earring

“This task,” I said. “Would it happen to be off the island?”
“Obviously.”
I pointed a finger at my temple. “Then we have an issue with the incapacitated-by-pain thing. You’ll have to fix me first.”
“If I did, you’d never agree to it,” Mab said calmly. “And I would then be obliged to replace you. For your own health and safety, therefore, you will wear this instead.” She lifted her hand and held it out to me, palm up.
There was a small stone in her palm, a deep blue opal. I leaned a little closer, eyeing it. It was set on a silver stud—an earring.
“It should suffice to contain the parasite for what time remains,” Mab said. “Put it on.”
“My ears aren’t pierced,” I objected.
Mab arched an eyebrow. “Are you the Winter Knight or some sort of puling child?”
I scowled at her. “Come over here and say that.”
At that, Mab calmly stepped onto the shore of Demonreach, until her toes were almost touching mine. She was several inches over six feet tall, and barely had to reach up to take my earlobe in her fingers.
“Wait,” I said. “Wait.”
She paused.
“The left one.”
Mab tilted her head. “Why?”
“It’s . . . Look, it’s a mortal thing. Just do the left one, okay?”
She exhaled briefly through her nose. Then she shook her head and changed ears. There was a pinpoint of red-hot pain in my left earlobe, and then a slow pulse of lazy, almost seductive cold, like the air on an autumn night when you open the bedroom windows and sleep like a rock.
“There,” Mab said, fixing the post in place. “Was that such a trial?”
I glowered and reached up to the stone with my left hand. My fingertips confirmed what my ears had reported—it felt physically cold to the touch.
“Now that I’ve got this to keep me safe off the island,” I said very quietly, “what’s to stop me from having Alfred drop you into a cell right this second, and solving my problems myself?”


Skin Game Chapter 2, Page 9-10