Mimicking him, I tested the air, but my fingers passed straight through into the dim moonlight filtering through the branches woven atop the clearing.
I pulled my hand back quickly.
“Looks like you won’t be any help to me, then. You can go.” I needed this faerie to stop distracting me so I could form a plan.
He groaned, mumbling something under his breath.
Then, “Make a deal with me, Mystique.”
I whipped my head toward him. “You have got to be out of your immortal mind.”
“I can’t enter that camp, but I can get you in. In turn, you help me.”
It was reckless, making a bargain with a faerie. They were tricksters, enemies of the warriors.
But if he truly could get me into the camp…I looked at the array of guards surrounding the clearing. They swept around with the same unnatural, windy movements of the Engrossians we’d fought in the Southern Pass.
Tol was there; I knew it in my bones. And I’d do anything to reach him.
Without letting myself second guess it, I said, “This way.”
We walked until we were far enough to not be overheard.
“What do I need to help you with?”
“When the time comes, I’ll call on you.” From the predatory curve of his lips, I had a sick feeling there was more he wasn’t saying. A concrete reason he needed me.
“Absolutely not.” I wouldn’t make such a loose deal.
“Set your parameters, then,” he agreed quickly, and I realized he’d known I wouldn’t be so easy to sway. And that—that feeling of being a step behind this immortal being—had me reconsidering.
Conflict warred in my gut at the thought of trusting him, but I supposed I didn’t have a choice. This damn fae was forcing help I very much needed upon me, and I wasn’t sure what that meant for our history with them.
I did not want to offer this to him, to trust even a breath from his lungs, but…
“Parameters,” I repeated. “If I make this deal, it cannot harm anyone I care for. It cannot touch them; you cannot use or manipulate them. I will do what is needed, but everyone else is left out of it. I will not come if I am in the middle of my own war, nor will I respond immediately if doing so will jeopardize any members of my clan.”
His eyes flicked over my face, narrowing in his search for loopholes with that expert mind of his. I repeated my words, checking for any myself.
“Anything else?”
“Yes.” Now my smiled turned wicked. “I want to be able to callon you in the future, too. If a time comes when I need your help again, you come.”
“An indefinite bargain?” He almost looked impressed. “I’ve never made one before. Not in the centuries I’ve lived.”
I held my hand out. “Afraid of one small warrior?”
“Never.” He looked at my hand. “But that is not how bargains are sealed with my kind.”
“For the love of the Angels, Lancaster, what do you want?” I was growing impatient with his games.
“A kiss.”
My stomach hollowed out. “A kiss?”
“I did not create the magic,” he grumbled with an impatient eye roll. “It’s the only way to seal our bargain.”
The alternative to a kiss…possibly losing Tol. That thought nearly carved out my chest.
