The Wish Granter (Ravenspire #2)(75)

Sebastian glanced at her, his eyes haunted, and she knew he was feeling the terrible weight of being responsible for her fate. Ari understood all too well how it felt to have the fate of others rest on your decisions, but there was no backing down now. For either of them.

“Agreed,” Sebastian said.

“Excellent.” Teague sat at the table and began packing tobacco into his pipe, his pale fingers working quickly while he stared at Ari. “Now, you and I have some matters to discuss.”

“Do we?” She blinked at him, pressing her trembling hands together beneath the table.

He raised a brow at her, and Ari’s heart thudded heavily against her chest.

Oh, stars, did he already know about Maarit catching her in his study? The creepy monster statue must have told him somehow. She’d have to warn Sebastian about the house the first chance she got. If she survived the conversation with Teague long enough to do so.

Whatever she did, she had to convince him that she wasn’t standing in his way. That she wasn’t trying to keep him from what he wanted. She desperately didn’t want to end up like poor Peder with her throat slit by golden thread magically made from straw.

When she didn’t say anything, Teague snapped his fingers and a thin wisp of flame leaped to life in midair. He leaned forward, put the bowl of his pipe beneath the flame, and puffed a few times until the tobacco caught.

She’d seen him do the same thing a dozen times, and it never got any less creepy.

He took a deep drag and blew a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling. She felt like she had when she’d been the one to accidentally set the gardener’s shed on fire as a girl, and her mother had simply waited her out until the silence became too much for Ari, and she confessed. Her leg bounced up and down, her fingers twisted together and then came apart, and her mouth went dry. She could feel the words swelling in her chest, ready to spill out in a torrent of hasty excuses and desperate explanations.

Sebastian pressed his thigh against hers until her leg stopped moving.

“What have you been doing with yourself while you’ve been here?” Teague asked with implacable expectation in his voice.

Somehow he knew about the study. Maybe Maarit really was fae, and they had some sort of magical mind connection.

Ari needed to spin the situation back to her favor as fast as possible. Keeping her leg pressed against Sebastian’s, she met Teague’s eyes and said, “Most days I’ve been going over your accounts, finding places you can cut out the middlemen and streamline things, or I’ve been borrowing books from your library.” Though all she’d read was the nursery primer, still hoping that somehow Gretel’s hint would pay off with information Ari could actually use against Teague.

“And today?” Teague’s eyes glowed with fury, and Ari’s stomach dropped.

“But today I got sick of Maarit’s awful excuse for cooking. She was kind enough to go to the market to get some things I requested, so I decided I would help her with the housekeeping.”

Warming to the story she was selling, Ari leaned forward and lowered her voice as if worried Maarit, who slept like the dead, would overhear. “I’m sure you’ve noticed that she’s not very capable of keeping up with the housework anymore. The amount of dust on the main level is absurd. It’s like she hasn’t cleaned in a year. It’s nice that you feel a sense of loyalty toward her and want to keep her on staff, but maybe you could put her in charge of a few maids? And also a cook, because, stars know, the stuff she serves is barely edible.”

“So you helped with the housework today?” Teague puffed on his pipe, his gaze unwavering.

Ari met his eyes, her heart pounding, and tried to work a note of contrition into her voice. “I thought I’d at least take care of the dust. I started in the back parlor, and then moved to your study, and then—”

“My study is off-limits.”

She nodded. “I know that now.” Quickly she gave him the same story she’d given Maarit about the tea and the haziness and her inability to remember anything that was said to her after she’d finished the drink.

There was a long silence once Ari finished talking. Teague studied her—it was unbelievably disturbing that he didn’t blink for minutes at a time—his pipe burning unnoticed in his fingers.

Ari couldn’t swallow. Couldn’t look away. Could barely breathe as she waited to see if he believed her or if he was going to kill her the way he’d killed Peder.

Finally, he stood, and even though he was barely tall enough to reach Ari’s shoulder, he seemed larger than life as he leaned toward her, wrapped his cold, pale fingers around her wrist, and smiled as he felt the proof that her heart was racing.

His voice was little more than a whisper. “I have ways of knowing a person’s weakness. Your weakness, Princess Arianna, is that you think you still have secrets, when the truth is that the only one in this room with any secrets left is me.”

His grip tightened until little sparks of pain shot up her arm.

She gritted her teeth to keep from crying out.

“Get up, Princess,” he said. “We’re going to go see if you are telling the truth.”





THIRTY-TWO


HUMANS WERE LIARS—weak and feckless to the very marrow of their bones. The princess was no exception.

He glared at her as he pulled her away from the kitchen table.