The Wish Granter (Ravenspire #2)(85)

It was progress, but Ari was no closer to an answer.

Teague had been gone every day to the trade summit Thad was hosting at the palace. Sebastian had been gone all day as well, working from dawn to dusk on a list of tasks for Teague. Ari suspected Teague was simply finding a way to keep Sebastian and Ari apart in his absence. Even Maarit had been gone. Teague had sent a carriage for her each morning so that the palace physician could care for her since she’d been feeling poorly.

Ari figured the physician would diagnose her with old age and grumpiness.

In Maarit’s absence, a pair of villa guards had been sent indoors to keep an eye on Ari. She’d spent the days baking—chocolate cake, plum torte, butter twists, apple puffs, and fig crepes—while she left the Book of the Fae lying open beneath a cookbook so she could read without raising the guards’ suspicions.

The pages were filled with small, precise handwriting. Reading about the first fairy war—the one that had divided them into Summer and Winter courts—was fascinating, as was the list of royal births and fae gifts bestowed upon favored humans, but she’d yet to find a passage about the birth of a short, pale Wish Granter with a taste for violent power.

In between baking and sneaking a peek at the Book of the Fae, she’d been busy listing her options and trying to come up with a workable plan for stopping Teague.

She had a copy of one of his wish granter contracts ready to study at her first opportunity. With Maarit gone during the day, Ari had sneaked into the old woman’s bedroom, lifted the stolen contract from its hiding place inside the vase, and folded it back into her chemise. She had the Book of the Fae, which she hid inside a soup pot when she wasn’t baking. She had the jar of bloodflower poison that she’d hidden on the spice shelf—one place she was absolutely sure Maarit didn’t even know existed. She had her brother’s spy looking for the truth about Teague’s exile. And she’d memorized the nursery primer poem about the wolf-headed woman who’d left the secret to her monstrous power behind at birth.

Now she needed to see if bloodflower poison actually worked on Teague, or if she was stuck reading the rest of the Book of the Fae while she waited for results from Thad’s spy.

Popping a bite of fig crepe in her mouth, she glanced at the guards, who were sampling the plum torte while a branch from the wall behind them chuffed, alternating between sniffing the torte and the guards. With the guards distracted by the creepy branch, Ari retrieved the jar of bloodflower. She poked holes in the left side of the chocolate cake and poured a small dose of the poison over it. Then, whipping butter and sugar together until she had a bowl of fluffy frosting, she decorated the cake with delicate roses, vines, and thorns, making sure to put the biggest rose over the area that had absorbed the dram of poison.

She didn’t want to eat that piece by mistake.

Pulling out the ingredients for cherry tarts, she checked that the guards were still eating the torte and that the house was still curious about them instead of her, and then she surreptitiously turned the page to read the next section in the Book of the Fae, but it was hard to concentrate. Something about the poem in the nursery primer—the one about the woman with the wolf’s head, bird’s talons, and goat’s hooves—was niggling at her thoughts. She closed her eyes and ran through the rhyme, hoping something would jump out at her. When that failed, she examined her memory of the statue.

Teague kept it in his locked study. It matched a poem in the book Gretel had said she should read if she wanted to unlock the secret of the fae. It had to be connected, but she couldn’t figure out how.

She was deeply engrossed in her thoughts when the wall behind the counter shuddered, and a pair of branches whipped into the air, their nostrils flared as they hovered over the book.

Her mouth went dry as she slowly slid the cookbook back into place and reached for another mixing bowl.

Maybe they hadn’t seen anything—she didn’t even know if they could see.

But if they had, and they had a way of telling Teague, she was going to be in trouble.

One of the branches curled around the mixing bowl, tugging it out of her hands until it hung suspended in midair. The other wrapped around her wrist and pulled her toward the wall. She leaned against the counter, the wall breathing in front of her while the branches dumped the bowl and slithered over the books instead.

She had to assume the house had seen the Book of the Fae. There was only one solution.

Pushing a plate of cherry tarts toward the branches as a momentary distraction, she whipped a dish linen around the Book of the Fae and shoved it into the burlap sack of eggshells and discarded food she’d been planning to bury in the garden for compost.

“Off to bury the rotting food. Who wants to help?” she asked. Her voice was too loud, too bright, but the guards didn’t seem to notice. They escorted her out of the villa, across the back lawn, and into the garden. Without looking at them, she swiftly dumped the contents of the burlap sack into the compost ditch and then turned to hurry back inside.

If the house told Teague about the book, he wouldn’t find it in the kitchen. Of course, he might still find it in the garden, but this was as close to safety as she was going to get.

She’d just have to feed him a slice of poisoned cake before he ever started looking.





THIRTY-EIGHT


THE SUN HUNG low in the sky by the time Maarit returned to drag herself wearily up the stairs and into bed, waving off all attempts at conversation and offers of fresh-baked pastries.