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CHAPTER THIRTEEN

A va was standing once more in Serrik’s library. This time, he wasn’t playing music, but at the fireplace with his back to her. His hands were clasped behind him, and he was gazing into the fire.

She didn’t know what to say. Somehow, in some strange way, she assumed he was going to be mad at her. There was no possible reason why . She hadn’t done anything wrong. Okay, maybe she shouldn’t have gone along with Ibin and Nos to go “meet people.” But they had been sheltering her.

He was an imposing sight, silhouetted like that.

Was she supposed to talk first? She might as well fall on her sword. He’d warned her, after all. “I should’ve listened to you about Ibin and Nos. You were right.”

“You are cornered and searching for any path forward. I do not fault you for it.”

That was a relief. Her mood lifted.

“I heard you consulting with the grimoire. The first image it showed you was clearly one that disagreed with you. What did it show you?”

Aaand there it went crashing back down. Scrambling for a quick way to dodge, she came up empty-handed. Shit. No way out. She’d have to tell the truth. “You and a man with blue bat wings. At war. Surrounded by dead bodies.”

“Valroy. The Unseelie King.” Serrik’s hands flexed and relaxed where he kept them clasped at his back. “What else, Ava?”

“You were holding the grimoire. And I was…chained up at your feet.” This wasn’t going well. This wasn’t going well at all.

“I see.” He paused. Then four words, like lead balloons. “And what else, Ava?”

“You weren’t…” Human , the word echoed in her mind. “You looked different.”

“Different.” He repeated the word with all the emotion of a statue. It wasn’t possible to tell how he felt about what she’d said. “You said you had made a mistake. In your words, ‘you fucked up.’ You asked it to show you something to aid you. Another path to walk. It showed you another image. You said, ‘screw me for asking.’ What did it show you?”

“Nothing.” It was a terrifying bet to make. She was going to have to put all her chips on the bluff. But she had no other choice to make ahead of her. None. It was this, or…what? Honestly let him use her and commit genocide and wage a bloody war? Or wait until something in the Web got her? No. She’d honestly rather Serrik just rip her head off. “It flipped to an image of me. I had a tattoo of a weird spiraling…spiderweb thing down my right arm. And I was kneeling at your feet. And you looked different still. That’s it.”

Finally, he turned from the fire to face her. Despite every instinct in her body telling her to turn and run for her life, he walked up to her. Slowly. Giving her every chance to flinch. Every chance to blanch and reveal she was holding junk cards in her hand.

He circled her, like a shark. When he crossed behind her, he stroked her hair away from her shoulder and pulled aside the collar of her T-shirt to reveal the spider inked onto her collarbone. “You will wear it well, little butterfly.”

It sounded like a real compliment. More importantly, it sounded like he believed her. The tension in her shoulders loosened just slightly. “You could have warned me about the train thing.”

“How could I, when it was heretofore impossible?” His fingers lingered on her skin. They sent a shiver through her, and she felt goosebumps spread over her arms. He hummed, moving to stand in front of her, now only a few inches away. “You do not recognize what you have done.”

The sheer overwhelming nature of him made her take a step back. “No clue. I don’t know what’s going on, and I have nothing to compare it to.”

“You pulled an object of considerable magnitude from Earth and hurtled it into the Web with no more regard for the effort involved in such a feat than a child tossing a ball of snow at a sibling.” He laughed, quietly. It wasn’t a mirthful laugh. It was sadistic. It promised that whatever she’d just revealed that she could do—he planned on using it. And she wasn’t going to like it when he did.

But she had to pretend to be on his side. She wanted what he wanted. Swallowing thickly, she chewed her lip. “I don’t know how to do it again…”

“And that, my dear, is a problem we may solve together.” With a sweep of an arm, he gestured for her to follow him as he began to walk through his library. “All art consists of three things. First, the raw, innate gift. Second, learned skill. Third, the tools of the trade, or the means by which the art is made.”

Oh good, she was back in college again.

Yay.

Instead of learning how to draw houses, she was learning to drop them on people.

Focus, stupid. Focus.

“You have the raw gift of an artist. However, you were missing the magic, you were missing the paint, the brushes, the canvas. You now have access to mine. But those two together will give you a product that is inefficient, unrefined, liable to…” He trailed off.

“Liable to drop trains on people.”

“Precisely.” He smirked slightly. “To create unintentional results. Through my tutelage, perhaps less unexpected things may result when you ask your grimoire for assistance. However, you will remain limited in your access to my magic.”

