Lanterns already burned in the main level of the house as the gloom of twilight filled the sky outside the windows. Ari stood in the parlor at the base of the stairs, trying to figure out where to find the kitchen, even as she watched the walls, floors, and anything else made of wood with a close eye. Plush chairs covered in evergreen velvet flanked bookcases that stretched from the floor to the ceiling along one wall. The other wall held curio shelves full of fairy statuettes dancing in grotesquely beautiful poses, carved ivory instruments, and sculptures of beasts that looked at once familiar and terrifyingly strange. Everything was covered with a thick layer of dust, but still the effect of the green rug and chairs, the wood-covered walls, and the pale yellow ceiling made her feel like she was trapped inside a fae forest.
Her pulse jerked unsteadily as one of the statuettes slowly pivoted until it could look Ari in the eyes.
The princess hugged herself and scanned the room for a way out. From the north side of the parlor, a hall bisected the back of the villa with doors leading to rooms on either side. In the other direction, the parlor’s doorway led to what looked like a formal dining room, which meant the kitchen would be close by.
Ari started in that direction, but froze when Teague’s polished marble voice echoed from the hallway behind her.
“Princess Arianna, I’ve been expecting you for some time. I’m told you woke nearly an hour ago.”
She turned, and the room seemed to quiver and stretch wider than it had been a moment earlier. Her voice sounded small as she asked, “Who told you that?”
He stepped into the parlor, his immaculate clothing pressed to perfection, his alabaster skin glowing in the lantern light, and smiled coldly. “The house, of course. It’s been months since it woke up. I never know what will set it off, but it seems to find humans interesting.”
Ari wanted to deliver a fabulously sarcastic reply, but the fairy statuette was slowly spinning, its face split with a maniacal smile, and several of the monstrous sculptures were blinking as they watched her.
Teague beckoned her toward him, and she moved forward on feet that felt as though she’d kept them in the frigid winter waters of the Chrysós for too long. Another twig unfurled from the closest wall and hovered over her head. She flinched and stepped aside before it could sniff her.
Teague’s laugh was cruel. “Best to let the fae wood get acquainted with you, or it will never leave you alone.”
“Fae wood?” She shuddered as the twig dipped down and swept its leaves over her cheek. Tiny little puffs of air tickled her skin, and she was swamped with the scent of damp forest floors and sunlit treetops.
“The house is built entirely out of trees I had chopped down on Llorenyae and then shipped here. It wakes when it wants to, sleeps when it wants to, and can be tricky if it decides it doesn’t like you.” He sounded sure the house was going to despise her.
Ari decided the feeling was mutual.
Working to make her voice sound as normal as possible, she said, “If my bed swallows me in the middle of the night, Thad won’t introduce you to any of his allies.”
Teague’s smile disappeared. “Foolish girl. Only the house is fae wood—floors, ceilings, walls. Everything else is from Súndraille.”
Ari eyed the curio shelves as another statuette smiled, sending a crack through its plaster face. “And those?”
“Keepsakes from my homeland. Come along, Princess. You’re needed in the library.”
Without giving her a chance to respond, he gripped her arm firmly and guided her along the hallway to the second door on the left. The library was lit by lanterns resting along the middle of an enormous table that stretched down the center of half the room. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves crowded every wall, though some of the shelves had been used to store weapons in glass cases, decanters of wine, or more creepy relics from Llorenyae.
Teague turned Ari away from the table, and she found a sitting area in the other half of the library with six upholstered green chairs surrounding a plain wooden spinning wheel that sat beside a basket of hay. A man huddled in one of the chairs, his wrists bound by rope. Another thick rope was lodged between his teeth and tied behind his head, making it impossible for him to clearly speak.
“Have a seat, Princess.” Teague motioned toward the chair beside the bound man.
“Why?” she whispered as the man’s eyes sought hers and begged for something—for help? for mercy? Whatever he needed, she had no power to give it.
