“What do you want in exchange for the antidote?” I ask.
The female raises a perfectly arched brow. “You aren’t going to ask how I managed it?”
“How you managed what?”
“To poison some of you while leaving the others unharmed?”
I don’t figure there’s a way around the question; best to plow through it. “How?”
The female looks disappointed, but she answers anyway. “I am particularly skilled at potion-making. It’s always been a talent of mine, but I possess a Gift, not unlike yours.”
My Gift stirs inside me, as if waking and stretching its limbs at the sound of its name.
“I once possessed a different form of Old Magic. The kind I possess now is not like her brother, yet she offers skills I could never have dreamed of. She’s done it before, you see, offered this gift to another. She taught me how to do it.”
Marcus is still shaking. I’m running out of patience. “Do what?”
“Concoct potions that only affect who they’re meant for. It’s a hassle, you know, to try to ensure a poisoned glass gets to the right individual, especially when your goal is to poison three out of five of them. Especially when they have a princess among them who likes to stick her nose where it doesn’t belong.
“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
