Chapter Two
I open my mouth to ask a million questions, but I can’t settle on one.
Luthian offers me his hand. “Come on. You’re soaked to the bone. Let’s get you someplace dry.”
Not knowing what else to do, I reach up for him. The moment my muddy fingertips touch his gloved hand, my vision goes white. I blink it away and find myself in a place I don’t recognize.
The room is small, with deep cerulean walls and black furnishings. Even the fireplace is black, and the scorching blue flame from the hearth casts long, eerie shadows. I suspect that wherever I am, Thrace will not be able to find me, and I am warm and dry.
Warm and dry? I glance down at my hands in alarm. Just seconds before, I was lying in the crook of some tree roots, weighed down by my sopping funeral raiment. Now, silver satin brushes my comfortable skin, and over that, a luxurious robe of dark-blue velvet with a high collar and outrageously puffed sleeves.
There has been no time to change, and I don’t own anything so fine. My usual nightdress is a simple linen shift.
“There.”
I turn in my chair, peeking past the tall wing. Luthian stands framed by an enormous, round window, through which only a brilliant night sky shows. I’m not an expert in constellations, but intuition tells me that, should I study those stars, I will find they aren’t the same ones that shine in the sky above Fablemere.
“Isn’t that so much better?” he asks, striding to the chair opposite mine.
“Y-yes.” I swallow thickly. “Thank you?”
“Refreshment?” He rolls his hand on the end of his wrist, and a goblet appears. Its contents glow like a sapphire lit from within, and glittering metal embellishments cup the glass.
I reach for it, mesmerized, then pull my hand back. “We’re in Faeryland, are we not?”
He nods, the corners of his mouth curling up in mischievous acknowledgement.
“I know better than to eat or drink anything.” But my mouth becomes more parched the longer I stare at the glass.
“You’re here as my guest. I would not trick you into staying forever.” He leans forward and presses the cup into my hand. “Not for lack of wanting. But I can’t, even though you are…”
His eyes rake down my body.
The nightgown is thin. I grip the front of the robe closed with one hand. “Why couldn’t you trick me into staying? Not that I’d prefer it. But why did you even appear to me, at all?”
“The deal I made with your mother.” He waves his fingers at the glass. “You can trust me. You must be thirsty, after your run.”
“You saw me?” I wet my lips before I touch them to the rim of the glass. Whatever is inside smells fruity and sweet and cold, and my sandy throat can’t resist it any longer. I take a huge gulp.
“I knew it would only be a matter of time until the cenere tree drew its namesake,” he says, a lazy, predatory smile growing across his face. “Destiny is a force one cannot ignore.”
“Destiny?” I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, and I’m instantly mortified at my lack of manners. “I’m sorry—”
“It’s nothing,” he assures me. “Your mother told you about your conception, yes?”
“She wished at the cenere tree and was granted a child.”
“She left out an important part of the tale.” He plucks another glass from the air and swirls the liquid inside. “I offered her three wishes. She only used one. The rest pass on to the next in her line.”
I can’t think up any words. I point to my chest.
“Exactly.” He sips from his glass. “As your faery guardian, it is my job to make your two wishes come true.”
Two wishes? Even just one wish is unthinkable. Wishes are rarely granted, and certainly never to unimportant people like me.
“You don’t have to use them today,” he begins. “In fact, I have a proposal—”
I don’t hesitate; I don’t hope, either. Wishes and magic only go so far, and I know the moment I utter the words that my wish can never be. “I wish my mother was alive again.”
Sadness flickers across his face like cold flame. We both know his answer before he speaks it. “Everyone knows that a wish cannot restore life once the spirit leaves this sphere.”
“Then I wish Cadwyn Thrace dead!” I blurt.
“Death?” Luthian blinks at me. “Death, then? Not something more… satisfying?”
“I…” Now that he mentions it, maybe it is a little too simple. “Can I take it back?”
