Chapter 10 Andar
Isaddled the horses and strode away, intending to check the ice castle for anything the queen left behind, but a wave of light-headed nausea made me throw my hands out to my sides for balance. When the world stopped tilting, I ran one hand through my hair and rested the other on my stomach.
The queen watched me sway and raised a brow. “Suffering from a lack of nutrients?”
I ground my teeth. I was not weak. I refused to admit to being wrong about the need for food last night.
The queen sighed and waved her hand, collapsing the castle and then smothering the debris that attempted to splash up.
As the ice settled, a crystal table and a winged armchair rose from the ground in front of me.
Their forms appeared in wrought detail, edges carved with leaves and curling vines, but the entire structures glittered with icy crystals.
She pointed at the crystalline furniture. “Sit down. I’ll get you something.”
I obeyed, but only because I risked collapsing on the ground if I didn’t rest. The world was not slanting under me anymore, but I felt light-headed.
And my stomach was not settled. I leaned my forearms on the cold table and turned my attention inward.
Magic still rose to my command, and I directed it into the table and chair I sat on, rearranging the invisible structures of the icy crystals into solid wood.
The power to manipulate matter still responded to my thoughts—my natural fiery fae magic controlled the magic I’d collected and studied for centuries—but something about my body was not working correctly.
The queen set a cup made from ice on the table in front of me. Inside, a faint floral scent rose from a pale pink liquid. Was she trying to poison me?
As if reading my thoughts, her lips pressed together in a line before she said, “It’s not poison. Drink it.”
But a drink could hurt a fae in more ways than poison. “Will it allow you to control me?”
She scoffed. “No. We’re—” She glanced away. “Traveling companions. We’ve already made a bargain, but I can’t feed you if you pass out from a lack of food.”
I swirled the fluid around the cup. “What is it?”
She tipped her chin at the plum trees on the edge of the meadow. “Plum blossoms steeped in water. The simple tea should help your stomach calm. It should also improve your mood.”
I tipped my chin to look up at her. “My mood is perfectly fine.”
Her lips twitched into an amused smile. “Your mood is perfectly sour. I’ve given you the freedom you begged for yesterday, and you haven’t even thanked me.
You don’t trust the tea I made you, despite the fact that I bargained to provide food.
And, you refuse to admit you were wrong about needing food, even though you’re so weak you can hardly stand. ”
Because admitting I was wrong would be admitting weakness. And I was not weak.
But perhaps her other points were valid.
I clenched a fist under the table and swallowed a sip of tea.
I hadn’t allowed anyone to prepare food or drink for me since I’d left my island, and swallowing her concoction took an enormous amount of will power—because she was right.
I did not trust her. But I did not want her to see that weakness either.
After a second sip, I faced her again. A satisfied smirk had landed on her pretty face, and I shook my head. “You know you’re trouble, don’t you?” Trouble that elicited emotions that would interrupt my plans for revenge.
Trouble that had made me capable of seeking that revenge for the first time in centuries.
“And thank you,” I added, “for freeing me from the lamp.” I could give her that much satisfaction, even if I had manipulated her into doing it.
I intended to protect her as long as we were together, and that might as well apply to her emotions.
If she needed gratitude for her role in my freedom, it cost me nothing.
Even the strongest fae were grateful for the help they received from others.
Especially if that help cost the other a rather powerful wish.
She tapped the wooden table. “You’re not immune to the effects of the cold anymore?”
I sipped her drink again. Would this be admitting a weakness?
No, any summer fae would prefer a wooden table to one made of ice. “I am not.” I tapped the table next to her fingers. “Fortunately, I can transform any material into another with relative ease.”
She raised a brow. “Is that your natural magic?”
I swallowed the rest of her tea. It had improved my stomach and balance.
“No. The magic of my birth is based in fire. This—” I tapped the table.
“Is a skill I learned through study and practice.” I held the empty cup out to her and shifted it into a pink hellebore, an appropriate thank-you gift for the tea.
She raised a suspicious brow. “A Winter Rose? Are you trying to poison me now?”
“No.” I lifted the flower closer to her.
“I cleared the surface of all toxins.” If touching it would poison her, it would poison me also.
“Just don’t eat it.” An overwhelming urge to see her trust me stomped down the logical emotional distance I’d kept between us.
I had drunk her tea, after all. It was only fair she trusted me in return.
Besides, her tea had not activated the saddle-shaped bargain tattoo. It wasn’t food. She had done it for her own reasons, and I refused to be indebted to her for it.
“I am fae,” I reminded her. “I cannot lie to you.”
She clenched her jaw. It was a subtle movement, one I wouldn’t have noticed without years of practice watching for small tells. She didn’t want to trust me. Would she say as much? Or would—
She reached out and took the flower into her hand, rolling the stem from her thumb to her palm deliberately so it touched much more of her skin than necessary.
Not just a little trust.
No.
She was making a statement.
Or issuing a challenge.
I wasn’t sure which.
She wrapped her fingers around the flower stem and lifted her eyes to mine. That gesture—that trust or challenge or whatever she meant by it—shook something deep inside me. It ran through my chest and made breathing hard. Did she really trust me?
She should not. Not when I planned to abandon her.
And why had she made me tea?
Her voice carried the same challenge her eyes held. “If I bring you some dried fruit, will you eat it, now that your magic is restored?”
I nodded, fully aware that she was blaming the lamp for my refusal to eat last night instead of my own pride.
It was an unexpectedly endearing thing to do, as if she knew I couldn’t accept any other explanation out loud.
The gesture contrasted with the confrontational tone of her voice and the fiery look in her eyes, but she didn’t say anything else as she led us back to the horses.
She untied a flap on a bag and removed a pouch of dried peaches.
The gelding chose that moment to shove his muzzle into my shoulder.
“What are you doing?” I grumbled, but the queen had disarmed me enough that I forgot I’d created a mask of not caring about people and animals.
I lifted a hand to his mane as if the last eight centuries hadn’t happened—as if I was still a young fae on a farm—and stroked his neck.
“Fine, you deserve to be called something.” I should have asked his name from the singers, but the queen caught me talking to him, and her gasp reminded me that I couldn’t admit to a mistake now, even if that mistake was as small as not asking a horse’s name.
“How about Sabir?” I stroked his neck again.
Sabir, for his outstanding patience in changing riders yesterday.
“You’ve been a good boy,” I told Sabir. “Have a treat before we leave.” I turned the grass at our feet into oats, and the other gelding pranced over quickly, playfully nudging me out of the way so he could reach the oats too.
The queen offered me a handful of dried peach slices, and the tattoo on my wrist warmed. That was part of her bargain—food that I needed.
So what was the tea?
I changed the dried peaches into fresh, plump slices and ate one. The queen’s eyes widened as the food transformed, and her gaze followed the peach from my hand to my mouth. I resisted smirking at her open jealousy and asked, “Would you like one?”
She reached for the saddlebag again. “You need all of those. And perhaps more. I can’t have you dropping half-way to the Autumn Realm.”
This time she handed me an entire pouch filled with the dried fruit, and something twinged in my chest again. My tattoo did not warm up—I would survive fine on the handful of food she’d already given me, so this bag of fruit was not part of the bargain.
And she would know I knew it. Her own tattoo would be just as inactive as mine.
So why offer it?
My inner cynic answered: to create a debt that would force me to stay with her longer.
The flash of anxiety in her grey eyes made me doubt myself. If she had another reason, I did not know it.