The Wish Granter (Ravenspire #2)(94)

She wasn’t beaten. She refused to be beaten. This was a problem, and all problems had solutions. Instead of focusing on what she didn’t have, she needed to look at what she did.

She had her memory of the poem in Magic in the Moonlight. The one that matched the statue in Teague’s study.

Something about the poem had been tugging at her mind for days, but she’d been distracted by the house coming alive around her, and Maarit and Teague looking over her shoulder, and her research in the Book of the Fae. Now she had nothing but time and a stone cell, so she closed her eyes and examined the poem.

The story said that a werewolf had married a werehawk, and they were very much in love. But years passed without the wolf bearing a child, and she became more and more despondent until finally she refused to eat. On that day, the werehawk made a deal with a powerful devil who agreed to open the wolf’s womb for a price. The wolf became pregnant, but when she delivered her child, both parents were shocked that the baby had the head of a wolf, the talons of a hawk, but the cloven hooves of a devil. In terror and dismay, the wolf tried to eat her child, but the baby possessed the power of all three of her parents, and she destroyed both the wolf and the hawk and left the secret given to her on the day of her birth behind with her parents. Henceforth, she was known as the Devil’s Child, and no one was able to stand against her because no one could name her secret.

Ari picked up each piece of the story and examined it. The connection to Teague might be in the devil who granted the werehawk’s wish, but Teague was a Wish Granter, not a devil. The book made a distinction between the two, so that meant the only logical connection was the secret that no one could name.

A secret, by definition, would be something no one else could name. Not helpful. Gritting her teeth in frustration, Ari slowly looked at every piece again.

A secret no one could name.

A secret given to her on the day of her birth.

What was given to a baby on the day of its birth? A blanket? A bracelet? Something specific to the fae?

A name?

Ari’s skin tingled, and her eyes flew open.

No one could stand against the Devil’s Child because no one knew her name.

Teague came from the isle of the fae. She’d heard the language he used when he spoke his commands over the beasts or his incantation to take her soul. The words were soft and lilting, rolling off the tongue like poetry.

They sounded nothing like the name Alistair Teague.

What if that wasn’t his real name? What if the key to controlling Teague was to learn his true name?

Slowly, she sat up and brushed dirt from the front of her nightdress. Parchment rustled against her skin.

The contract. She’d taken it from Maarit’s room the previous afternoon and hidden it in her chemise so she would have it at hand for her first opportunity to study it.

And because she couldn’t think of a better hiding place after Teague had torn through her bedroom searching for anything that didn’t belong, she’d decided to wear her undergarment beneath her nightdress and keep the contract with her.

“Don’t look very royal to me,” Jacob said from his chair by the door. He waited a beat and then said, “What are you, deaf? Or just stupid?”

Ari ignored him, her fingers still pressed to her chest as a whisper of hope flickered within.

She wasn’t without options. Without plans.

She had a blank contract already signed by Teague.

She had Sebastian, hiding his grief and his fear so that he could be the kind of person he had to be to meet Teague’s demands and keep her safe.

She had the contract, she had Sebastian, she had the idea that she needed Teague’s true name, and she had herself.

She knew how to negotiate. She knew how to talk her way out of things.

And she knew how to solve problems.

Maybe she didn’t have access to the secrets in the Book of the Fae, maybe iron and bloodflower didn’t work on Teague, and maybe she was chained to the wall inside a room with the man who’d scarred Sebastian’s back and left him afraid to be touched.

That wasn’t going to stop her.

Nothing was going to stop her, because she had nothing left to lose. At some point, Teague would decide he was done with Thad’s connections, and would kill her brother. At some point, he would push Sebastian too far—give him something even his devotion to Ari wouldn’t allow him to do—and then with the contract broken, Teague would kill them both.

She was facing the most dangerous evil her kingdom had ever known, and she was going to be the weapon that brought him down.

She would be iron and bloodflower. She would be trickery and deceit.

She would uncover the secret he’d left behind at birth, and she would speak it.

And when she was finished with Teague, there would be nothing left.





FORTY-THREE


SEBASTIAN STOOD OUTSIDE a tiny clay house on the outskirts of Kosim Thalas, his stomach in knots.

Until that morning, Sebastian hadn’t been aware that anyone but Teague himself could collect a soul, but apparently, as with all of Teague’s magic, it was a simple matter of blood contracts. A new contract had to be drawn up giving Sebastian the power to collect soul debts in Teague’s stead. A short while later, Sebastian’s bloody fingerprint was on another contract, and he was armed with a vial of fae magic, an incantation written out on piece of parchment, and a stern warning from Teague that the magic only worked on those who’d signed away their soul, so if Sebastian tried it on Teague himself, it would backfire and kill him instead.