“I didn’t hear a thing,” Luthian says somberly. “But may I offer you an alternate deal?”
I nod, ashamed to have jumped in so quickly to wishing. I’m one of a very lucky few. Wishes don’t happen every day. I need to think carefully, view my requests from every possible angle. Wishes do go wrong.
All it takes is a blink, and Luthian stands beside me, one long-fingered hand walking on its tips from my chin to my collar bones. “You could wish for his death, but I would personally find it too quick. It’s a sentence, not revenge.”
Revenge. The possibility lights a poisoned flame in my heart.
“You could wish for power. You could wish for riches,” he goes on.
“Power comes with riches,” I counter.
His beautiful mouth grins wide and he’s close enough that I feel his breath against my cheek when he speaks. “You’re clever. That cleverness means you won’t choose incorrectly.”
Luthian crouches in front of me with the long-limbed grace of a spider. “Wishes are powerful. And rare. Why would you waste them on something so petty as revenge? Or riches, which will only make you more attractive to your enemy?”
I get the distinct feeling that he’s trying to pull some fae trickery. “Why should you be so set upon me retaining my wishes? So that you don’t have to grant them?”
“My, but you are like your mother, aren’t you?” He holds my gaze for a long, silent moment, then rises and paces back to the window. “I know of a way that you could keep your wishes until you truly need them.”
“And I know that a faery would never make such a deal without a reason.” My mother taught me well. She was teasing, of course, when she would hold a daisy out to my chubby, child’s hand and croon, “Come and give me a kiss for it.” There were other lessons, later, but those first games laid a foundation for my distrust of her kind.
“My mother taught me that no deal with her kind comes without a price.”
Luthian doesn’t deny it. “Smart. But ultimately, not something you need worry about with this deal. I will still owe you two wishes when our venture is complete. But you’re right; I’m not doing this out of sentimentality or altruism. I stand to gain quite a lot if you agree to my proposal. But so do you.”
The way he stares into my eyes, as if he can push my acquiescence from some precipice and into the pit of his desires, unsettles me. I hear a voice quite like my mother’s, urging me to reject him, to leave Faeryland and never be tempted back.
But I’m too curious. That’s her fault, too. “What do you stand to gain?”
Perhaps it’s a fae trick, but when he turns back to me, there is an earnestness in his expression that wasn’t there before. “I have fallen out of favor with my court. I plan to use you to get back into favor.”
“Be more specific.” For all I know, he could plan to present me trussed and roasted at a banquet with an apple in my mouth. He would still owe me the wishes.
“The king has two sons. I loathe the eldest, but the second is a dear friend of mine. He will be my ticket to return to the heights I commanded previous to the… indiscretion that resulted in my banishment.”
His hesitation sparks my curiosity. “And what indiscretion did you commit?”
He thinks for a moment. “The same indiscretion that resulted in the queen losing her head.”
I’m unfamiliar with the faery courts and their kings and queens, but it isn’t difficult to infer his meaning. “What have I to offer this prince?”
“What don’t you have to offer him?” Luthian approaches me again. “Have you no looking glasses in your home? Have you never seen your smooth, milky skin? Your copper-kissed hair? Have you never noticed the stares when you pass people in the village?”
“So, I’m to seduce him?” I cut directly to the point; Mother also warned me about flattery. “I’m so sorry to disappoint you, but I haven’t the skill for it.”
“Does a sculptor choose stone that’s already been chiseled into perfection? Or does he find the raw material that will help him accomplish his artistic vision?” Luthian counters.
“I’m to be your raw material? A stone you can sculpt into the perfect seductress, capable of altering the destiny of a kingdom?” I laugh, but it dies it in my throat when he doesn’t laugh with me.
“That is exactly what I’m proposing.” He offers me his hand. The goblet in mine vanishes. I slip my fingers into his and he draws me close, close, closer, until I feel the warmth of his skin through our clothes. “But you cannot be stone. If you accept what I’m offering, you must yield to me. Completely. Every request. Every command. You will acquiesce to me in all things and deny me nothing.”
