“He killed Cleo.”
“I know, and I’m so sorry.” He held her gaze for a long moment, letting her see his own grief. Letting her share the part of himself that made him feel naked and vulnerable to attack. Surprising himself with how easy it was to give her that piece of him. Teague cleared his throat, and Sebastian whispered, “I have to go to work now, but I’ll be back, and we’ll make a plan. You aren’t alone, Princess . . . Ari.”
She tried to smile again, but her heart wasn’t in it. He brushed her cheek lightly once more and then turned, the raw, vulnerable part of him once more hidden behind the shield he’d built as his one defense against his father and the streets outside their front door.
“You’ll need one or two bits of instruction before you can take the soul,” Teague said, his eyes bright chips of malice. “You have until nightfall. If you fail to return with every debt by then, Jacob has my permission to do whatever he pleases to our dear princess.”
His father pinned Sebastian with the look that used to turn his stomach to water and have him clenching his fists against the pain before the first blow struck.
Sebastian followed Teague out of the cage, his shoulders back and his head held high, while his scars burned as he left the girl he cared about more than anyone in the world with the monster who’d raised him.
FORTY-TWO
EVERYTHING HURT. ARI’S eyes burned from the tears she’d shed into the night and again this morning. Her muscles ached. And every heartbeat sent a shaft of grief through her veins.
She wasn’t sure how long she’d lain on the mattress after Sebastian left—an hour? Three?—but her tears had dried now. She was a hollowed-out vessel, and the howling grief that had torn her to pieces in the night had become a weary kind of acceptance. She had no more tears. No more desperate pleas for Cleo to come back to life.
All that was left was a small flicker of anger whispering within her.
It was impossible that a few short months ago, she’d had her mother to smile at her with love and pride in her eyes and to scold her for chapping her hands when she was born to be a princess. She’d had Cleo by her side to break Mama Eleni’s rules, to steal pastries and gossip about the nobility, and to fill a part of her that she hadn’t know was incomplete until Cleo was gone.
She’d had Thad, unburdened by the weight of ruling a kingdom he couldn’t protect. She’d had her anonymity and her ignorance of the true state of affairs on the streets of Kosim Thalas.
Now, her mother was dead. Her brother couldn’t look at himself in the mirror. Her people were dying—Cleo had died.
And she could lay the blame for all but her mother at Teague’s doorstep.
The flicker of anger that burned within her became a steady flame, consuming her despair and replacing it with furious purpose.
Teague, with his insatiable need for power at any cost, had laid waste to her life. Her family.
Her kingdom.
And now he was going to do the same to the rest of the kingdoms.
And she’d been the one to suggest it.
She wanted to be sick, but she had nothing in her stomach.
She wanted to cry, but she had no tears left. Besides, tears wouldn’t change this. Wouldn’t stop this.
She had no weapons, no Book of the Fae, no freedom, and no plan.
Despair dampened the edges of her anger, and she shoved it back.
She wasn’t beaten. She refused to be beaten. This was a problem, and all problems had solutions. Instead of focusing on what she didn’t have, she needed to look at what she did.
She had her memory of the poem in Magic in the Moonlight. The one that matched the statue in Teague’s study.
Something about the poem had been tugging at her mind for days, but she’d been distracted by the house coming alive around her, and Maarit and Teague looking over her shoulder, and her research in the Book of the Fae. Now she had nothing but time and a stone cell, so she closed her eyes and examined the poem.
The story said that a werewolf had married a werehawk, and they were very much in love. But years passed without the wolf bearing a child, and she became more and more despondent until finally she refused to eat. On that day, the werehawk made a deal with a powerful devil who agreed to open the wolf’s womb for a price. The wolf became pregnant, but when she delivered her child, both parents were shocked that the baby had the head of a wolf, the talons of a hawk, but the cloven hooves of a devil. In terror and dismay, the wolf tried to eat her child, but the baby possessed the power of all three of her parents, and she destroyed both the wolf and the hawk and left the secret given to her on the day of her birth behind with her parents. Henceforth, she was known as the Devil’s Child, and no one was able to stand against her because no one could name her secret.
Ari picked up each piece of the story and examined it. The connection to Teague might be in the devil who granted the werehawk’s wish, but Teague was a Wish Granter, not a devil. The book made a distinction between the two, so that meant the only logical connection was the secret that no one could name.
A secret, by definition, would be something no one else could name. Not helpful. Gritting her teeth in frustration, Ari slowly looked at every piece again.
A secret no one could name.
A secret given to her on the day of her birth.
What was given to a baby on the day of its birth? A blanket? A bracelet? Something specific to the fae?
A name?
Ari’s skin tingled, and her eyes flew open.
No one could stand against the Devil’s Child because no one knew her name.
Teague came from the isle of the fae. She’d heard the language he used when he spoke his commands over the beasts or his incantation to take her soul. The words were soft and lilting, rolling off the tongue like poetry.
They sounded nothing like the name Alistair Teague.
What if that wasn’t his real name? What if the key to controlling Teague was to learn his true name?
Slowly, she sat up and brushed dirt from the front of her nightdress. Parchment rustled against her skin.
The contract. She’d taken it from Maarit’s room the previous afternoon and hidden it in her chemise so she would have it at hand for her first opportunity to study it.
And because she couldn’t think of a better hiding place after Teague had torn through her bedroom searching for anything that didn’t belong, she’d decided to wear her undergarment beneath her nightdress and keep the contract with her.
“Don’t look very royal to me,” Jacob said from his chair by the door. He waited a beat and then said, “What are you, deaf? Or just stupid?”
Ari ignored him, her fingers still pressed to her chest as a whisper of hope flickered within.
She wasn’t without options. Without plans.
She had a blank contract already signed by Teague.