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But now I had the opportunity to save everyone. To restore the city, or at least keep it from further destruction. And if there was anything that would allow me to bring down Marcela and her gang and give life back to New York, I would do it. Regardless of what Aubrey asked for in return.
No doubt his price would be steep, but some things were worth the cost.
Moving beyond the scenes of my past, we reached the edge of the pond again. I stared up at the top observation deck and saw Holden and Desmond frozen in a tableau, gazing down in horror to the place where I’d hit the water.
Time wasn’t moving faster, like it did in Aubrey’s kingdom.
“You’ve stopped it,” I observed.
“Not stopped, no. But slowed it quite considerably.”
“You can do that?”
“I can do a great many things.”
“So help me.”
“Don’t you want to hear my terms? You should know better than to demand help from a fairy without knowing what they want first.” He clucked his tongue at me.
“Whatever it is, it’ll be worth it. As long as you demand it from me and no one else. I can’t give you what isn’t mine to give.” I remembered the last time he’d demanded a price from me he’d tried to make me choose between Holden and Desmond. I wasn’t about to let him paint me into an impossible corner again. I might not be able to talk my way out of it a second time.
“Clever girl. Come, let’s get you back to your champions. We’ll talk as we go.” He led me around the shoreline towards the castle entrance. “What I want from you is twofold, and you must agree to both parts or else I cannot help you.”
“Can’t, or won’t?”
“What do the whys and wherefores matter, hmm? If you do not agree, you won’t get help. It’s as simple as that.”
Simple was not a word I’d choose to apply to Aubrey or what he did, but it seemed pretty cut-and-dry this time around. If I agreed to give him what he wanted, I’d get fairy aid. If I shot him down, I got squat.
“What do you want?”
“First let me tell you what I’m offering, because I think it’s important you know what you’re agreeing to.”
“Fine.”
“I will give you my power for one night.”
I stopped walking and almost tripped over my own feet. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me. I will allow you to function as an extension of myself for one night, tonight, and only then. You will be able to do everything I can do with no limits or exceptions. For all intents and purposes, you will become me, though you will maintain your pretty self, and your thoughts will all be your own. I can’t imagine you’d want to think like me.” He winked.
“Why would you do that?”
“You are interesting to me, Secret. You’ve long been interesting to my sister, and I’ve been paying careful attention to you since our last encounter. You have a nobility in you I rarely encounter in mortals. And you’re clever. Not clever enough to outsmart me, mind, but smart enough to equal me from time to time. Seeing you in this situation has been intriguing, and I’d like to see you play it out. But as you are, you cannot. You will die. And that’s not how I want to see you go out.”
I was still too stunned to understand the full extent of what he was offering. I didn’t even know what a fairy king was capable of. The outer limits of his power were a complete mystery to me. His magic would certainly let me obliterate the remaining necromancers, but what else? Could I restore the city?
Could I bring the dead back to life?
My pulse tripped and picked up pace. The possibilities lying in front of me were too exciting to fathom. With the control of time, could I reverse what had happened already?
With my hands trembling and my mind spinning, I started walking with him again.
Of course I would agree to this. I’d be a fool not to. What price could he ask that would be too high? There was nothing. The gift he was offering was invaluable, so whatever he asked for I would give him. I made up my mind without thinking of all the manipulative and wicked things he’d done to me in the past. He was a master of finding a person’s greatest desire and using it to his own advantage. Was he doing that to me now? Absolutely.
Except it didn’t matter.
He wasn’t playing a game with me and toying with my emotional or sexual desires as he’d done in the past. Now he had found something I wanted more than sex, love or humanity. He was offering me the lives and freedom of millions. That was so much bigger than me.
