“No.” She moved closer to him, and he didn’t flinch. She checked the hall. Still empty. Checked the walls. Not breathing. Her voice barely more than a whisper, she said, “I was alone and afraid, but I can survive that. Especially knowing that you did what you had to do to stay here with me. And now he trusts me a little more. He didn’t find where I’d hidden the contract.”
Sebastian glanced at her chest, and Ari’s face heated. “No, it wasn’t . . . That’s not where . . . I hid it in a dusty vase just inside Maarit’s room. Last place he’d ever look.”
Sebastian jerked his eyes back up to hers and took a small step back. “I’m sorry. That was . . . I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to notice anything.”
The misery disappeared from his face, replaced by mortification, but there was something warm in his eyes that hadn’t been there before.
Ari smiled as the fizzy tingling in her stomach spread to her veins, a welcome relief from the loneliness and tension of the past week.
His eyes swept over her with a faint hint of desperation. “I mean I was, um, noticing that I like your hair down.”
She patted her hair as if just now discovering that she hadn’t braided it—which was a stupid reaction, but somehow his words made her feel like whatever she’d done right with her hair this morning needed to be repeated every morning for the rest of her life.
The scent of scorched bread brought her up short. “Are you making toast?” She craned to see the stove behind him.
“Burning it, more likely.” He hurried to the stove, grabbed the tongs, and scooped the blackened bread out of its pan.
Ari glanced around the empty kitchen. “Where’s Maarit? It’s not like her to allow a decent breakfast to hit the table.”
“Teague said she isn’t feeling well this morning and is staying in bed.” He turned the sausage and poured a bowlful of beaten eggs into another skillet.
She joined him at the stove and sniffed appreciatively at the chives he’d sprinkled into the eggs as he put butter and two new slices of toast into a pan. “Mmm, compliments and a full breakfast. You sure do know the way to a girl’s heart, don’t you?”
“I know yours,” he said quietly without looking at her.
The heat from the stove had nothing on the warmth that rushed through Ari, rekindling the torch in her heart and igniting something deep within her.
Her breath caught, and Sebastian’s shoulders braced as if he expected a blow.
Longing spread through her. Somewhere along the way, between sparring sessions and long talks about everything and nothing, Sebastian had become something far more precious to her than a weapons master turned friend. She wanted him to look at her the way he had when he’d seen her in her ball gown. She wanted his fingers on her cheek and his arms around her waist. She wanted his smiles, his silences, and his kisses.
Stars help her, how she wanted his kisses.
It was lunacy. She was trapped in Teague’s villa, one word away from dying, and the choices she was making would either ruin her keeper or destroy herself. She had no right to want more than friendship with Sebastian when she wasn’t sure she’d live to see the next morning.
“That was . . . I’m sorry. Again,” Sebastian said into the silence, and the reserve in his voice galvanized Ari into action.
“Only apologize if you didn’t mean it,” she said, and waited, hardly daring to wish for him to turn toward her. To show her his face so she could know if he longed for her too.
He was silent for an agonizingly long time, his body held perfectly still the way he did when he was looking for threats in a new environment. She willed him to trust her. To trust himself.
To want her.
Finally, he said, “I shouldn’t say things like that to you.”
“Were you telling the truth?” She reached past him to flip the toast before it burned, and then stirred the eggs.
“It doesn’t matter.”
Forget waiting for him to turn toward her. Ari wiggled between him and the stove, prayed her hair wouldn’t catch on fire, and looked up to meet his gaze.
His brown eyes widened, and he started to step back.
“Please,” she said, “stay.”
He stayed—separated from her by a breath of space, his chest rising and falling rapidly, his lips parting as he stared at hers.
Every part of her strained toward him, but she held still. Waiting. Letting him get comfortable with almost touching. With staying.
Her heart was thunder, her blood lightning, and the rest of the kitchen fell away as he slowly bent his head toward hers.
She swayed toward him and pressed her palms to his chest. “Sebastian,” she breathed.
“Princess Arianna,” he whispered.
She closed her eyes.
“I do hope I’m not interrupting anything.” Teague’s cold, polished voice spoke from the doorway.
Sebastian jerked back from her, his body instantly tense as he spun to face Teague. Ari glared at the fae.
“Just for that, you don’t get any sausage.” She turned toward the stove and plated the food while she waited for her skin to cool and her heartbeat to return to normal.
Under no circumstances was she going to deal with Teague while her body still wanted Sebastian.
“We have errands to run. Eat quickly,” Teague said as he took an apple from a bowl in the center of the table, sat down, and took a bite.
Ari grabbed her plate and then risked a quick glance at Sebastian, her cheeks warming at the (absolutely delicious) memory of almost kissing him.
He gave her his crinkle-eyed smile.
So much for not wanting Sebastian while she had to deal with Teague. Thank the stars she had a real breakfast on her plate. She was going to need it.
Her search for the secret to stopping Teague was at a standstill. She had the empty contract, and she planned to read through it at her first opportunity, but it wasn’t like he would’ve carelessly included an addendum with instructions on how to kill him.