“You still haven’t said, plainly, what you’re proposing.” I hope he doesn’t think I haven’t noticed.
“I want Prince Cassan to be king. He will be when all of my plans fall into place. And you will rule at his side, as his queen. And with that power—”
He doesn’t need to finish. I know exactly what I will do with such power. “I can crush Cadwyn Thrace.”
I can make him far more miserable as his queen than any one wish ever could. I am not inventively cruel enough to think of a wish that could inflict a satisfactory amount of pain upon him, but given time to slowly torture him, keep him alive, heal him and then break him over and over until my pain is satisfied…
The thought is delicious enough to make me shiver.
“And you’ll still have your wishes. Should you need them.” Luthian strokes the backs of his fingers down my throat. “All you must do is surrender to me, totally. Give me all of your trust, swear you will do exactly as I say, no matter the request, and most importantly, you must drop every inhibition in pursuit of this power. Can you do that?”
I imagine Cadwyn Thrace on his knees in chains. It’s almost pleasurable enough to make me swoon.
Still, “That’s an awful lot to ask. You’re basically asking me to give up my free will.”
“It’s exactly what I’m asking,” he agrees. “Until the crown is placed upon your head, you will be entirely mine to command.”
I hold his stare for a long moment, the only sound the silver fire crackling in the hearth.
“Nothing without a price,” he whispers, in a voice that could turn sunlight to ice. And he extends one graceful hand, waiting for me to clasp it in agreement.
A crown can’t coax winter blossoms from beneath the snow or a heal a wounded sap-sparrow’s wing. I’m not meant for that type of power. But I can see myself in a crown, see Thrace’s blood running over my hands.
But I wonder, “I’m human. Why would Cassan deign to speak to me, let alone make me his queen?”
Luthian’s hand remains open to me. “You needn’t worry about the details. Of all the fae courts, his is the least concerned with such trivial matters.”
I reach forward. Our fingers almost touch.
I snatch mine back. “You never told me which court.”
Luthian sighs as if caught at some innocent mischief. “It makes a difference?”
“It does. My mother was cast out of the Court of Seasons. I won’t dishonor her memory by groveling for their approval.” I don’t know why she was cast out, but I don’t need to know. They didn’t deserve her, and they don’t deserve me.
“The Court of Pleasure and Torment.” He flexes his hand, silently urging me to take it.
My heart stops between beats. It refuses to go further down this mad path with me. The Court of Pleasure and Torment. The infamous kingdom of sensuality and depravity, where the fae indulge their every perversion and sick desire.
“Give me all of your trust, swear you will do exactly as I say, and most importantly, you must drop every inhibition in pursuit of this power.”
My tongue thick with fear, I ask, “Do you swear an oath upon every last drop of your fae magic that I will not be killed?”
His dark brows rise. “Killed? Is that how far you’re willing to go for your revenge? The only line too far to cross is death?”
“Do you swear?” I repeat. Thrace murdered my mother. I would shove him from a cliff and fall with him if it were the only way to assure his death. I would drink from a poison cup just to induce him to do the same.
There is no line too far. But I can’t let a faery know that.
“I swear it,” Luthian answers in the space of a blink. “Surrender to me, and I will deliver a crown and two untouched wishes to you on a platter, with room to spare for your murdering stepfather’s head. But be warned: if you enter into this endeavor with me and you do not see it through, I will find someone more deserving of your wishes. And you will be left with nothing but ash.”
There will be consequences , my conscience screams. It sounds unnervingly like my mother. But even her voice can’t drown out the exhilarating, laughing hatred in my heart at the thought of Thrace’s future suffering.
Judging from his smile, I think Luthian can hear it, too.
Nothing without a price.
I place my hand in his.
“We have a deal.”