No threats.
“How is Ari?” the king asked, his expression a naked plea for reassurance.
Sebastian met his gaze as he reached for the sack that held the poison and the book. “She’s safe. She’s managed to take over the kitchen.”
Cleo laughed, and Thad’s lips quirked as if he wanted to smile but just didn’t have the energy.
“What else can we do?” the king asked.
Sebastian glanced once more at the road. Still empty.
He wasn’t reassured.
It was time to end this meeting and dive back into his life as Teague’s collector before the wrong person saw him meeting with Cleo and the king.
“You can hire someone—someone you absolutely trust—to go to Llorenyae and get the true story of Teague’s exile.”
“That’s all?” the king asked, his disappointment evident.
“That’s important,” Sebastian said. “If Ari—I mean, if Princess Arianna knows how someone gained control of Teague before, she can figure out how to do it again. In the meantime, she can search for his origins in the Book of the Fae and use the poison if necessary.”
His scars tingled, and he swept the street again. A wagon drove past the cemetery, but from this height, Sebastian couldn’t tell who was in it.
“It’s time to leave. You go down first. I’ll watch you leave and make sure no one follows you or tries to harm you,” he said.
“Sebastian.” The king leaned forward and gripped his arm like it was a lifeline. “Thank you for being there for Ari.”
Sebastian met the king’s eyes and nodded. Holding the sack that contained what he hoped would be the key to ruining Teague, he watched them climb down the hill, get into their carriage, and drive away.
No one followed.
It was time to push this part of himself into the corner of his mind and become Teague’s top collector again. He stood. Throwing his shoulders back and hardening his expression, he strode down the steps of the pauper’s cemetery and back into the streets of Kosim Thalas.
THIRTY-SEVEN
IT HAD BEEN four days since Ari had gone to the market with Teague and witnessed the remains of Edwin and his shop. Since then, Sebastian had brought her the little jar of bloodflower poison and the Book of the Fae, both courtesy of Cleo—a fact that still made Ari’s stomach hurt with anxiety—and had told her that Thad had promised to send a spy to Llorenyae to unearth the story of Teague’s exile so many years ago.
It was progress, but Ari was no closer to an answer.
Teague had been gone every day to the trade summit Thad was hosting at the palace. Sebastian had been gone all day as well, working from dawn to dusk on a list of tasks for Teague. Ari suspected Teague was simply finding a way to keep Sebastian and Ari apart in his absence. Even Maarit had been gone. Teague had sent a carriage for her each morning so that the palace physician could care for her since she’d been feeling poorly.
Ari figured the physician would diagnose her with old age and grumpiness.
In Maarit’s absence, a pair of villa guards had been sent indoors to keep an eye on Ari. She’d spent the days baking—chocolate cake, plum torte, butter twists, apple puffs, and fig crepes—while she left the Book of the Fae lying open beneath a cookbook so she could read without raising the guards’ suspicions.
The pages were filled with small, precise handwriting. Reading about the first fairy war—the one that had divided them into Summer and Winter courts—was fascinating, as was the list of royal births and fae gifts bestowed upon favored humans, but she’d yet to find a passage about the birth of a short, pale Wish Granter with a taste for violent power.
In between baking and sneaking a peek at the Book of the Fae, she’d been busy listing her options and trying to come up with a workable plan for stopping Teague.
She had a copy of one of his wish granter contracts ready to study at her first opportunity. With Maarit gone during the day, Ari had sneaked into the old woman’s bedroom, lifted the stolen contract from its hiding place inside the vase, and folded it back into her chemise. She had the Book of the Fae, which she hid inside a soup pot when she wasn’t baking. She had the jar of bloodflower poison that she’d hidden on the spice shelf—one place she was absolutely sure Maarit didn’t even know existed. She had her brother’s spy looking for the truth about Teague’s exile. And she’d memorized the nursery primer poem about the wolf-headed woman who’d left the secret to her monstrous power behind at birth.
Now she needed to see if bloodflower poison actually worked on Teague, or if she was stuck reading the rest of the Book of the Fae while she waited for results from Thad’s spy.
Popping a bite of fig crepe in her mouth, she glanced at the guards, who were sampling the plum torte while a branch from the wall behind them chuffed, alternating between sniffing the torte and the guards. With the guards distracted by the creepy branch, Ari retrieved the jar of bloodflower. She poked holes in the left side of the chocolate cake and poured a small dose of the poison over it. Then, whipping butter and sugar together until she had a bowl of fluffy frosting, she decorated the cake with delicate roses, vines, and thorns, making sure to put the biggest rose over the area that had absorbed the dram of poison.
She didn’t want to eat that piece by mistake.
Pulling out the ingredients for cherry tarts, she checked that the guards were still eating the torte and that the house was still curious about them instead of her, and then she surreptitiously turned the page to read the next section in the Book of the Fae, but it was hard to concentrate. Something about the poem in the nursery primer—the one about the woman with the wolf’s head, bird’s talons, and goat’s hooves—was niggling at her thoughts. She closed her eyes and ran through the rhyme, hoping something would jump out at her. When that failed, she examined her memory of the statue.
Teague kept it in his locked study. It matched a poem in the book Gretel had said she should read if she wanted to unlock the secret of the fae. It had to be connected, but she couldn’t figure out how.
She was deeply engrossed in her thoughts when the wall behind the counter shuddered, and a pair of branches whipped into the air, their nostrils flared as they hovered over the book.
Her mouth went dry as she slowly slid the cookbook back into place and reached for another mixing bowl.
Maybe they hadn’t seen anything—she didn’t even know if they could see.
But if they had, and they had a way of telling Teague, she was going to be in trouble.
One of the branches curled around the mixing bowl, tugging it out of her hands until it hung suspended in midair. The other wrapped around her wrist and pulled her toward the wall. She leaned against the counter, the wall breathing in front of her while the branches dumped the bowl and slithered over the books instead.