Even a day here has left me with what feels like a mild hangover. I can’t imagine years, decades, centuries of this. Typhus must be powerful, to live here for this long and still have so much magic.

  “Thousands have gifted me their powers,” he continues, “all in return for my protection…protection that you are now threatening.”

  Des raises his eyebrows. “Is that right?”

  “We’re not in your kingdom anymore. We’re in mine.”

  Typhus doesn’t say it, but he’s implying Des and I are bound by loi du royaume—that we must submit to Typhus’s rule and the laws of his land.

  The Bargainers eyes sweep over the room. “So this is your kingdom now?” A surprised little chuckle escapes him.

  King Henbane tightens his grip on his armrests.

  “Forgive me,” Des says, “but this is the first I’ve heard of anyone wanting this shithole.”

  Henbane rises to his feet again, his face flushing with anger. At his back, angular iridescent wings form.

  The king motions to someone in the crowd, and in response, a fairy steps away from the gathered masses, a pair of thick iron shackles in his gloved hands. Several of the soldiers in our entourage now hesitantly grab Des. They might not want to get in another skirmish with the King of Night, but they also don’t want to betray their own king.

  They move my mate’s hands in front of him, and Des lets them. I make a move to intercede, but two of our escorts cut me off, holding me in place.

  The King of the Night flashes me a look, and unlike all his playful words, the expression is serious, though I’m not sure what unspoken message he’s trying to beam at me.

  The fairy with the iron manacles steps up to the Bargainer. I don’t care that Des is powerful and unyielding as the fairy moves them to his wrists; I struggle at the sight of them. During my time as Karnon’s prisoner, I saw exactly what iron does to the fae.

  With an ominous clink, the soldier cuffs Des. The iron shackles are only on his wrists for an instant before they slide uselessly off to land on the dirt floor in front of Des.

  The Bargainer raises his eyebrows. “That was not supposed to happen, I take it?” he asks.

  Up on the throne, the king fists one of his hands but otherwise continues to watch impassively.

  Frowning, the fairy picks up the iron manacles with a gloved hand and again tries to cuff Des.

  And again the shackles slip off him before falling once more to the ground. This time, when the guard stoops to grab them, the Bargainer kicks them away.

  “Whoops.”

  Typhus settles into his seat, his sharp green eyes flicking over me. “Since our lord king won’t cooperate, put a pair on the bitch he’s with.”

  In response, the room gets a hint darker.

  Once more, the fairy bends down and picks up the shackles. Only, as soon as he touches them, the cuffs clamp themselves on his wrists. His gloves slide off, exposing his bare skin to the iron. It only takes a few seconds for his screams to start.

  And that right there is proof this whole kingdom is nothing but fool’s gold. I was imprisoned next to enough real soldiers to know that no matter how badly iron burned them, they wouldn’t give their captors the benefit of their screams. Badassery at its finest.

  That was how hardened those soldiers were. These fairies are nothing but children role-playing at being soldiers.

  Des takes several steps forward, his magic thickening in the air. “You really shouldn’t have said that.”

  That’s all the warning he gives. In the next instant, power explodes out of him, tearing through the room. It blasts back the crowd of fairies, knocking them down like bowling pins. Even Typhus is thrown back against his seat, the stone trembling under the force of Des’s magic.

  The king looks utterly shell-shocked for a moment, and I can’t decide whether he’s blown away by Des’s power or his audacity.

  When Typhus recovers, magic forms in his fist, bending the light as it takes the shape of a spear. He throws the bolt like a javelin, aiming straight for Des.

  The Bargainer doesn’t move, though he has time to sidestep the throw. Instead, he takes the full brunt of it as it slams into his chest.

  He grunts at the impact, then touches his chest with mild interest. “I am impressed. How many of your subjects have you drained to amass this sort of power? Hundreds? Thousands? You must be co-bound to damn near everyone to wield this level of magic.”

  Another spear forms in Typhus’s hand. “They’ve bequeathed their power willingly”—uh-huh, and cake has no calories—“so I could defend them from men like you.”

  Des waves a hand, and King Henbane is thrown back in his seat, his magic disintegrating in an instant.

  “Enough.” The King of the Night says it with such finality that the room full of hardened criminals now stills.

  Des steps forward. “I was told you could give me answers, and I will have them, one way or another.”

  Typhus grimaces in his seat, his body slightly contorted. It takes a moment for me to realize the Bargainer’s magic has him pinned in place. Around us, the fairies crowding the room seem to be held back by invisible hands.

  For the first time since exiting Galleghar Nyx’s tomb, the air is thick with power. It slips over my arms and curls around my ankles, caressing my skin. But unlike the magic in Galleghar’s tomb, Des’s power is familiar and inviting; it drapes itself over me like a shawl.

  Des closes in on the dais, each careful step echoing across the quiet room. He’s struck us all silent.

  “There’s a grave in the southwestern territory of the Banished Lands,” he says, his gaze trained on Typhus. “It’s marked by several large boulders. The body inside it was impervious to damage. And now it’s missing. I want to know how that came to be.”

  Typhus narrows his eyes, a calculating gleam in them. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he says, his words ringing false.

