The Wish Granter (Ravenspire #2)(65)
“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 they’d accomplished it.