She needed information she couldn’t find inside the villa. She needed a contact on Llorenyae to research Teague’s past, she needed her vial of bloodflower poison she’d unfortunately left behind in her suite the night of the ball, and she needed the Book of the Fae.
None of those were going to be easy to come by while she was trapped in the villa beneath Maarit’s and Teague’s watchful eyes. She put a bite of egg into her mouth and met Sebastian’s gaze.
She might be trapped in the villa, but he wasn’t. The next time Teague and Maarit left them alone, she’d ask Sebastian to go out and gather what she needed.
Sebastian crinkled his eyes at her, and she gave him a quick little smile, even though eating near Teague was nearly enough to kill her enjoyment of the sausage.
Teague stayed in the kitchen with them for the entire meal—an act that made Ari wish a pox upon him and anyone unfortunate enough to be related to him. When breakfast was finished, Teague said, “Sebastian, see to the shipments at the dock this morning. There’s a horse saddled and waiting for you in my stables. Princess, you’ll accompany me.”
“Where?” Ari asked, her hands trembling at the thought of being stuck alone with Teague for hours on end.
He smiled. “I have a special debt to collect at the market today.”
She frowned. “Why do you want me to come along?”
His smile grew. “Maarit is unwell, and I think we both know I’d be a fool to leave you unsupervised.”
Ari’s heart pounded painfully and her palms were slick with sweat as Teague escorted her out of the villa and into his waiting carriage. A golden spinning wheel was painted on the door.
Maybe yesterday hadn’t been the victory she’d assumed it was if Teague was still suspicious of her.
But Teague didn’t have proof of her actions yet. And he was taking her to the one place where she might finally get some useful answers about him.
She just had to find a way to get to Rahel’s bookshop and hope tha
t the Book of the Fae was there waiting for her. And that she could sneak it back into the villa under Teague’s nose.
Matching Teague’s malicious little smile with one of her own, she settled back against the carriage seat, looked out the window, and began to plan.
THIRTY-FOUR
THE MARKET WAS teeming with people, and Ari realized with a start that it was Mama Eleni’s usual market day. Housekeepers and cooks tromped through the streets with groups of maids, grooms, or personal guards carrying wide baskets loaded with goods for the household. She recognized a face here and there, and fisted her hands in her lap to subdue the sharp edge of bitter jealousy that they could walk the sunny streets freely, doing whatever they wished without worrying that one wrong move would cost them everything.
She had no right to be jealous. She’d chosen to intervene, to negotiate with Teague, to save her brother. She’d do it again in a heartbeat.
The air inside Teague’s carriage smelled of leather seats and his wild, woodsy fae scent. The combination set her teeth on edge. She wanted to be in the streets smelling the tang of brine, the sweetness of window box flowers, and the yeasty goodness of baking bread.
As the carriage slowly bumped its way past the bakery where Ari and Cleo always stopped for a pastry, the princess caught sight of a bright blue scarf wrapped around black curly hair, and pressed her face against the window.
Cleo sat at one of the bakery’s delicate iron tables, a mostly untouched pastry in front of her. Ari’s throat ached and tears burned her eyes, turning her friend into a blurred smudge against the pastel backdrop of the bakery.
She missed Cleo. Missed getting up at the crack of dawn to cook breakfast with her and their late-night talks after both girls were absolutely sure their mothers were asleep. Missed the inside jokes, the pranks played on Thad and the few stableboys they deemed worthy of the effort, and missed the confidence that no matter what she did, Cleo would be there to defend her.
Except this time. This time getting Cleo involved could cost her friend her life.
Ari blinked away the tears just as Cleo looked up at the passing carriage. They locked gazes and stared at each other for a long moment. Then Cleo jumped to her feet as if to run to the carriage, but Ari shook her head, hoping that Cleo would just accept what couldn’t be changed and leave it be. There was no way Ari could allow Cleo to be anywhere near Teague. She had no bargaining power left, and he was already far too interested in the ways he might hurt Cleo and use her pain against the princess.
The carriage bumped and jostled over the road and then turned onto the street that held Edwin’s spice shop, leaving the bakery and Cleo behind.
Ari’s heart ached, and loneliness was a deep, dark well inside her. It was too easy to add up her losses—her mother, Thad, Cleo, her home—and feel like she’d never be whole again.
Except she hadn’t really lost Thad or Cleo. They were still alive. They might be distant from her, but they were still alive, and if she was careful, if she was smart, they would stay that way.
The carriage wound up the hill, and Teague shifted in his seat, leaning forward so he could look out Ari’s window.
No, not out her window. He was looking at her with that cold smile playing about his lips.
“What?” she asked, her voice sharper than she’d intended. “Do I have sausage in my teeth?”
“Shall we make a stop?” he asked.
She shrugged, though the intensity of his gaze and the fact that they were close to Edwin’s spice shop sent prickles of unease over her skin.
Did he somehow know about the bloodflower poison the way he’d known she’d been in his study?
She turned to look at Edwin’s shop and froze, dread pooling in her stomach.
The shop was a charred skeleton of blackened lumber, the roof caved in and drooping toward the buckled floor. Shards of the pretty glass bottles that had held Edwin’s spices were scattered among the ashes.
