Parker touches his cheek. “Few more days. I’ll make them good.”“Good?” says Arthur, very tiny. “I just want to hurt John.”“You will.” Parker’s tone is vicious. “But you don’t have to hurt, too. Come on. I’ll treat you like a king until it’s time—and when it is time, it won’t fucking hurt. You have my word.”It’s a lie. Arthur knows it’s a lie. He sniffles. “Okay.”

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You are taking the biggest fucking risk.“The biggest fucking risk, Hastur, was choosing to trust you after I learned what you did.”Hastur is silent.“I still hate you for it,” Arthur says. “But… I trust you. I’m making that choice. And now, I need you to make that choice, too.”

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He feels Hastur on his lips and under his tongue, behind his eyes and so very careful not to knock Arthur out of his own body because if he is too much himself, he would.And then it’s gone, and Arthur is gasping, and somehow on his knees, and the bugdog is licking his face with concern and making weird little whimpering buzzing sounds. “Got a kiss after all,” he blurts, laughs weakly, and hangs his head to keep from passing out.

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Parker, thinks Arthur, because it is Parker, because Parker’s never been nice, and after today’s little episode they were over, but he was a detective, he’d solved murders, he was one of the good guys, and now—

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“You fuck,” Arthur says quietly, again not recognizing his own voice. “How could you do this to me?”Hastur sighs. You can be so smart, sometimes. And others… it’s like you’ve pulled the plug on your own intelligence.

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Sit, witch. It’s the Defiler. And oh, Asenath’s face.She already looks tired. Now, at these words, she goes dead pale, making her stubble stand out, making the kohl around her eyes seem bruisingly dark. “Oh,” says Asenath, and falls into her chair as though unplugged from her power source. “Well, that sucks.”

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Why did it have to be his eyes?Funny; he hadn’t expected the blindness. Of all the horrors he’d imagined, prepared himself for prior to his Contract, he really hadn’t thought his sight would go first. That felt like being trapped, somehow. It felt like being cheated.

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Parker eyes him. “Do you have any control over him at all??”“Funny,” says Arthur. “Asenath said that to him about me.”

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Feeling like prey isn’t new, but it is terrible.

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"Don’t suppose you know who the King in Yellow is.”I do.“Wh- you do? Who? What is he?”An Esoteric. A true god, Hastur says. Mighty; ancient and wise. He goes by many names.

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