He shoved the boy toward his siblings and unstoppered the flask as Sela pulled her son close. “Nine years, eight months, three weeks, and two days ago, you made a wish that I would save your dying husband. You promised me your soul if I would take away the disease that was killing him.” His eyes snapped to hers, and rage burned in his chest while his magic spread through his veins like ice. “I kept my end of our bargain. And how do you repay me? You try to run!”
“Because my children need me!”
“They have your husband.” His gaze was pitiless.
“He died. Two years ago this fall. Hit by a horse and carriage while we were at the market.” She threw the words at him, desperate and fierce. “When I made the deal, I thought he would be alive to take care of any children we might have. To provide for them. But he died.”
“That’s what people do,” Teague said viciously. “And that changes nothing about our arrangement.”
“But my children! They’ll be left with no one to take care of them.” Tears streamed down her cheeks and fell to the dusty wooden planks beneath her feet.
Teague smiled. “They’ll have me. At least until I sell them to a slaver in Balavata.” He met the gaze of his collector and motioned sharply for his men to move in.
Sela looked wildly around the dock as the enforcers stepped forward. “Run!” she yelled to her children, but it was too late. Teague’s men had them surrounded.
“Please, I’m begging you!” She fell to her knees and clutched for her children as the enforcers dragged them away from her.
“Beg all you want.” His voice was soft as he stepped toward her. “Plead. Grovel. Promise me anything if only I won’t take what you already agreed to give.”
She reached for his boots with trembling hands. “Not my children. They aren’t part of this. Please. Take me, but spare them.”
He crouched beside her.
“And if I do that, what will my other debtors think? Why would they not also try to defy me?”
She choked out her children’s names between sobs.
Teague raised his voice to be heard above her cries. “Ghlacadh anam de Sela Argyris agus mianach a dhéanamh.”
Strands of brilliant white streaked through her veins to gather in her chest. Somewhere behind him, a child wailed. Sela’s eyes rolled back in her head, and Teague stood, holding out the flask as the light slowly separated from her body and hung in the air before gently winding its way into the mouth of the bottle. Sela’s body hit the dock with a thud, and her children screamed.
Teague pushed the stopper back into the flask and returned it to his pocket.
Another soul captured and ready to join the hundreds that had come before it and be turned into apodrasi, a new drug of his own creation that was lining Teague’s pocket with enough coin to make a lesser man happy.
Teague, though, wasn’t happy. Coin didn’t protect you. It didn’t save you from your secrets.
Only absolute power did that.
He looked around the docks, smiling grimly at the shocked, terrified faces of those who were close enough to have seen Sela’s soul exit her body.
Still not a single city guard in sight.
Power was telling the king to leave the docks unprotected and having him obey.
Power was knowing when his debtor was going to betray him.
Power was the fear he saw on the faces of those who dared to meet his gaze as he stood over Sela’s body.
Leaving her corpse crumpled on the dock, Teague turned on his heel and walked away.
FOUR
IT HAD BEEN two days since the coronation ball, and Ari still hadn’t found a minute alone with Thad. Instead, she’d been trapped into sessions with the palace seamstress, who was measuring her for her fall wardrobe, afternoon tea with the nobility who’d stayed on at the palace for a few days after the ball before returning to their distant cities, and long discussions with the palace steward about managing the things usually delegated to the queen.
She didn’t know which was worse—the nonstop burden of princessy expectations that were (almost) ruining her appetite or the bright flare of panic that stole her breath and sent her pulse thundering in her ears when she thought about Thad being indebted to the strange man who’d crashed the ball. If she could just do something about it—get to the bottom of whatever was going on and make a plan to deal with it—she’d feel better.
Instead, on the morning of the third day after the ball, Ari found herself seated beside Thad on the royal platform in the palace’s Assembly hall, surrounded by a crowd of royally appointed nobles whose job was to bring their city’s needs to the king.
Judging by the lengthy list of discussion topics the Assembly had submitted to Thad, there was a lot that needed his attention.
Ari could think of something that needed his attention too, and since this was the first time her brother had slowed down long enough to be in the same room with her for more than a few seconds, she was going to make the most of it.
As pages drew the sea-gold curtains to let the morning sun in, and members of the Assembly broke away from their clustered conversational groups and headed toward their assigned seats at the enormous U-shaped table that lined the room, Ari leaned toward Thad.
“Put me on your schedule.”
A frown puckered his brow, and he looked up from the list of discussion topics. “What for?”
Oh please. As if he didn’t know.
“For the talk we need to have.” She gave him a look that dared him to pretend ignorance.
He pretended anyway.
“What talk?”
“Don’t play dumb.” She lowered her voice when she realized that Ajax, the head of Thad’s personal security detail, was standing in earshot just to her brother’s right. “You know exactly what I’m talking about.”
“We don’t need to have a talk right now.” He looked down at the topics on the parchment in front of him. “We have bigger problems.”
“Bigger problems than your debt to a fae who threatened to kill you if you don’t do what he says?” Her voice was bright panic laced with anger. “I don’t think so.”
“Keep your voice down,” he whispered as he pushed the Assembly’s list toward her. “Look at these.”
She glanced at the parchment and then looked back at him. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Did you read any of it?”
“In the half a second I took to look at the thing my brother is trying to use to distract me from the discussion we need to have? No.” She glared at him.
He took a deep breath as if reaching for patience and said quietly, “All right. We’ll have that talk. Soon. But right now I need you to see that our kingdom has bigger problems it needs us to deal with.” He pointed to an item on the list. “The western cities are being raided by bands of what they assume are refugees fleeing the unrest in Akram. They need extra protection.”
She followed his finger as he tapped another item. “Export sales of food remain strong, but our own people are buying less of everything our merchants offer. That means either their coin is going to something else, or they lack confidence in me as a leader and feel the need to save their coin in case I send our economy into ruin.”