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“He’s not worth wasting any more breath on.”

“We’re already wasting breath searching for him,” I say. “Tell me something about him—something I don’t already know.”

The Bargainer beckons his discarded flask with his fingers, calling it back to him like a wayward soldier. It’s not until he’s caught the thing and taken a sip from it that he speaks again.

“He had hundreds of concubines,” Des finally says. “Hundreds. Just take a moment to imagine that.”

Hundreds? That’s like having a wife for every day of the year.

“I don’t know how many of them he fathered children with, but the number is large—large enough for the killing to get a name in our histories. It became known as the Royal Purge—the Purge, for short.

“And when Galleghar died and I first walked the halls of his former castle, I saw firsthand the women he’d taken in.

“They had this look about them.” Des gestures to his eyes. “Soldiers get that look when they’ve lived through too much. Many of them had it. And yet … and yet dozens of those women cried for him when he died.” Des scoffs to himself. “He killed babies—theirbabies—and they still cried for him.”

I don’t say anything. There aren’t words for this kinds of atrocity.

“That’s not to say that everyone in his harem loved him. In the years after his death, I started to uncover the details of their lives. In the ledgers, we found evidence that some of his wives died untimely deaths—usually after they openly mourned their dead children or objected to the Purge.

“Someone had also diligently recorded the dozens of suicide notes from Galleghar’s various concubines. I later discovered that those who survived their suicide attempts were then brutalized by the king. He took it as a personal slight that they dared to leave him.

“And of course, there were other escape attempts by other wives, and those too were violently punished. Hell was a kinder place than my father’s court. To think my mother dared to escape under these circumstances …”

Brave, brave woman.

The fire snaps and pops between us. Des is still lost in the past.

“Did you know that when I executed my father, I was expected to inherit the harem he left behind?” He gives a humorless laugh. “Doesn’t that make your skin crawl? To inherit a lover like some sort of heirloom?”

It’s sickening. But then, this entire story has turned my stomach.

“I broke with tradition went I sent them all away.” His eyes move to me. “I knew about you even then,” he admits, a soft smile spreading across his face. But then it disappears. “As did my father,” he adds.

A chill slides over my skin. In front of me the iridescent fire dims as the Bargainer’s shadows close in on it.

“To answer your question, cherub, I never knew much about Galleghar Nyx. Only that he was a mean sonuvabitch, that he tyrannically ruled over the Night Kingdom, and he killed my mother in cold blood. And now, somehow, he is alive.”

Chapter 10

“Still no closerto finding me—or Galleghar—it appears.”

The Thief stands on the other side of the fire, peering down at me with his onyx eyes.

I sit up so fast a wave of vertigo washes through me.

“That was a neat trick you did there, back in Somnia,” he says, circling around the fire as he approaches me.

I scoot backwards, but there’s nowhere to go out here in the Banished Lands. I look for Desmond, but other than the Thief, I’m utterly alone.

He crouches next to me and tilts his head, studying me. There’s something detached and reptilian about him.

“So you can glamour fairies after all,” he says.

I can glamour fairies—I can glamour him.

My skin brightens. “Get away from me.”

He continues to stare at me, his eyes inky. Slowly, he begins to smile. “Enticing, but no. I think I’ll stay right here.”