When the last bit of straw had been turned into gold thread, Teague stood, removed the bobbin, and looked at the man. “I didn’t ask for much, did I?”
The man made a strangled noise and jerked against the ropes that bound his wrists.
Teague circled the man’s chair and began unspooling the thread.
“It was a very simple transaction, Peder. I offered fair market value for your shop, didn’t I?”
Ari’s pulse raced as the man shook his head and tried to speak around the thick rope in his mouth.
“Oh, I know,” Teague said softly as he stretched the length of golden thread taut between his hands, his eyes on the back of Peder’s head. “You didn’t want to sell. It’s been in your family for generations. Very touching, except that I wanted it.”
In one quick movement, Teague dropped his hands in front of Peder’s neck and pulled the thread back against the man’s throat. Peder bucked and screamed around his rope gag, but Teague yanked the thread like he was hauling on a horse’s reins and it bit deep into the man’s skin.
Ari’s stomach heaved, and she lurched out of the chair and toward the library’s door as Peder made an awful wet gurgling noise, and Teague said in his cold, elegant voice, “No one defies me and lives.”
She escaped the library and rushed down the hall, through the parlor and dining room, and finally into the kitchen, where, thank the stars, the walls weren’t breathing and there weren’t any creepy fae relics to stare at her. Bile burned the back of her throat, and she scooped water from the sink into her mouth with shaking hands.
Teague had promised an object lesson for those who got in his way. Those who defied him.
He’d delivered.
Terror blazed through her, stark and unrelenting, and she clung to the sink to keep from collapsing onto the floor.
Teague would kill her if she tried to stop his plans.
But even as fear shuddered through her, she thought of Thad, sitting on a throne bought with blood. She thought of Peder dying because he didn’t want to sell his shop. She thought of the seven kingdoms she’d offered up to Teague as leverage to save her brother’s soul, and she knew.
Teague would destroy her if he caught her trying to ruin him.
She had to do it anyway.
TWENTY-EIGHT
IT HAD BEEN five days since Ari had arrived at Teague’s villa. Five days of jumping at shadows because she never knew which part of the house might come alive next. Five days of eating the tiny, plain meals that Maarit cooked and then searching Teague’s extensive collection of books for anything that might give her a clue about who had exiled him from Llorenyae and how they’d accomplished it.
Five days of aching for the life she’d had before, as Teague gave her ledgers and contracts to peruse with the unyielding expectation that she’d find places for him to improve his margins in Balavata even as he began collecting debtors from the Súndraillian nobility in residence at the palace where Teague spent every morning.
And she did ache for her former life. The fae magic in the tea Maarit had given her had healed Ari’s injuries, but nothing could heal the loneliness that hurt with every breath she took.
She looked warily at her bedroom walls as she pulled on a long yellow dress and draped a delicate gold chain around her waist. The room had seemed uninterested in her since her first day there, but she couldn’t relax. Couldn’t stop listening for the whisper of breathing or the damp scrape of a fae tree’s tongue on the soles of her shoes.
Five days, and she was no closer to figuring out how to destroy Teague, save Thad, and get back to the palace and her loved ones. The answer wasn’t just going to fall into her lap. She had to work for it.
She washed her face in the basin and quickly pulled her hair into a bun, securing it with a trio of hairpins. Her shutters were thrown open as they were every morning—it was unsettling to think that Maarit must come into the room before Ari awakened—but today’s sea breeze was a slap of damp, chilly air that heralded the approach of a storm.
Ari moved to the window and shivered as she gazed at the choppy gold waters and the purple-gray clouds that pressed low against the horizon. A pair of Teague’s guards patrolled the edges of the property, but Ari ignored them. There would be another pair on patrol during the day and the watch would double at night, but they never approached the villa itself. As the first raindrops splashed against the ground, she hugged her arms around herself and let herself wonder where Sebastian was.
Five days, and she hadn’t seen a single sign that he’d followed her. That he was watching over her.
She’d been sure that he would—that when he’d held her gaze in the midst of the ballroom’s carnage and mouthed “I’ll find you,” he’d do it. Sebastian didn’t say things he didn’t mean. She’d catch herself looking out of windows in hope of seeing him coming toward the villa entrance. Each time the road was empty, and each time her hope sank a little lower. She didn’t realize she was crying until the first tear traced a scalding path along the coolness of her cheek.
Something whispered along her arm, and she jerked back as a branch unfurled from the windowsill and chuffed against her skin as if it could smell her. Another branch whipped out from the wall beside her, wrapped around her waist, and firmly pushed her back toward the windowsill again.
Ari held her breath, her heart pounding, as the first branch sniffed her cheek and then slithered toward her mouth. She pressed her lips in a thin, hard line and drew in a long, shuddering breath as the rough bark brushed her mouth and then scraped over her cheek, a wooden tongue licking up her tears.
It was over just as suddenly as it had begun, and in seconds the branches had become one with the wall and windowsill again. She wrapped her arms around her chest, her knees shaking, but she didn’t move away.
The house hadn’t hurt her. It was creepy, yes, but maybe it was more benign than Teague had led her to believe. She needed to talk it over with Sebastian. She hadn’t realized how much she’d depended on his friendship until it was out of reach. She wanted to tell him about the house. About the straw that Teague had turned into a weapon of gold thread. About the nightmares that flooded her sleep until she woke with her own screams ringing in her ears. She wanted to sit beside his comforting stillness and spill every thought until she’d been cleansed of the terror and the loneliness. Until she could see clearly what to do next.
The rain swept down in curtains of misty gray that blurred the landscape, a barrier that seemed to cut Ari off from the rest of the world. She closed her shutters and turned away.