Something else lay among the ashes too. Something shriveled and curled in on itself.
Teague’s driver opened the door, and the faint stench of burned spices and scorched flesh drifted in. Ari’s stomach heaved, and she fought to keep her breakfast down.
“Let’s visit your friend Edwin,” Teague said in his polished voice. As if they weren’t staring at wreckage. As if the shriveled, curled thing in the ashes hadn’t once been a person.
None of it mattered to him. None of it touched that cold, remote place inside Teague that made him see people as expendable tools he could use to build the life he wanted for himself.
Her hands shook as she held on to the carriage door and slowly climbed down.
She’d come to the market on a collection day. She’d sought out Edwin because she wanted bloodflower poison. She’d been caught at his shop.
She’d brought this disaster on his head.
“Why?” She choked on the word, forcing it past the horror that clogged her throat.
“He defied me.” Teague brushed a crease from his jacket and took out his pipe. “It’s important to make a punishment truly horrible. Teaches others not to make the same mistake.”
“He didn’t—he just wanted to sell spices and be left in peace!”
Teague turned on her, his golden eyes filled with unblinking malice. “He answered your questions while you were here with your friend Cleo. He told you something or gave you something that he didn’t want me to know about. And when I questioned him, he refused to tell me the truth. So I punished him and nearly everyone who was in his shop.”
She stared at him, sickness crawling up the back of her throat. “You burned his customers too?”
He smiled. “All but one. An object lesson is useless if you don’t have a witness ready to spread the tale. Now the entire city knows the cost of discussing me in secret. Now they know that lying to me results in unimaginable pain.” Leaning closer to her, he said quietly, “It’s a lesson you needed to witness as well.”
“I haven’t lied to you.” She put as much conviction into her voice as she could muster, but she couldn’t look away from Edwin. Why hadn’t his family collected him? Why hadn’t he had the decency of a proper burial? She’d bet Teague had something to do with that as well.
“I hope that’s true, because if it isn’t, you and everyone you love will be the next object lesson.”
Teague said something else, but Ari wasn’t listening. Stumbling forward, she stood at the entrance to the shop and let the truth of it sear itself into her heart.
Let the memories cut deep and draw blood.
The reports that a woman had been killed at the docks and her children taken by Teague while the city guard stayed away on Thad’s orders. The merchant district living in fear of collection day. The crumbling streets of east Kosim Thalas where so many were wasting away on apodrasi, and so many more were doing unthinkable things on Teague’s behalf because to refuse him would be to die.
Like Peder had died, a golden thread slicing into his neck for the crime of refusing Teague.
Like Edwin had died, burned to death for remaining loyal to his princess—a sacrifice that rested heavy on Ari’s shoulders and even heavier on her heart.
She may have led Teague to Edwin, but none of them would be in this position without Teague’s greed for power. He’d backed Thad into a corner, used his weakness for his sister’s safety against him, and then tricked him into a blood contract that forbade him from interfering with anything Teague wanted to do in Súndraille.
Ari owed it to Edwin, to Peder, and to everyone else who’d been hurt by Teague not to look away.
She’d decided to fight Teague because she couldn’t stand the thought of losing her brother. She’d started using stealth because she didn’t want to lose Cleo.
But this was bigger than Thad and Cleo. Bigger than keeping her own soul in her body.
This was her kingdom. Her people. Until she’d started attending Assembly meetings and seeing the long list of needs her people had, she’
d always seen them as Thad’s responsibility—he was the one who’d been raised to rule, after all.
But they needed protection now, and Thad couldn’t do it. It was up to Ari. She was the princess of Súndraille and it was time she stepped up to the mantle of responsibility that came with that.
She was going to ruin Teague, no matter what it cost her. She’d enlist Sebastian to get what she needed. She’d poison Teague’s food every day with iron and bloodflower. She’d study the contract she’d stolen and find something she could use as a loophole. She’d get her hands on the Book of the Fae and read every single page. She’d unlock the meaning behind the poem in Magic in the Moonlight. And she’d find an ally on Llorenyae who could uncover the reason behind Teague’s exile.
He had a weakness. He had secrets. And he’d done enough damage to her people.
By the time she was finished with him, Teague was going to regret ever setting foot in her kingdom.
THIRTY-FIVE
LIVING UNDER THE same roof as the princess and Teague was an exhausting balancing act. Sebastian was caught between being the ruthless, violent person who collected debts for Teague, the messenger who brought news of Ari’s well-being to Thad’s trusted palace guards and gave them information Thad might find helpful as he worked to find a way to rescue his sister, and the boy who longed to just sit beside Ari and memorize her smiles.
Two months ago, all he’d wanted was enough coin to buy a solitary life far from Kosim Thalas and the memories it held.
Two months ago, he’d been willing to break his promise to his brother for a chance to avoid another confrontation with his father. To avoid discovering just how like his father he really was inside.
He still wanted his cottage on a sea cliff. He still wanted to avoid his father.
But now he wanted Ari’s safety more.
Figuring out how to protect her kept him up at night, tossing and turning in his little room in the far corner of Teague’s villa while he ran various scenarios that always ended with the same conclusion.