Bummel gulped out loud, and I broke into a sinister smile. “We will make a bargain. You will swear allegiance to me, tell the world of my glorious return, and—” I glanced at their pack animals. “Give me two horses.” I locked eyes with each of them, ending on Amador. “In return, I will let you live.”
Tugging on the magic in the air around them, I cooled the temperature—not to a freezing point, but to an uncomfortable chill to remind them that I had all the power in this bargain.
Their faces paled. “Your Majesty,” Bummel started, “we would love an animus—”
Aakil rolled his eyes and hissed at him. “Not animus. We’d love an alliance. Can’t do an allegiance. Or—”
Amador interrupted them both. “Your Majesty, what they are trying to say is we cannot give you our allegiance because we’ve already sworn it to the Sun King. As you know, fae cannot lie, so we would be unable to speak our fealty.”
I ground my teeth together. They were refusing me. I did not let people live who refused me.
“But,” Amador added, “we are happy to tell everyone we meet the splendid news of your return. And give you our horses. It is a small price for our lives.”
I was tired of these three—killing them, destroying the humans who had trapped me, and beginning the work of re-establishing my kingdom sounded far better than speaking with them any longer.
Andar stepped closer to me, but stayed just behind my left shoulder, as if he wanted to support me or lend me strength. I turned my head enough to look at him. He raised one brow, silently asking if I needed anything. Here was a fae who had actually reached out to me, protected me, caught me, and shared his ownsecrets with me. He had given me attention and support when he didn’t have to.
During this one day he’d given me everything I’d ever hoped for in a friend and the sweet attention I’d tried to cultivate in a companion. If I could encourage him to continue that, it would be worth more than any magic wish he’d offered.
Certainly worth more than the lives of the obnoxious musicians. And Andar had made it clear that he wanted me to spare them.
“Very well.” I turned back to face Amador. “Our bargain will be your lives in exchange for two horses and your helpful telling the world of my return.”
His eyes widened. “Really?” he choked out.
Bummel grinned. “Your Majesty is exceedingly malevolent—”
“Magnanimous,” Aakil interjected.
I extended my hand, and they silenced themselves. How had the world produced three such irritating fae all at once?
It didn’t matter. I pulled on the magic surrounding us again. “The bargain.”
They each raised a hand and pointed it at mine. “I will grant your lives,” I said, “in exchange for two horses and your commitment to tell the world of my return as good news.”
“It is a bargain,” they each said in unison. Magic wrapped around our wrists like an invisible hand, pressing against our skin for a few seconds and then fading away. As the pressure eased, a small grey markshaped like an ice crystal appeared on the inside of my wrist. A matching mark settled on the skin of each of the musicians.
A sign of the bargain. It would remain until the terms were fulfilled.
Chapter 7: Andar
We rode south until the sun settled below the horizon. A few minutes after it sank behind the treetops, the queen stopped us in a large clearing. This meadow was not crusted over with ice like the last one we’d been in, but patches of frozen water imprisoned tufts of hardy grass. Splotches of hard-packed soil covered any portion of the clearing without ice, and around the edges of the meadow blossoming plum trees mingled with evergreens.
I swung down from my horse and dug a dried horse snack out of one of the supply bags the musicians had deemed not important enough for them to carry after losing two horses. My gelding drooled on my hand as he greedily gobbled the treat. I stroked his mane. When I was younger I would have named him, fawned over him, and grown attached within minutes of taking possession of him. But that had been another life, before my rise to power and fall to the prison of a lamp.
“This is a good place to stop for the night,” the queen said, dismounting her gelding. It was the first she’d spoken since we started riding. “I’m going to make arrangements for us, and then you’re going to tell me what you’ve been holding back all day.”
I bowed politely, the gesture no less painful than the first time I’d done it, but she hardly noticed. She pointed her hands at the middle of the meadow andwaved them upward. The air rippled with magic she directed into a fifty-foot high pillar of ice.
She threw her hands out, and spears of ice burst out of the pillar, growing into castle-like towers and walls. Doors and windows erupted out of sparkling crystals, revealing furnished rooms and glistening halls. A wall rose around the small castle with deadly spikes and strategic crenels.
In mere moments an entire fortress had grown in the middle of the icy meadow. It was only three stories high and clearly not meant to host the hundreds who would normally live in a castle, but it was still an incredible display of magic and precision. She turned to me and raised a brow, as if asking what I thought of her work.
I dipped my head toward her. “Impressive.”
Her lips tilted into more of a smirk than a smile. I hadn’t seen her truly smile yet, but she seemed pleased with the compliment. She valued my good opinion—an important step in convincing her to use her last magical request on me.
She retrieved my lamp from her horse’s saddlebag and waved a hand at the ground, melting a large patch of ice and exposing several meals’ worth of grass. The geldings headed instinctively toward the food, and the queen gestured at the small palace. “Let’s talk.”
