It struck me like lightning and twice as painfully—I swayed as an aching clarity came over me. I knew what I must do, and I knew…
I knew we’d eaten for the last time together at the table, and that I’d never see that unguarded smile of his again. That when Adrik looked at me next, it would be with contempt, and that I’d deserve it.
A favor was what I needed from him, and at last I had one to offer in return.
“I need a word,” I said to Adrik with a voice as hollow as an echo.
He must have caught the apprehension on my face. His features tightened as we walked to the chamber. In the air between us crackled a horrible tension. We stood, after he’d closed the door, for an unbearable moment in stiff silence. The hearth hissed as if it already knew of my betrayal. A tear licked my cheek.
I said, voice thick with pleading, “If I knew any other way… You must know that this is not how I wished it would go. You must know—”I cut myself short with a sob. He had retreated;already, and I’d only just reached for the knife I was about to plunge into his chest. “I must ask for a bargain.”
As if I’d breathed too harshly at a flame, the light in his eyes vanished. In its place bloomed darkness, like an inkstain spreading over moss-green silk.
“Ah,” he said slowly, with the dark, low lilt of a faerie. “I was a fool, after all. Tell me, Evana. What could you possess that interests me enough to put myself through such torment? Whatcould I possess that you could not just ask from me? There is little, I fear, that I’d not have given you for free.”
I caught a sob between my teeth. “I could not risk it. I could not risk even the slightest chance—” I could not risk returning to a cage. Abindingfavor. I’d lived too long as a slave to risk anything else. “I must ask you for a binding favor bestowed upon me. In return… I will tell you where to find Emond.”
For a beat, he was still as the frozen river and twice as cold. Then, slowly and horribly, rage thawed his features and he looked no longer half-human. “You would let Emond die?” he whispered with the sharpness of the winter wind. “You would let Yavor and me die in search of him?”
“Please, Adrik.”
“How do you know?”
“I dreamed of it.”
He laughed bitterly. “I’m supposed to trust a dream? I’m supposed to trust that you speak the truth?”
“Have you any other choice?”
“Then tell me, Evana. Tell me where he is, and if we find him there, I will grant you your favor, bargain or not. Do not make me—”
“No,” I said tersely. His coldness had turned me callous in return. I stood there, frigid and lifeless as a river-rock. “I need a true bargain.”
“You would ask me—” He shook his head as if to rearrange his shattered image of me in his mind. A vile creature. That's what I was. “Then state your terms.”
“I will tell you where to find Emond as soon as the bargain is made. In return, if you find him there, you will grant me one favor to be called in whenever I wish, and you will fulfill it on the spot.”
“Ah,” Adrik said with a smile that was no smile. “That is no good, Evana. Favors are a potent tool. Wars have taken a turnand lands have disappeared for a simple favor.” He trapped his chin between long fingers and observed me darkly. “How about this? I will grant you one favor to be called in whenever you wish, fulfilled on the spot, so long as that favor will bring no harm to this town or its people.”
I said, like a small and broken thing, “You believe I’d ever hurt this town? These people?”
“It seems that I had a great many misbeliefs about you until now,” he said harshly. “I’m not willing to take the chance.”
It stung more for the kernel of truth in it. “I agree,” I said numbly.
That smile that was not a smile widened horribly; thin and sharp like the edge of a blade. “Then let us mark it in blood.”
He’d swept so close his whispered words stirred my hair, and when he drew his knife, his hand brushed my side. I ached to curl into him and take it all back, and I ached at the same time to run from whatever beast I’d awoken in him. Adrik opened, without a sliver of feeling, a thin cut on his palm. I flinched when he grasped my wrist—but he was horribly tender with me as he raised my hand between us and brought the blade to my palm. I felt only a fleeting sting, quick as a kiss. His hand swallowed mine whole as he held it.
Adrik spat the words of the bargain with a sharp, clipped tongue. I repeated them quietly, throat tight with tears. He dropped my hand as if burned by it and I found, where he’d drawn my blood, only a thin silver line—curved like riverwaves, or the currents of a mild summer sea.
“There is a pond,” I whispered. “In the eastern forest, on the tallest hill beyond the fields.” I barely dared to speak the words, so horrible and final were they. “You will find him in that pond.”
Adrik did not linger once it was done.
He left me in the darkness and I stood frozen beside the cold hearth until the front door closed with a screech. Until the thunder of hooves passed in the street. Until the flicker of torchlight I’d tracked blurredly through the window vanished among the shifting trees.
I did not allow myself to weep.
