“So my Gift helped me. Helped me concoct a draft that would take out your guardians, at least momentarily, but the true target of the potion was your husband.”
My heart pounds, rage barreling through me. That anyone would ever dare to hurt Marcus, with no reason except to get to me.
Amity is crying now, wet tears staining her cheeks as she sobs.
“What do you want?” I ask.
“I would like your assistance in a task I will reveal when it becomes relevant to you.”
“In exchange for you healing Marcus now?”
The female tsks. “Don’t fret. Your husband has weeks to live. As long as the task is completed before then, he’ll not suffer death or permanent damage, at least not by the potion’s hands.”
Weeks. My heart pounds. “What do you want me to do?”
The female reaches out her hand. “I would like you to make a bargain with me. One where you’ll do as I ask, whenever I ask it. Until the task is done and your husband is free.”
I glance back and forth between Amity and Marcus, my heart cracking.
Since my blood is half human, half fae, I’m not cursed with the inability to lie like full-blooded fae. Still, if I enter a fae bargain with the female, I’ll have no choice but to follow through. At least not without dying, should I choose to resist.
“No,” I say at last.
The female lifts her brow. “No?”
I cross my arms to hide the fact that they’re shaking. I’m not sure I’m successful. “No. I won’t enter into a fae bargain with you.”
“I must have overestimated your love for your husband then,” she says, louder than she was talking previously, as if she wants to make sure Marcus hears even in his drugged state.
“No, you haven’t. And if you believe I love him, as I do, then surely you know the threat of him dying is enough to motivate me to do whatever you say.”
The female’s lip twitches. “Perhaps you’ve misunderstood. Enter into the fae bargain with me, or no deal.”
I stalk toward her. “Perhaps you have misunderstood. I’m not entering into a fae bargain with you with unnamed conditions. If I do that, my husband is as good as dead.”
And I’m not providing Amity an example of entering into a messy fae bargain to get out of a temporary problem, I don’t add.
Tears bead at the undersides of my eyelids, begging to spill, but I won’t let them. Not when I need this female to believe my bluff.
“Fine,” I say.
She slips a blindfold over me, and everything goes dark.
Amity’s whimpers fill my ears.
“Wait,” I say. “Deal’s off unless you untie her.”
The female says nothing, but I can hear her move across the tent and untie Amity’s restraints.
I also hear Amity spit on her.
Fear mingled with pride lances through me, but the female gives no reaction. Not that I can tell.
I clap my fingers against my side. Our signal for “It’s going to be okay.”
I wonder if that’s the last lie I’ll ever get to tell my daughter.
CHAPTER 10
ELLIE
When I agreed to accept glassblowing lessons from my father (to relearn the skills I bargained away to save Evander’s life during the third Trial), I expected him to want to go back to basics.
I just didn’t expect we’d be returning to these basics.
We stand in my father’s workshop, smoke from the furnace filling my nostrils. The overwhelming scent incites my gagging reflex, which is strange. You would think I’d be used to it by now.
I make a mental note to ask him if he’s burning a different type of coal than usual.
Of course, that could just be my way of not admitting why I’m feeling ill.
I’ve never considered myself an anxious person, but with Blaise’s disappearance and Evander’s extended absence, I recently find that just about anything can turn my stomach.
Even coating cast-iron pans with enameled glass, the task my father has currently assigned me.
We’ve been standing here for hours. In that time frame, an enormous pile of heavy cast-iron cookware has piled up beside me. It’s the new trend in Othian—enameled cookware—and my father has been all too keen to jump on it.
“Don’t you get tired of this?” I ask him, wiping sweat from my brow as we work. “It’s not exactly as refined as glassblowing, is it? I’m pretty sure you taught me to do this before I learned to walk.”
My father shoots me a knowing look, seeing through my not-so-innocent question. “I understand that being a princess has afforded you certain luxuries, Elynore, but I wouldn’t have expected the basics of the trade to be beneath you.”
I level him an equally challenging glare. “It’s not that it’s beneath me, Papa. I’m just not sure how it’s supposed to help me relearn how to glass blow.”
The process of enameling cast iron is a far cry from the intricacy it takes to form a pair of glass slippers.
“Glassblowing isn’t simply about skill with the hands and the torch and the furnace, Elynore. Glassblowing is about patience.”
“Yes, well, I don’t think my bargain took away my patience.”
“It couldn’t have,” says my father. The grin tugging on the edge of his lip should have been foretelling when he finishes with, “given that you never possessed that particular quality to begin with.”
I let out a groan, but it’s the playful sort, and the low rumbles of my father’s laughter warm my heart better than any furnace could.
As much as coating these pots bores me out of my mind, I’ve enjoyed the time it allows me to spend with my father. I’m adjusting to my life at the palace, and when Evander is home, it’s downright lovely, but I’ve still missed my parents. I’d gone from living with them to not seeing them for weeks after the debacle with the glass slipper, and I’m more than happy for an excuse to come visit them daily.
Besides. It’s an excuse not to attend King Marken’s meetings with his officials.
My father-in-law and I maintain a complicated relationship. On the one hand, I’m glad he respects me enough to invite me to meetings. That he cares about my opinion.
