don't make my fight with him a useless conflict. Take them."
Filled with a sudden guilt, I reach out, hesitantly taking a hairpin with each hand.
As soon as I pick the second up, the Fae talisman inside me floods with a wildly-mushrooming, jubilant power. The air around me pulses with the gathering charge and I can feel the molecular energy throbbing in the water for miles around us. My heart pummels the insides of my chest with its mad beat as the monstrous thing feeding my talisman digs its hooks in to take control.
My vision tunnels white and in the periphery of my senses, I hear shouting.
"Jesus fⴎcking Christ! Get them off of her!"
"They won't come off! Ow! It stung me! What the hell are they!?"
A yawning void opens around me, filling with coalescing pressure that pushes everything away.
