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I shrugged, hoping I could lie well enough to trick him, and as I’d learned from the fae, a truth made the lie sound more believable. “Do you knowwhyI ended up married?”
Chester stared at me.
“He made a faery bargain,” I said, truthfully. “I promised him a kiss, and then suddenly I’m choosing between weddings and freedom. I never wanted to get married. Ilikesex, but the idea of just one partner . . .? Forever? That wasn’t my plan.”
I was skirting a line that was near enough to truth that I could see Chester buying it. I pushed back the rest of the truth—the part that admitted my plan wasn’t as good as reality—and smiled at the man in front of me.Convincing. Believe the lie, Gen.
I thought about the person I was before marriage, terrified of commitment even though I could not stay away from Eli. That person, that version of me, was good at self-deception.
“I’m awitch,” I said. “We aren’t known for fidelity, you know.”
“True.”
I watched his eyes narrow. “If I recall, you met my ancestor? Beatrice. Not really a monogamous woman, was she?”
“She was far from the first witch I met,” Chester muttered.
I nodded, filing that detail away to ponder if I survived the next hour. His hatred of magical women spanned back a while.
“So you can set me free,” I said with a shrug. “Easy peasy. I go back to my real life. I certainly had no interest in being a faery queen. Protocol, rules,yawn.”
With a gesture the chains around me loosened. I stifled a gasp of surprise.Was it really going to be this easy?For the oldest human, he was certainly carrying a few centuries of misogyny in his pocket. Not so different from a lot of middle-aged men who thought they ought to have all the power!
The easiest way to deal with them was to feed their fears, pretend you agreed with their nonsense. More than a few bigots and misogynists were pliable if a person simply let them think they werevalidated. Entire political parties were built on fear. A few years ago, members of one political group even pretended that they were subject to “witchhunts,” as ifbeingthe haters was the same as being the victims.
It felt good to play him. It felt like I might—
“Wait.” Chester froze the saltwater with a hex whispered so silently I couldn’t hear it. Then he gestured me forward.
Once I was standing in reach of him, I took a step toward the door. “Right, well, glad we got that settled. I’ll be go—”
“A vow.” Chester withdrew a knife from his pocket. It looked like a child’s toy, a pocketknife with a dark handle. “You cannot leave without it.”
I paused. I wasn’t interested in a vow withhim.Maybe I could entice him into a faery bargain instead. If a bargain is begun, the fae making the bargain knows what the bargainer most desperately wants.
In an intentionally nonchalant voice, I suggested, “Before the ability is gone from me, why not enter into a faery bargain?”
Chester looked at me, curious in that way that said this was new to him. “What terms?”
I held my breath as his greatest desires flooded me. He wanted to be the most powerful being in the world, and to do that, he had to eliminate me. Mostly, though, he wanted to be sure no one ever found what he had hidden. He wouldn’t be safe if they did.
But then he said, “No. Faery bargains may hold or not after you are unbound. We shall make a blood vow instead. I will not strike you, and you will not strike me. I’m not so green as to trust the word of a witch—ora woman.”
I blinked at him. None of the terms he proposed were his greatest desire.
As he rejected the idea of a bargain, I couldn’t see more details. I only knew that there was a ruined building on an island. There, the whatever-it-was had been hidden. I thought about the details, committing them to memory. The sign was weathered. Last he’d visited, the site was marked by a Historic Scotland sign.
Damn.
Everyone knew that Scotland was one of those places where historic sites were ubiquitous. Throw a bone; hit archaeology. What I needed was to find that place, that hidden thing. Weapon to stop Chester? Yes, please.
First, I needed to get out of this prison. Could I flee without getting caught? I looked toward the door. It wassoclose. If I could get it open, I couldflow.
That was it. My magic was low, trapped and stifled in this place, and my stomach was yowling for food. Fighting when I’d been electrocuted, starved, and imprisoned—and oh yeah, partially drowned—was not ideal.
Butflowingwas no different than walking because I wasdraugr-born.It was magic but not in the hex throwing way. I should still be able to do that.
I glanced at the door, weighing my odds. He’d frozen the water with a word, removed my restraints with a word. He was powerful in ways no other creature I knew of had been.