“Because you’re here to ensure that I expand my business interests across the kingdoms.” His feral golden eyes held hers. “And I’d like you to see what happens to someone who gets in my way instead. Object lessons are so much more effective when they’re delivered face-to-face.”
She shook her head, but the look on Teague’s face turned her knees to jelly, and she collapsed in the chair beside the captive man. He made a noise in the back of his throat, but Ari couldn’t bear to look at him. Instead, she stared at Teague as he sat at the spinning wheel and picked up a few long pieces of straw. Pressing the straw against the leader yarn, which was already threaded and attached to the bobbin, he adjusted the tension knobs and began treadling. The flyer spun quickly, and the straw twisted. Ari’s mouth dropped open as instead of straw, the bobbin began collecting a spool of glittering gold thread as thick as a candlewick.
When the last bit of straw had been turned into gold thread, Teague stood, removed the bobbin, and looked at the man. “I didn’t ask for much, did I?”
The man made a strangled noise and jerked against the ropes that bound his wrists.
Teague circled the man’s chair and began unspooling the thread.
“It was a very simple transaction, Peder. I offered fair market value for your shop, didn’t I?”
Ari’s pulse raced as the man shook his head and tried to speak around the thick rope in his mouth.
“Oh, I know,” Teague said softly as he stretched the length of golden thread taut between his hands, his eyes on the back of Peder’s head. “You didn’t want to sell. It’s been in your family for generations. Very touching, except that I wanted it.”
In one quick movement, Teague dropped his hands in front of Peder’s neck and pulled the thread back against the man’s throat. Peder bucked and screamed around his rope gag, but Teague yanked the thread like he was hauling on a horse’s reins and it bit deep into the man’s skin.
Ari’s stomach heaved, and she lurched out of the chair and toward the library’s door as Peder made an awful wet gurgling noise, and Teague said in his cold, elegant voice, “No one defies me and lives.”
She escaped the library and rushed down the hall, through the parlor and dining room, and finally into the kitchen, where, thank the stars, the walls weren’t breathing and there weren’t any creepy fae relics to stare at her. Bile burned the back of her throat, and she scooped water from the sink into her mouth with shaking hands.
Teague had promised an object lesson for those who got in his way. Those who defied him.
He’d delivered.
Terror blazed through her, stark and unrelenting, and she clung to the sink to keep from collapsing onto the floor.
Teague would kill her if she tried to stop his plans.
But even as fear shuddered through her, she thought of Thad, sitting on a throne bought with blood. She thought of Peder dying because he didn’t want to sell his shop. She thought of the seven kingdoms she’d offered up to Teague as leverage to save her brother’s soul, and she knew.
Teague would destroy her if he caught her trying to ruin him.
She had to do it anyway.
TWENTY-EIGHT
IT HAD BEEN five days since Ari had arrived at Teague’s villa. Five days of jumping at shadows because she never knew which part of the house might come alive next. Five days of eating the tiny, plain meals that Maarit cooked and then searching Teague’s extensive collection of books for anything that might give her a clue about who had exiled him from Llorenyae and how t
hey’d accomplished it.
Five days of aching for the life she’d had before, as Teague gave her ledgers and contracts to peruse with the unyielding expectation that she’d find places for him to improve his margins in Balavata even as he began collecting debtors from the Súndraillian nobility in residence at the palace where Teague spent every morning.
And she did ache for her former life. The fae magic in the tea Maarit had given her had healed Ari’s injuries, but nothing could heal the loneliness that hurt with every breath she took.
She looked warily at her bedroom walls as she pulled on a long yellow dress and draped a delicate gold chain around her waist. The room had seemed uninterested in her since her first day there, but she couldn’t relax. Couldn’t stop listening for the whisper of breathing or the damp scrape of a fae tree’s tongue on the soles of her shoes.
Five days, and she was no closer to figuring out how to destroy Teague, save Thad, and get back to the palace and her loved ones. The answer wasn’t just going to fall into her lap. She had to work for it.
