There was no point in dwelling on how alone she felt without Sebastian. She had a monster to destroy, and she couldn’t wait around for help that might never come.
She’d gained Teague’s permission to borrow some books from his library to pass time in the evenings, and had been delighted to find Magic in the Moonlight: A Nursery Primer on the shelves, though she’d been careful to take other books as well so it wouldn’t look like she was focused on tales of the fae. So far, nothing had come of it, though she’d studied it every night. If there was information about Teague’s weaknesses somewhere in the villa, Ari hadn’t found it.
The problem was that Ari was never truly alone. On her second day at the villa, Teague had given her a small office beside the library so she could look over his ledgers and assess how well his current contracts might perform in other kingdoms. She’d taken her time with it, working meticulously while she waited for a chance to be alone, but the chance never came.
She didn’t care about the guards who patrolled the property, but Maarit and Teague were a different issue. One of them was nearly always underfoot. Teague left the villa early for business each day, but Maarit spent her mornings popping into Ari’s office regularly to “check on her,” which Ari figured was a euphemism for “report problems to Teague.” The housekeeper took an hours-long nap after lunch and ate dinner in her rooms, but it didn’t matter because Teague was often home in the afternoons and evenings, watching Ari like a cat toying with a mouse.
To uncover whatever Teague was hiding about his past on Llorenyae, Ari was going to have to find a way to get Maarit out of the house during the morning.
Leaving her room, Ari walked briskly to the back staircase that led down to the kitchen, careful to avoid touching the bannister in case it woke. If she was going to start aggressively going after Teague, she was going to need a decent breakfast. None of that yogurt and dry toast nonsense. This required meat and at least two pastries.
She entered the kitchen, and there was a flash of movement at the corner of her eye. Turning, she found Maarit standing by the sink, a plate and cup in her withered hands.
“What are you doing in here?” Maarit demanded. “I always bring your breakfast.”
“Not anymore.” Ari moved toward the pantry and began assembling ingredients. “I’ll cook for myself. I’ll cook for you and for Teague too, if you’d like.”
“You can’t just decide to— What are you doing with those plum preserves? Those are for holidays only!”
“Not anymore.” Ari hugged the preserves close to her chest in case Maarit decided to try taking them from her and hauled out a sack of flour, a clay jar of butter, and some salt.
Maarit reached her side much faster than Ari thought a woman her age ought to be able to move and blocked her progress toward the counter. “The boss likes those preserves.”
“Then I’ll make him some more. It’s not hard. But I’m done eating yogurt and dry toast. Seriously, what is the point of having all this butter if you aren’t going to use it?” She stepped around Maarit and placed the ingredients on the counter except the preserves. She was hanging on to those. “Now, please tell me you have bacon or sausage.”
Maarit shook her head.
“Then let me go to the market to get some,” Ari said as she opened cupboards searching for a bowl and a rolling pin.
“So that’s what this is about.” Maarit’s voice was cold.
“Excuse me?” Ari blinked at her.
“You think I’m going to fall for your tricks and let you out so you can run away.” Her eyes flashed with anger. “I had a feeling you’d try something like this soon enough.”
Ari dumped the bowl and rolling pin onto the counter beside the flour and turned on Maarit. “Where am I going to run? You tell me that, because I’d love to hear it. Teague is fae, and the stars only know what kind of magic he’s capable of. All he has to do is say one more word, and he ends my very existence. I’m stuck here, and I’m going to make the best of it. And that means I’m going to bake some pastries with Teague’s favorite plum preserves, and, by all that’s sacred, it means I am going to eat some meat.”
Maarit stared at her for a long moment. Ari was getting used to the older woman’s shrewd, calculating looks, but that didn’t mean she had to stand there and take it on an empty stomach. Turning away, Ari measured flour, butter, salt, and water into her bowl and began making dough.
Finally, Maarit said, “I’ll go to the market and get sausage.”
“And bacon.”
“Anything else?” Maarit’s voice was loaded with sarcasm, but Ari didn’t care.
“Yes. I want the ingredients to make chocolate cake.”
An hour later, Maarit wrapped a scarf over her head and braved the storm to head to market. Not that taking one of Teague’s carriages was a hardship, but still. The older woman had kept her word, and Ari was grateful. Not just because sausage and bacon were (finally!) going to be a part of her morning routine again, but because Ari now had the opportunity to start looking for anything she could use against Teague.
Fortified with plum tarts and a slice of melon, Ari started exploring, careful to check each room to see if the walls were breathing or the knickknacks were watching her before she did anything that could look like snooping. The door to Teague’s personal quarters on the third floor was locked, and she was terrified that if she managed to pick the lock, the rooms inside would be awake and waiting to either alert Teague to her presence or pin her to a wall until he returned.
The second floor was a collection of ordinary rooms—Ari’s and Maarit’s among them. None of them seemed to hide any secrets, although Maarit’s had a sweet, musty scent that reminded Ari of Cleo’s grandmother.
That left the main floor of the villa. The rooms were all decorated in Teague’s preferred shades of misty green and gold. With its dark wood floors and pale yellow ceilings, moving through the main level felt like walking through a forest. There were more strange dust-covered knickknacks scattered about every room—painted vases with fairy dancers who appeared to change positions depending on which side of the vase you were on, opaque squares of glass with runes of gold melted onto their surface, and wax sculptures of fantastical creatures that both intrigued and repelled Ari. In the hallway that bisected the back half of the villa, behind a thick tapestry that depicted some sort of fairy feast, Ari found a long, narrow box set back into a hole in the wall, but when she opened the box, there was nothing but the velvet-lined outline of a pipe inside.