The Wish Granter (Ravenspire #2)(91)

Her lungs burned, begging for air. She clawed at his arm, but he only tightened his hold. Tiny sparks danced at the edge of her vision, and her head spun. Vaguely she heard the sound of a door opening, and then he was dragging her across a stone floor.

“Don’t move,” he barked as he tossed her onto a thin mattress and looped a chain around her ankle before fastening it to a hook embedded in the wall behind her. Pocketing the key, he returned to the door, slammed it shut, and then slid the room’s single chair against the wall and sat down facing her.

Ari gulped in deep breaths of air, but it still felt like she was suffocating.

Cleo was gone.

Her best friend. Her sister in all the ways that counted.

Gone.

Somewhere inside the yawning pit of grief that was swallowing her, a spark of anger flickered, but she couldn’t reach it. Her thoughts spun away from her, leaving her with only the terrible understanding that Teague had taken Cleo from her, and there was nothing Ari could do to change it.

Turning her back on Jacob, she curled into a ball on the thin mattress and cried until she was empty.





FORTY-ONE


FOR THE FIRST time in weeks, Sebastian woke without the smell of cooking breakfast in the air. Strange that Ari wasn’t already downstairs, making pastries or bacon or whatever delicious thing she felt like eating this morning. Frowning, he swung out of bed, washed quickly, dressed, and headed to the kitchen. As he passed by the stairs that led to the princess’s room, he glanced up.

Her door was open.

His heart thudded heavily in his chest, and he quickened his pace as the sense of quiet that shrouded the house pressed against him.

Where was Ari?

He rounded the corner, entered the kitchen, and pulled up short. Teague sat at the table, a sheet of parchment in front of him, his pipe clenched between his teeth.

Ari was nowhere to be seen.

“Busy day ahead,” Teague said.

Sebastian’s scars tingled at the malice in Teague’s voice.

He glanced around the kitchen once more. No skillets on the stove. No mixing bowls with pastry dough clinging to their insides. No flour on the counter or the floor.

Ari hadn’t been here.

“Where is the princess?” he asked, his steady voice belying the sudden rush of panic that churned through him.

Teague puffed on his pipe and regarded Sebastian for a long moment. Finally, he said, “Today is the day we see where your loyalties lie.”

Fear was making it hard to breathe, but Sebastian slowly pulled out a chair opposite to Teague and sat down. He wasn’t sure what game they were playing, but it was his move.

“I thought I’d proven my loyalty to you already. I proved it before you even asked for it.” He reached for one of the apples Teague always kept in a bowl on the table and took a bite.

Teague regarded him in silence for another moment. “Did you prove your loyalty to me? Or did you prove that you’d do anything to stay by the princess’s side?”

Sebastian swallowed the mouthful of apple and shrugged. “Since you own the princess for the rest of her life, the distinction is hardly important. I do what you ask, and I get to live here with her. I can be loyal to you both without a conflict.”

Teague smiled. “I’m afraid that is no longer true.”

The residue of apple on his tongue turned bitter as panic tumbled through Sebastian. “What do you mean?”

His fists were clenched, but he couldn’t make himself uncurl them. Couldn’t make himself take a deep breath around the vise that was squeezing his chest.

Where was Ari?

“Jacob wanted to kill her, you know.” Teague folded up the parchment and leaned across the table. “Very bloodthirsty sort, your father. But you already knew that, didn’t you?”

He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think as his scars prickled and burned and the crashing sea of panic tore at him from the inside out.

It took every shred of self-control he possessed to keep his voice steady as he asked, “What does my father have to do with anything?”

Teague smiled. “Remarkable how alike you both are—so ruthless, so focused—and yet so different. You keep your temper, you think long-term, and you know how to organize and run a business without having to resort to using a whip to do it. That’s why I’ve been happy with my choice to make you my Kosim Thalas collector, even though I’d originally planned to offer it to your father.”

“He’s in Balavata—”

“Hardly.” Teague shoved the folded parchment into Sebastian’s hand and stood. “I recalled him the moment we found Daan’s body. It takes a while for word to travel between kingdoms, of course, but he’s here now.”

Sebastian looked wildly around the room as if his father was going to jump out of one of the cupboards, whip already lashing toward his son’s back. “Where?” His voice was a breathless shadow of its former self, but it was the best he could push past the suffocating noose of panic that was closing in on him. His scars burned, sharp jolts of phantom pain searing his skin until he could hardly stand to have his tunic touching them.

Teague brushed his coat smooth and stepped toward the door. “He’s out in the cage with the princess.”

Sebastian’s chest constricted. He shoved his chair away from the table and stood. His father—the monster who was so loyal to Teague that he’d beaten his oldest son to death on his boss’s orders—was locked in a room with Ari.