She washed her face in the basin and quickly pulled her hair into a bun, securing it with a trio of hairpins. Her shutters were thrown open as they were every morning—it was unsettling to think that Maarit must come into the room before Ari awakened—but today’s sea breeze was a slap of damp, chilly air that heralded the approach of a storm.
Ari moved to the window and shivered as she gazed at the choppy gold waters and the purple-gray clouds that pressed low against the horizon. A pair of Teague’s guards patrolled the edges of the property, but Ari ignored them. There would be another pair on patrol during the day and the watch would double at night, but they never approached the villa itself. As the first raindrops splashed against the ground, she hugged her arms around herself and let herself wonder where Sebastian was.
Five days, and she hadn’t seen a single sign that he’d followed her. That he was watching over her.
She’d been sure that he would—that when he’d held her gaze in the midst of the ballroom’s carnage and mouthed “I’ll find you,” he’d do it. Sebastian didn’t say things he didn’t mean. She’d catch herself looking out of windows in hope of seeing him coming toward the villa entrance. Each time the road was empty, and each time her hope sank a little lower. She didn’t realize she was crying until the first tear traced a scalding path along the coolness of her cheek.
Something whispered along her arm, and she jerked back as a branch unfurled from the windowsill and chuffed against her skin as if it could smell her. Another branch whipped out from the wall beside her, wrapped around her waist, and firmly pushed her back toward the windowsill again.
Ari held her breath, her heart pounding, as the first branch sniffed her cheek and then slithered toward her mouth. She pressed her lips in a thin, hard line and drew in a long, shuddering breath as the rough bark brushed her mouth and then scraped over her cheek, a wooden tongue licking up her tears.
It was over just as suddenly as it had begun, and in seconds the branches had become one with the wall and windowsill again. She wrapped her arms around her chest, her knees shaking, but she didn’t move away.
The house hadn’t hurt her. It was creepy, yes, but maybe it was more benign than Teague had led her to believe. She needed to talk it over with Sebastian. She hadn’t realized how much she’d depended on his friendship until it was out of reach. She wanted to tell him about the house. About the straw that Teague had turned into a weapon of gold thread. About the nightmares that flooded her sleep until she woke with her own screams ringing in her ears. She wanted to sit beside his comforting stillness and spill every thought until she’d been cleansed of the terror and the loneliness. Until she could see clearly what to do next.
The rain swept down in curtains of misty gray that blurred the landscape, a barrier that seemed to cut Ari off from the rest of the world. She closed her shutters and turned away.
There was no point in dwelling on how alone she felt without Sebastian. She had a monster to destroy, and she couldn’t wait around for help that might never come.
She’d gained Teague’s permission to borrow some books from his library to pass time in the evenings, and had been delighted to find Magic in the Moonlight: A Nursery Primer on the shelves, though she’d been careful to take other books as well so it wouldn’t look like she was focused on tales of the fae. So far, nothing had come of it, though she’d studied it every night. If there was information about Teague’s weaknesses somewhere in the villa, Ari hadn’t found it.
The problem was that Ari was never truly alone. On her second day at the villa, Teague had given her a small office beside the library so she could look over his ledgers and assess how well his current contracts might perform in other kingdoms. She’d taken her time with it, working meticulously while she waited for a chance to be alone, but the chance never came.
She didn’t care about the guards who patrolled the property, but Maarit and Teague were a different issue. One of them was nearly always underfoot. Teague left the villa early for business each day, but Maarit spent her mornings popping into Ari’s office regularly to “check on her,” which Ari figured was a euphemism for “report problems to Teague.” The housekeeper took an hours-long nap after lunch and ate dinner in her rooms, but it didn’t matter because Teague was often home in the afternoons and evenings, watching Ari like a cat toying with a mouse.
To uncover whatever Teague was hiding about his past on Llorenyae, Ari was going to have to find a way to get Maarit out of the house during the morning.
Leaving her room, Ari walked briskly to the back staircase that led down to the kitchen, careful to avoid touching the bannister in case it woke. If she was going to start aggressively going after Teague, she was going to need a decent breakfast. None of that yogurt and dry toast nonsense. This required meat and at least two pastries.
