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.