42. Chapter 42 #2
“And abandon weeks of preparation because you’ve finally decided to bare your teeth?” He clicks his tongue. “That hardly seems fair.”
“Fair,” I scoff. “You broke every rule you could get around, and tried to steal an assignment that was never yours.”
“Right,” he sneers. “Because you believe things belong to whoever they’re handed to.
The rest of us learned to seize an opening before someone else closed their fist around it.
We clawed for every scrap of influence we had, lost it, burned for it, then came back ruthless enough to hold on the next time.
But you could fail as often as you pleased, and they still placed another chance directly in your hands. ”
“I’d have traded all of it to be left alone.”
“That is precisely why I can’t stand you.”
Then he turns to Evie, and all that rancor disappears behind a polished smile.
“Evie, look at me.” His voice turns coaxing. “I want you to hear this from me rather than Zavian, because he’ll frighten you, and there’s no need to be frightened.”
“Stop this,” I say.
He doesn’t so much as glance at me.
Evie folds her arms over herself, but it does nothing to contain the trembling.
“Everything I offered you is real,” he tells her. “Every part of that future can be yours.”
Her brow pinches. “Can be?”
“What you experienced was a demonstration.” He opens his hands between them.
“A glimpse of what the contract can secure for you. Think of it as a sample. I allowed you to step inside the life you’ve been killing yourself to build, so you could understand that it isn’t some impossible fantasy. It’s attainable.”
“A demonstration,” she echoes. “So none of it was real?”
“You aren’t listening.” Krell’s patience frays.
“It was real, in the way a test drive is real. It’s simply not yours until you agree to the bargain and sign the paper.
” He glances at me. “Zavian hasn’t explained any of this to you, has he?
He’s spent his days here playing house instead of doing you the courtesy of the truth. ”
“Stop talking to her.” I pull Evie to my side.
Moisture gathers along her lower lashes. “Then what happens if I don’t sign?”
“I take it back.”
A faint tremor starts in her fingers. “You cancel everything?”
“I remove what I gave you.” His tone is patient, almost soothing. “Hell takes care of the rest.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Every consequence of the magic folds backward until your life is where it was before I intervened.” Krell tilts his head, watching comprehension gather behind her eyes. “But all of it can be yours if you make the bargain with me.”
“You made the loss real before she’d even refused you,” I bite out.
His gaze shifts to mine, and for a moment, the sweetness recedes. “That is generally how consequences work.”
“Is that why you came tonight?” Evie makes a small, broken sound. “To tell me you’re going to take it away?”
“I came because I wanted you to understand what remains available to you.”
I step in front of her. “She isn’t signing anything.”
“That isn’t your decision.” He leans just enough to look past my shoulder, attention fixed wholly on her. “You don’t have to give me an answer tonight, Evie. I’m not a monster. Take your time. Let the shock pass before you decide that losing everything is somehow more virtuous than keeping it.”
She wipes her eyes. “Keeping it in exchange for my soul.”
“What’s a soul in the grand scheme of things when you can have a good life now?” Krell shrugs.
Evie shakes her head, but the motion is slight and unsteady.
“When you’re ready, you’ll come find me.”
“She won’t,” I snap.
“Where?”
I turn to her, and she isn’t looking at me.
She’s staring past my shoulder, and I understand with a sick downward lurch that the hook is already sunk deep.
The Foxglove Inn isn’t only a building to her.
It’s every hour she’s poured into it, every loan payment, every dawn spent kneading dough in that outdated kitchen so a stranger might feel at home.
Krell knew that from the start and built his snare around the single thing she couldn’t bear to lose.
“The old toll factory.” Krell grins. “On the north road, past the river bend. I’ll be there a while yet.” His gaze slides to me. The civility drains from it, leaving behind a gleam of vicious amusement. “Enjoy the rest of your night.”
With that, he strolls out through the narrow seam between the booths.
For several steps, he remains visible among families gathering tired children and vendors carrying the remnants of their stalls.
Then the crowd closes around him, swallowing him so seamlessly that it’s difficult to believe he was ever there.
“Evie.” I reach for her, but she recoils from my hand. “Please. You can’t seriously be considering it?”
“I just found out the best day of my life came with an eraser attached.” Her voice quavers. “That everything I celebrated, every stupid second I thought Foxglove was finally safe can disappear the moment he decides to take it back.”
“I know, but signing away your soul won’t make any of this better.”
“And he chose me because of you.”
“That’s not—”
She wheels on me so sharply that her hair catches against her damp cheeks.
“He said it, Zavian. He’s here because you weren’t doing what Hell sent you to do.
All because of some ancient grudge that has nothing to do with me and everything to do with you.
Krell wouldn’t be here if you’d never been summoned.
He wouldn’t have chosen my inn as the battleground. ”
She turns her face away, but not before I see it crumple.
“I’m sorry, Evie.”
“I let you all the way in,” she whispers. “Trusted you with every part of my life I keep locked down because trusting people terrifies me.” She looks back at me. “And you brought this to my door.”
I could tell her it isn’t fair. I could explain that Krell’s interference is his choice rather than mine. There are a dozen true distinctions I could offer, and every one would still be me defending myself while she’s hurting because of something I helped conceal.
“You don’t mean that,” I say instead.
Evie studies me in silence, as if she’s trying to decide whether any of her faith in me survived.
Beyond us, the festival glows with indecent cheerfulness. The fiddler onstage begins another bright, lilting tune as though our lives haven’t just split open in the darkness.
“No,” she says. “I don’t. But I need some space to think about all of this.”
She turns away and walks out of the narrow passage, crossing the grass toward the parking lot.
Every instinct in me demands that I follow, explain, apologize properly, put myself between her and every terrible choice waiting beyond tonight.
But she asked for distance, so I remain in the dark and let her go.