Her trembling fingers closed around the square of parchment beneath her neckline as she said, “You’re nothing but a monster throwing a temper tantrum because a human got the best of you.”
He came for her, closing the distance between them so fast she couldn’t do anything but put her hands out as if to try to stop him as he collided with her and sent them both to the floor.
“Ari!” Sebastian’s voice was hoarse as he began crawling toward them.
“Princess Arianna,” Teague whispered, smiling his cold, awful smile. “You belong to me, now.”
She closed her hand around his bloody fingers, the contract pressed between them, and a jolt of power wrapped the parchment in brilliant strands of light.
Matching his smile with one of her own, Ari said, “No, Teague. You belong to me.”
FIFTY-ONE
ARI HELD TEAGUE’S gaze as strands of light danced over the folded-up piece of parchment lodged between their hands. He grabbed her shoulder, his fist raised.
“Stop,” she said.
His fist, already moving toward her face, jerked as if he’d plowed it into a wall. Shaking with fury, he snarled, “What have you done, you miserable little human?”
Ari climbed to her feet, contract in hand. “That’s no way to talk to your new master.”
Teague’s eyes glowed as he watched her walk past him and crouch beside Sebastian. “I have buried hundreds of your kind for lesser crimes against me, and I will bury hundreds more,” he said.
Ari wrapped her arms around Sebastian, held him through another coughing fit, and then helped him to his feet. Sebastian laced his fingers through hers, and together they turned to face Teague.
His lips peeled back in a snarl. “You have no idea who you’re dealing with.”
“Then tell me,” Ari said.
Teague froze.
Ari took a step forward, Sebastian right beside her. She held Teague’s gaze and said, “Alistair Teague, tell me your birth name.”
His eyes widened, and the cords of his neck stood out as he clamped his lips together. His pale cheeks reddened, and his chest heaved.
“You cannot refuse me,” Ari said quietly. “I own your total obedience. Those are the terms of our contract.”
His smile was slicked with desperation, and every word sounded as if he was forcing it past the name he refused to speak. “If those are the terms, then you have no need of my name.”
“And if the contract burns or disintegrates in water? If you find a way to trick someone into destroying it or killing me?” Ari shook her head. “I want your birth name.”
He gnashed his teeth and tore at his clothes, his pipe falling unheeded to the floor.
“Tell me your birth name.” Her tone was hard and unforgiving. “Now.”
His body shook, and he arched his back. Clamping his hands over his mouth, he tried to stop himself from speaking, but the terms of his contract were absolute.
The word seemed to swell in the back of his throat, a hum of noise that became a roar as it moved to the tip of his tongue. He threw back his head, and in a voice of wild forests and moonlit magic he cried, “Rumpelstiltskin!”
He shuddered and glared at her as his name echoed off the walls. After a long silence, he whispered, “I suppose you’re going to banish me from Súndraille now.”
Ari locked eyes with him. “Banishment is the least of your worries. Stand there, harm no one, and be quiet until I tell you that you can speak.”
If hateful looks could drop a princess where she stood, Ari would’ve joined Maarit on the floor. Turning away from Teague (she couldn’t quite think of him as Rumpelstiltskin), she stepped into Sebastian’s embrace and held on tight.
“You saved me,” she whispered.
“I just did what you would’ve done. I talked fast, made an offer he couldn’t refuse, and then put your own plan into place,” he said, but there was something dark and grief stricken in his voice.
She pulled back and framed his face with her hands, studying his eyes. He looked haunted—hollowed out and weary in a way that reminded her of Thad as he told her he couldn’t bear to look at himself in the mirror.
“Tell me,” she said, and he did.
She listened as he explained how Teague could possess a vessel once he owned the soul, and how the fae had planned to possess her. How Sebastian had argued until Teague agreed to restore Ari’s soul before it was too late, but only if Sebastian brought him one hundred souls he had no right to take.
“I did it,” Sebastian said, his shoulders bowed as if the weight of those one hundred souls was crushing him. “I tricked his employees into signing contracts and then took their souls because Teague had to be stopped, and your plan was our best chance.”
He closed his eyes. “I couldn’t see another way. I couldn’t trick him into obeying me because I didn’t have a contract filled out. The only way to sneak one out of the study was to demand that I get to take your body with me, but if I did that, the only guarantee that I would ever see Teague face-to-face again was if I offered something he couldn’t possibly refuse.”
“Sebastian,” she said, and waited until he opened his eyes and looked at her. “Thank you.”
She tried to put everything into those two little words. Her gratitude for a chance to grow old and try new foods and ride a dragon. Her respect for the courage it took to face down a monster alone and do the unspeakable because he could see that sacrificing one hundred people was the cost of saving the world from Teague. And her grief that he’d had to make that choice and walk that road alone.
He leaned into her, buried his fists in the back of her dress, and whispered, “Their blood is on my hands, Ari. We have to make Teague put their souls back.”
“We will.”
She turned toward Teague, who stood watching them with hate seeping from every pore.
“Do you have to be next to a body to return the soul? Or can you do it from here?”
Teague shrugged.
Sebastian reached him in three steps, wrapped his hands around Teague’s throat, and lifted him off the ground. “You will answer clearly, or I will do things to you that would make even my father flinch.”
“That’s all right, Sebastian,” Ari said softly. “If I order him to, Rumpelstiltskin will destroy his own body, one piece at a time.”
Teague glared as Sebastian set him down, but there was fear lurking in his eyes now.
Ari moved in front of him. “Can you restore the souls from a distance? Answer me clearly, or I will have you break off your own fingers one at a time.”
Which was a disgusting thought. Ari was half proud, half worried that she’d thought of it, but one look at Teague’s face told her that her threat was effective.
“I can restore them from a distance,” he said, his voice an ice storm of rage.
Sebastian pulled the glittering vial of souls from Teague’s pocket and opened it. “Send them back,” he said.
Teague spat at him.
“Send. Them. Back.” Ari crossed her arms over her chest and glared at Teague.