The Wish Granter (Ravenspire #2)(66)
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.