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 he recovers, magic begins to form 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 cobound to damn near everyone to wield this level of magic.”
Another spear begins to form 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 that’s because 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 dumb.
“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 calculative 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 begin to get to their feet.
Typhus doesn’t move, instead pretending that he deliberately chose to sit like a folded up 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 that bracket us in, “back their magic, or I’ll do it for you.”
I’m thinking that 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 rising 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 now all those strong, potent smells are clashing and giving 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 of the fairies in this room to answer to it.
“No.”
I feel the power of that one word ripple 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 your 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 begins to press in, none so close as our guards. As soon as their eyes fall on me, they forget they are self-respecting fairies who have duties. They move towards 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?” this king shouts at them, despite the fact that he can’t rip his gaze off of me.
“Shut up,” I order.
His mouth clicks closed.
The sheer outrage on his face! I savor every last drop of it.
“No one move—except to breathe,” I order, 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 was 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 begin to walk down the aisle, towards Typhus’s throne, my hips swaying.
I head up to the dais, Typhus’s gaze 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 in place, but I’d definitely say that 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 of his head, then settle it onto mine. “Look at that,” I breathe. “The slave 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 is 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, 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 him, and Typhus’s 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 that 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’d almost forgotten about this aspect of the Thief of Souls. The Night Kingdom’s wet nurses had seen a shadow watching over the casket children, and in the Flora Kingdom I had 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. Godsdamn idiot slave.” This last part he says under his breath, just 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 were my wings want to manifest.
Why do men like this always revert to the 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 his ear. “Perhaps I will make you suck someone’s cock.”
Over my dead body would I make someone do that. But a little empty threatening does wonders for cooperation.
I pull back. “I could you know,” I say, my voice low like a lover’s. “I could make you get down on your knees for every single man in this room, and you’d be powerless to stop me.”
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 that the shadow retrieved Galleghar. What was Galleghar doing while this was happening?”
“Walking.” He says this so derisively, like there is 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 of 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 are 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 cobound to my subjects.”
“How does one … cobind 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 just 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.”
The air thickens with Typhus’s magic.
Definitely hit on a sore spot. His eyes no longer look just angry; they seem wild with panic.
Right now, he can only answer my questions, and I’m curious to see what’s going on behind those eyes.
“What is it, Typhus?”
“Fairies die out here all the time.”
“And I bet you have nothing to do with that.”
Again, he looks desperate to explain himself. Too bad we’re not playing this game by his rules.
We’re playing it by mine.
“Do you or the fae who work for you have anything to do with the deaths of the fairies who ‘die out here all the time’?” I ask, throwing his words back at him.
Again, that panic is in his eyes.
You made your shitty-ass bed, buddy. Now you have to lie in it.
Typhus holds out responding for a whopping three seconds.
“Sometimes,” he finally hisses out.
We’re not talking loudly, but his words still echo throughout the room.
I swear the silence somehow just got claws and teeth to it.
I lean a little closer and drop my voice. “Remember when I told you you’d pay for your words?”
He glares at me. The fucker remembers.
I swivel around. “Every fae in this room can now move their necks.”
As soon as the words are spoken, the crowd of fairies focus their attention on us.
I rotate to Typhus once more. He still can’t move, but he’s beginning to sweat, little beads of perspiration giving his skin a sheen.
He knows what’s coming. How delightful! I do savor how they squirm in the end.
I step off of him and face the room, raising my voice so everyone can hear. “You, Typhus Henbane, are going to confess to this entire room every single thing you don’t want them to hear, starting with your true intentions for taking their power,” I order.
His face is turning red, and he’s grinding his teeth together in a hopeless attempt to stop the inevitable.
“I … I …” Typhus tries to stall, until the confession is yanked from his lips. “I spent the last century and a half coming up with ways to manipulate fairies out of their powers, using whatever means I could think of. I—I did this so that I
could stay healthy and strong in this place. I trade magic for my protection even though I’m the worst thing fairies have to fear out here.”
He takes a breath. “I’ve killed hundreds, maybe thousands of fairies—some outright, and some indirectly after I drained them of too much magic. I have a hidden room filled with countless fairies who are all but dead.”
An unbidden shiver moves through me.
Sounds like the Thief of Souls.
He continues, “I try to keep them alive for as long as possible—”
“Why?” I interject.
“Once a fairy dies, the bond is broken, and Typhus loses their power,” Des says from where he stands. “Dead men can’t uphold oaths.”
Typhus begins explaining the same thing, forced by my glamour to answer my question. Once he finishes, he pauses, ever hopeful that he can skirt around my other order—the one where he confesses his crimes.
I raise my eyebrows, bemused.
Around me, fairies flash him venomous glares. Poor little Typhus.
With a shudder, he continues on. “I have blackmailed men and women into having sex with me. I’ve lied about how strong I really am—I cannot singlehandedly stop an uprising, should one happen …”
On and on it goes.
It takes twenty minutes—twenty incriminating minutes—for Typhus to get through the impressively long list of shitty things he’s done. By the end of those twenty minutes, you can feel the room baying for his blood.
Hell, after hearing his laundry list of dirty deeds, I want to rip his throat out.
This king knows it too. He’s now openly sweating; it drips into his eyes and down his chin. Gone is his cockiness. I wonder how long it’s been since he’s felt this kind of fear.
“Apologize to all these fairies,” I command Typhus. “Apologize and mean it.”
His eyes move to the crowd. “I’m sorry for everything I’ve done.” His voice is low and hollow with something like guilt. It’s definitely not regret, but whatever. Some people never do regret their choices, only where their choices landed them.
I walk around the throne, my skin still glowing, high as fuck off my power. I still wear his crown on my head, and I’ll admit, the weight of it gives me a little rush.
Dark Harmony (The Bargainer Book 3) Page 9