  I fibbed better when I was in diapers.

  “But even if I did,” he continues, “why should I tell you? You don’t recognize my rule.”

  Des studies the fairy, his head cocked to the side.

  My body tenses, expecting some reaction with a good dose of panache.

  But that’s not what I get.

  Des’s expression becomes almost contemplative. He nods, like Typhus didn’t just feed him a load of horseshit.

  Around the room, the Bargainer’s magic lifts, and the air tastes parched once more. Cautiously, fairies get to their feet.

  Typhus doesn’t move, instead pretending he deliberately chose to sit like a pretzel.

  “There is one other matter I must attend to before we head back to my kingdom,” the Bargainer says, waiting until he’s sure he has the room’s undivided attention. “You know as well as I do that I can’t leave here with you as you are,” Des says. “So either you give them”—he jerks his head to the desperate hordes bracketing us—“back their magic, or I’ll do it for you.”

  I’m thinking “I’ll do it for you” involves sharp weapons and a dead body.

  Typhus rises from his throne, his face darkening and his hands trembling with his mounting anger.

  The scent of the banished king’s borrowed magic saturates the air; it smells just how you’d imagine it would—like that time you idiotically sampled too many perfumes on yourself and all those potent smells clashed and gave you a mother of a headache.

  “Kill him where he stands!” It’s an open order, and I’m pretty sure this idiot expects all the fairies in this room to answer to it.

  “No.”

  The power of that one word ripples through the enclosed space. But it’s not Des who says it.

  I step away from the Bargainer, my skin illuminating.

  I’ve had enough of this place, where the air itself feels like it’s trying to squeeze magic out of you, and I’ve had enough of this man, who for all his years of life has learned nothing except how to be a brutish a-hole.

  In response to my magic, the crowd around us presses in, none so close as our guards. As soon as their eyes fall on me, they forget they’re self-respecting fairies who have duties. They move toward me, ready to touch my skin, stroke my hair, drink me up, and consume me whole. It’s the way it always has been, only here, in this magicless place, my glamour is all the more alluring.

  “Get out of my way,” I order, my power filling my voice.

  The fairies do as I say—albeit a little reluctantly.

  “What are you fools doing?” their king shouts at them, even though he can’t rip his gaze off me.

  “Shut up,” I order.

  His mouth clicks closed.

  The sheer outrage on his face! I savor every drop of it.

  “No one move—except to breathe,” I command, my voice echoing in the cavern. “Oh, and Des, ignore my commands. You can do whatever you want.”

  Around us, the room seems to freeze in place. If I didn’t know better, I’d say I’m in a hall of statues.

  The Bargainer folds his arms and leans against the nearest frozen fairy, using him like he would a wall. Des has a good deal of mirth in his eyes, and it’s clear he’s eager to let me steal the show.

  I walk down the aisle toward Typhus’s throne, my hips swaying.

  I head up to the dais, where I notice Typhus’s gaze is pinned in place. “You can move your eyes,” I allow.

  Immediately, they snap to me. It’s hard to read his emotions, since the rest of him is still frozen, but I’d say I’m getting some strong anger vibes coming from him.

  “I really shouldn’t let you do this,” Des says behind me. He sounds gleeful.

  I reach Typhus’s throne, and God, his chair is even uglier up close. His crudely made crown rests right there, within reach, and I just can’t help myself. I reach out and lift the thing off his head, then settle it onto mine. “Look at that,” I breathe. “The human you wanted to shackle is now your queen.”

  Now I can see Typhus’s anger bubbling in his eyes. Still, he’s powerless.

  On a whim, I command him, “Stand, Typhus.”

  Robotically, he rises from his chair.

  “Now, oh, great king, bow before me.” Typhus dips low, his nose nearly touching his knees as he’s forced to follow my command.

  As a PI, I’ve seen my fair share of pissed-off looks when someone is caught in the web of my glamour. King Henbane is no exception. He stares at me like he’s cursing my very existence with his eyes.

  I lap it up like a cat does cream. “Sit.”

  He sits.

  He won’t recover from this. Not now that his subjects have seen how easily I took his crown and bent his will.

  I tilt my head at the sight of him, sullen and powerless. There’s just something about a felled man that gets to me in the most twisted way.

  Giving in to my baser nature, I move forward, climbing onto the king’s lap and straddling his thighs.

  I feel just the thinnest thread of jealousy through my connection. That too I lap up.

  I am something to envy.

  Lifting a hand, I reach for one of his necklaces, enjoying the sick way the bones and teeth shiver as they brush each other.

  My gaze flicks to Typhus, and his green eyes seem to darken. There’s still plenty of anger in them, but now there’s lust there too.

  I smile. Someone probably wants to hate-bang me.

  Wouldn’t be the first time.

  I readjust myself on his lap, shaking my hair out. Why did I think glamouring him was important…?

  Oh, right.

  “You will answer all my questions fully and honestly,” I command. “Now, how long ago was the tomb opened?” I ask.

  His upper lip twitches in distaste. “A few weeks ago.”

  Recent. Part of me had assumed the tomb was opened years ago.