She entered the kitchen, and there was a flash of movement at the corner of her eye. Turning, she found Maarit standing by the sink, a plate and cup in her withered hands.
“What are you doing in here?” Maarit demanded. “I always bring your breakfast.”
“Not anymore.” Ari moved toward the pantry and began assembling ingredients. “I’ll cook for myself. I’ll cook for you and for Teague too, if you’d like.”
“You can’t just decide to— What are you doing with those plum preserves? Those are for holidays only!”
“Not anymore.” Ari hugged the preserves close to her chest in case Maarit decided to try taking them from her and hauled out a sack of flour, a clay jar of butter, and some salt.
Maarit reached her side much faster than Ari thought a woman her age ought to be able to move and blocked her progress toward the counter. “The boss likes those preserves.”
“Then I’ll make him some more. It’s not hard. But I’m done eating yogurt and dry toast. Seriously, what is the point of having all this butter if you aren’t going to use it?” She stepped around Maarit and placed the ingredients on the counter except the preserves. She was hanging on to those. “Now, please tell me you have bacon or sausage.”
Maarit shook her head.
“Then let me go to the market to get some,” Ari said as she opened cupboards searching for a bowl and a rolling pin.
“So that’s what this is about.” Maarit’s voice was cold.
“Excuse me?” Ari blinked at her.
“You think I’m going to fall for your tricks and let you out so you can run away.” Her eyes flashed with anger. “I had a feeling you’d try something like this soon enough.”
Ari dumped the bowl and rolling pin onto the counter beside the flour and turned on Maarit. “Where am I going to run? You tell me that, because I’d love to hear it. Teague is fae, and the stars only know what kind of magic he’s capable of. All he has to do is say one more word, and he ends my very existence. I’m stuck here, and I’m going to make the best of it. And that means I’m going to bake some pastries with Teague’s favorite plum preserves,
and, by all that’s sacred, it means I am going to eat some meat.”
Maarit stared at her for a long moment. Ari was getting used to the older woman’s shrewd, calculating looks, but that didn’t mean she had to stand there and take it on an empty stomach. Turning away, Ari measured flour, butter, salt, and water into her bowl and began making dough.
Finally, Maarit said, “I’ll go to the market and get sausage.”
“And bacon.”
“Anything else?” Maarit’s voice was loaded with sarcasm, but Ari didn’t care.
“Yes. I want the ingredients to make chocolate cake.”
An hour later, Maarit wrapped a scarf over her head and braved the storm to head to market. Not that taking one of Teague’s carriages was a hardship, but still. The older woman had kept her word, and Ari was grateful. Not just because sausage and bacon were (finally!) going to be a part of her morning routine again, but because Ari now had the opportunity to start looking for anything she could use against Teague.
Fortified with plum tarts and a slice of melon, Ari started exploring, careful to check each room to see if the walls were breathing or the knickknacks were watching her before she did anything that could look like snooping. The door to Teague’s personal quarters on the third floor was locked, and she was terrified that if she managed to pick the lock, the rooms inside would be awake and waiting to either alert Teague to her presence or pin her to a wall until he returned.
The second floor was a collection of ordinary rooms—Ari’s and Maarit’s among them. None of them seemed to hide any secrets, although Maarit’s had a sweet, musty scent that reminded Ari of Cleo’s grandmother.
That left the main floor of the villa. The rooms were all decorated in Teague’s preferred shades of misty green and gold. With its dark wood floors and pale yellow ceilings, moving through the main level felt like walking through a forest. There were more strange dust-covered knickknacks scattered about every room—painted vases with fairy dancers who appeared to change positions depending on which side of the vase you were on, opaque squares of glass with runes of gold melted onto their surface, and wax sculptures of fantastical creatures that both intrigued and repelled Ari. In the hallway that bisected the back half of the villa, behind a thick tapestry that depicted some sort of fairy feast, Ari found a long, narrow box set back into a hole in the wall, but when she opened the box, there was nothing but the velvet-lined outline of a pipe inside.