The corner of her mouth ticked up. “That, I do not doubt.”
She tilted her head slightly, studying me. I felt the brush of something, not physical, not quite magical, testing the air around me, looking for a way in.
Thorns, I thought fiercely.
I pictured them biting down on any tendril that reached for me, sap and bramble and all the tiny, ruthless plants that refused to be uprooted.
The pressure slid off.
Her eyes narrowed just a fraction.
“Interesting,” she murmured. “Hedge magic. Not as primitive as I thought.”
“We’re very versatile,” I said.
“Mm.” Her gaze flicked past me, to the shop, where shadows pressed against the fogged glass. “You keep impressivecompany,” she observed. “Wolf. Fae. Vampire. Goblins. Witches.” Her lip twitched. “And yet, for all your allies, you came alone when I called.”
“Let’s not pretend I had many options,” I said. “You shook the Wards. You froze the town. You shouted my entire name at a tea shop. Subtlety is not in your top five traits.”
She laughed.
It was a pretty sound, light and musical.
It did not make me feel any better.
“Come now,” she said. “If I wished to drag you elsewhere, I would not do it in front of an audience.” She spread her hands slightly, and the shadows at her feet quivered like obedient dogs. “We both know I have something you want. And you”—her eyes sharpened—“have somethingIwant.”
My stomach rolled.
“Let’s start with whatIwant,” I said, because hedge magic also meant picking your ground. “Gideon.”
Her expression didn’t change much, but something in her eyes cooled.
“Ah,” she said. “My little knife.”
I bristled. “He’s not—”
“He is exactly what I made him,” she said, voice cutting. “A blade. Sharp enough to wound, not sharp enough to kill me. He owes every scrap of his power to the path I opened for him. The Hunger, the shadows, the whisperingedgethat made him so useful to Malore and so irritating to you.”
“He’s a person,” I said. “Not a pet. Not a toy.”
She smiled, slow and terrible. “Everything is a toy, if you are old enough and patient enough.”
I felt bile rise in my throat.
“You used him,” I said.
“Of course I used him,” she said, as if I’d commented on the weather. “That is what one does with tools. I sharpened him. Pointed him at the right targets. Let him believe his rebellion meant something. It kept him obedient far longer than chains would have.”
“He helped you build the Hunger Path,” I said. “He kidnapped my father. He hurt people I love. And you expect me to believe he did all that because you…nudgedhim?”
“Do not be naive,” she said. “He enjoyed it. Power is… intoxicating, for those who have never had it.”
I thought of Gideon’s face in the neutral ground, drawn and tired, the glitter of something hollow in his eyes.
I thought of the way he said yes to the circle.
And didn’t come.