  I glance over my shoulder at Des, a self-satisfied smirk on my face. He stares back at me, and his expression is amused, but his eyes are stormy.

  Swiveling forward again, I lean into this idiot king, petting his cheek. In response, the room dims a little. Apparently, my mate has some objections to me petting other men.

  “And who opened the tomb?” I breathe.

  “I don’t know,” he growls.

  “What do you mean you don’t know?”

  “I mean it wasn’t a who at all.”

  Losing patience. “Explain,” I command.

  Again, he hesitates. How precious. As if he can fight the hold I have on him.

  After two short seconds, he gives up. “On the night the dead man rose—the night Galleghar rose,” he clarifies, making it clear he knows exactly who lay buried in that grave, “it was a shadow that retrieved him.”

  Chapter 12

  I don’t think I breathe. Around me, the room darkens.

  “A shadow,” I repeat.

  Back to this insidious shadow. I almost forgot about this aspect of the Thief of Souls. The Night Kingdom’s wet nurses saw a shadow watching over the casket children, and in the Flora Kingdom, I heard about a shadow visiting the sleeping women.

  I glance over my shoulder at Des, the two of us sharing a look.

  “What did the shadow look like?” I ask, facing Typhus once more. My voice lilts as the glamour drips off my tongue.

  Typhus glares at me, his fury still apparent. “It looked like a shadow. I don’t know, I wasn’t there. This is just what was reported to me. Gods damn idiot slave.” This last part he says under his breath, only loud enough for me to hear.

  The room darkens anyway. I don’t need to look behind me to know Des is all but primed for an attack. I don’t let him get the chance.

  I click my tongue and grab Typhus’s chin, squeezing his jaw the way annoying relatives love to squeeze kids’ faces. I lower my voice to match his. “This ‘idiot slave’ has your willpower by—the—balls. Now apologize to me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  It’s the least sincere apology I’ve ever heard.

  I shift my weight, the reaction pulling a groan from him.

  Definitely in hate-bang territory with this one.

  “What are you sorry for?”

  He glowers at me. “Absolutely nothing, you cock-sucking whore.”

  My claws sharpen, and my back pricks where my wings want to manifest.

  Why do men like this always revert to these insults? It’s embarrassingly predictable.

  “You’ll pay for that,” I say quietly. “After you give me what I want, you’ll pay for that.” I lean in to speak near his ear. “Perhaps I’ll call upon this entire room to insult you. I could make you smile as they called you the worst sort of names. And once it was over, I’d have you get on your knees and kiss their feet and beg for more insults.

  “Do you think your subjects would question your authority after that? Because I think they would,” I say.

  “Or,” I continue, “if that seems too tame for you, I could simply command you to degrade yourself in front of all these fae.

  “Anything I wanted you to do—and I do mean anything—you would have to do.” I cast my gaze about the room. “I bet I wouldn’t even have to ask them to laugh at you; this crowd seems as though they would do that all on their own.”

  These are all empty threats, but I’m sure they’re enough to guarantee his cooperation.

  Typhus’s borrowed magic seeps into the air around us, the most obvious indicator that behind his frozen exterior is a firestorm of anger.

  Someone is really unused to being at the bottom of a power dynamic.

  I pat his cheek patronizingly. “Now be a good boy, and let’s cooperate for a change.” My hand drops to one of his necklaces, and I finger a small bone. “You said the shadow retrieved Galleghar. What was Galleghar doing while this was happening?”

  “Walking.” He says this so derisively, like there’s no other way a previously dead body could leave a tomb. After a brief pause, he adds, “My reports said he walked out of the tomb alongside a shadow.”

  So Galleghar lay undying in his tomb until one night a shadow came and presumably awakened him. Then the two skipped off into the night, and the rest of us were none the wiser.

  “Good,” I say absently, patting his cheek once more. “Good.”

  I begin to climb off Typhus’s lap, my thoughts racing ahead to sleeping bodies and shadows, when I pause. “Oh, I almost forgot. There was one more thing.” I sit back down on the king’s lap, cocking my head to the side. He doesn’t know it yet, but this is how a bird sizes up a particularly juicy worm.

  “How is it you’re so strong?” I ask, my skin still glowing, my voice still harmonizing. I’m burning through magic like I’m a sorority girl throwing back tequila in Cabo.

  “I already told you,” he says between gritted teeth, “I am co-bound to my subjects.”

  “How does one…co-bind themselves to another?” I glance over at Des, who’s beginning to pose frozen fairies like they’re Christmas reindeer, each position a little more compromising than the last.

  I face forward again, just as Typhus replies, “Say a short oath, exchange a little bodily fluid, and briefly embrace—that’s all it takes.”

  “All it takes for fairies to what, give you their power?”

  “If that’s the oath they’ve sworn.”

  “And all these fairies just happily gave you their magic?” It’s hard even voicing such a ridiculous question.

  “They don’t just give me it.”

  It sounds like I’ve come close to ruffling this king’s feathers. Poor little Typhus, getting accused is the worst.

  “That’s right,” I say slowly, “you offer them protection in return—and I’m guessing a place to stay in your underground city. How magnanimous of you.”