“We’ll see. A gift from our queen,” Edain whispers, holding his fist up to his face. He opens it and blows the black dust held there directly toward us.
Within a second we’re enveloped in a cloud of shadows. I cough as it hits my lungs, fist clenching around the sword as I shove free of the dust. The bitter taste of it sinks into my tongue, but I breathe a sigh of relief as I realize what it is.
“It’s harmless,” I say, waving a hand in the air in front of me. “It’s merely a binding agent intended to lock a curse to its target.”
Too bad mine was broken completely. There’s nothing there for it to grab.
Eris locks eyes with Edain as she waves the black cloud from her head. “Permission to kill him?”
Edain merely smiles as his knife slips from his sleeve into his hand. “I would love to dance, sweet Eris. I’ve heard so much about you.”
I grab her arm. “Not now.”
Second strike.
There has to be a second strike.
“Nothing to say, Your Highness?” Edain prowls toward Thiago.
And I realize the arm beneath my hand has tensed.
Eris detects danger.
“Only that if you continue coming toward me with a knife in hand, I’ll consider our negotiations over.” There’s a cold, emotionless edge to my husband’s voice, but I can sense him trembling with the urge to step forward and repay Edain for his “gift”.
Edain pauses, but not with fear, I think. He cocks his head. “I don’t think I need the knife. I think the damage is already done. You contain it well, but it’s eating away at you, isn’t it?”
And then he laughs.
Andraste stares at Edain as if he’s suddenly turned into a snake. If this was meant to be mother’s strike, then she knew nothing about it.
“State your terms,” Thiago says coldly. “Then let us be done with this mockery.”
“A gift,” Andraste replies, visibly gathering herself, “to beg forgiveness and open negotiations toward peace.”
Baylor holds his breath.
“Bring the beast,” my sister says, a tiny gesture slicing toward one of her attendants.
A commotion echoes outside. Some kind of snarling, along with the dangerous scrabble of claws in the dirt. Men shout. Steel rings as a sword clears its sheath and then the tent flaps part, and an enormous beast is dragged inside the tent by four fae warriors.
Its arms are bound behind it and gold winks around its throat. The collar is as thick as my forearm, but even with the chains, it looks like it will barely hold the creature.
A bane.
Standing well over seven feet tall, he’s a monster of sinew and fur. Half-wolf. Half-lion. All rage and fury. Curse-twisted into a half-animal, half-human shape, he growls as he sees us.
Few have the power to create them, and breaking the curse is near-impossible. Sometimes it requires catching a cockerel’s first cry in a bottle, and then drinking it down. Or hunting a phoenix and swallowing its flame. There’s an old story that tells of a witch who managed to use her love and magic to keep her bane lover in fae form during the day, though her spell broke the second the moon rose and he would be a beast until the sun cleared the horizon.
Lysander.
“Xander!” Baylor surges toward him and Thiago hauls him to halt. A murderous flash of fury darkens Baylor’s face, but the second their gazes meet he visibly restrains himself.
There’s no acknowledgement in the creature’s eyes.
It merely huffs and snarls as each warrior fans out, hauling on the chains so that it can barely move.
“Asturia keeps its promise,” Andraste says, her shoulders suspiciously straight.
She clearly doesn’t like having the bane within the tent.
I can’t say I blame her.
“Asturia is renowned for keeping its promises,” Thiago says, his fist clenching around his gloves. “To the very letter of the law.”
His smile could ice over an entire kingdom.
Andraste tenses as if she suddenly senses the predator in the room.
She’s always been smart enough to gauge a room with a single glance, and right now, my husband looks like murder dressed in black leather. He knows he unsettles people so he usually reins his powers in hard. He moves slowly. He reclines. He watches but doesn’t loom. But right now, the leash is off.
Right now, he’s a wolf prowling into enemy territory and though his illusions shield his wings, there’s a menacing shadow trailing behind him as if to suggest pure Darkness looms over his shoulder.
“But there’s always a twist,” Thiago continues. “What does your mother want in return for Lysander?”
“Eidyn and its surrounding lands.” Andraste eases into familiar territory. Bartering is second nature to her. “Forswear them now and forever, and she’ll allow you to keep the bane.”
The border lands have been in dispute for nearly a century. Mother claimed Thornwood and its surrounds, but Eidyn—though it once belonged to Mother—has since stood mockingly out of reach.
Thiago sinks into the chair that is placed opposite my sister. “It’s a tempting proposition. It’s even believable. Your mother wants Eidyn desperately. She even bartered her daughter away to me for the chance to claim it. And now she’s lost both.” He unleashes a smile upon her—the deadly kind. “Unfortunately, I don’t believe either of you. Adaia thinks herself invulnerable. She has an army poised at my doorstep and Eidyn is within her reach. If she truly wanted it so badly, she would have sent her armies marching across our borders.”
“Maybe Mother desires peace.” Andraste leans forward. “What happened at the Queensmoot was unsettling for all of us—”
“She murdered a queen,” Thiago replies. “The only thing that unsettled her was that Prince Kyrian and I got away before she could slit our throats too.”
Andraste continues as if he didn’t speak. “And now the Alliance stands in disarray. We must stand strong against the unseelie threat from the north.”
“Again, a striking argument. Again, a lie. There is evidence your mother has been in contact with Angharad, and has used the unseelie for her own purposes.”
They stare at each other.
Thiago leans forward, resting his forearm along his thigh. Edain doesn’t quite shift, but he’s no longer at ease. Every inch of him tenses, and a dark flame flares to life in his blue eyes.
My breath catches.
“Perhaps I will make a counter-offer,” Thiago purrs. “I will give your mother Eidyn….”
What?
“In exchange for?” Andraste asks boldly.
“Clydain. And everything within it.”
Clydain? My gaze snaps toward him. Clydain’s an old rotting border keep with a broken waterwheel. Half the lower garrison is flooded. Nobody lives there anymore. The place is supposed to be haunted, and frankly, it holds no strategic value.
But he may as well have thrown a serpent directly into my sister’s lap.
“It’s a rotting old keep in the far north of Asturia,” she says. “And it borders Mistmere. It’s miles from your kingdom.”
“True,” Thiago replies. “But then, I’m not interested in the keep.”
And everything within it, he’d said.