“Because you’re locked away?” It was a guess.

“Indeed.” His smile lasted a little longer that time.

Yay, points with teacher.

“There are three seals that keep me trapped here within this place. Three locks that chain this room shut. Each one requires a particular task to be completed.” His expression tipped past stoic and into dour. “No one has attempted them all.”

“Because they didn’t want to, or because they didn’t survive?”

“No one has survived to desire it.” He was the mask of nothingness once more. He pushed open a door to a side room. It was smaller than the main chamber but filled with just as much stuff.

It matched the rest of everything else—the Baroque furniture, the soaring bookcases, the vines and leaves. Though unlike the rest of Serrik’s space, this room had more of the faded oil paintings that were more like murals with their sizes and how they dominated the walls, some twenty feet tall and thirty or forty feet wide.

The center of the room had been cleared away in a circle with candles lit around it. Another cliché, but hey—sometimes things were cliché for a reason. Sometimes they worked.

“So…you’re saying I need to find the locked door, and…break the seals, one at a time, until you’re free?”

“Yes.” Serrik stepped over the row of candles.

Ava waited for more. He didn’t give it. “Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer I suppose. Okay, can you give me any more details on how I’m supposed to do that? Like, where to go, what I’m supposed to do when I get there, how to avoid getting eaten by a?—”

“Ava.”

She shut up.

Serrik was smiling again, just the mildest twinge of his lips. He motioned for her to come join him. “One thing at a time. We are teaching you how to use your magic.”

“Fine.” She stepped over the candles and walked into the center. “I just think it’s more useful if I?—”

He put his pointer finger against her lips, once more silencing her. “Humans. Always so eager to chase your tail, with no thought spent about what to do with it once you catch it.” He turned her about-face. “You will not be able to break the first seal if you do not learn to tap into the magic properly. So, what good is it to guide you there? Do things in order , little butterfly. Now. Go sit at the edge of the circle.”

Stupid fae, making sense. She sighed and did as he said. Walking to the edge of the circle, she turned back to face him and sat. “Won’t I need the book, though?”

“No. We will get to that in a moment. But the short of it is; your will is what you make of it.” He rotated his wrist. And in a flash, a red apple was perched between his fingers.

“Whoa.” She laughed.

The smile on his face made it quite clear that she wasn’t meant to be impressed by that. He placed the apple down on the floor in front of her, about four feet away.

“Yeah, I get it. I’m a toddler.” Sheepishly, she tucked her hair behind her ear. “But all this is new to me.”

“Do not mistake me. I find it quite charming. It is easy for us to forget what we are in the grand scheme of things. Easy to lose sense of our nature.” He moved to stand behind and a little to the side of her.

“Forest for the trees and all that.”

“Precisely.”

“So…” She shifted a little bit, trying very hard not to get distracted by his nearness. Shit, he was so damn attractive. Don’t get the hots for the serial-killing, spider-monster fae, Ava. “What am I supposed to do now?”

“Change the apple.”

“Change it? How?”

“However you wish to. Make it smaller. Larger. Change its color, its shape, its nature. Turn it into a bird or into glass. Move it without touching it. Burst it into flames.” He hummed. “Perhaps avoid explosions, if you can help it.”

“Change it.” She sighed. “Cool. And how am I supposed to go about doing that?”

“In the same way you summoned that ‘train’ of yours. Let your instinct guide you. Choose what you wish it to be, and force it to happen. Enact your will upon it.” He stood almost behind her. She could just see him out of the corner of her eye.

“But…how?”

“In the exact method, I cannot guide you. Your thoughts are your own. I can set the stage. I can provide to you the footlights. The actors. The setting pieces. But I cannot tell the playwright what story to spin. You must find what calls to you.” Serrik crouched down behind her, his knees close to her sides. His nearness made a warmth rush over her that she tried not to overthink. A flash of gold jewelry in her peripheral vision, and he stroked another strand of hair behind her ear.

His touch sent a thrill through her, making her swallow reflexively. The fae really had no sense of personal space. Not even Serrik, who seemed more remote than most.

His fingers lingered at her throat, which didn’t help matters. “The grimoire is merely a tool at your disposal. A method to assist you in your focus. But your access to my magic exists outside of it. Here, in this dreaming state, linked as tightly as we are, you will not need it. To begin, think of the grimoire as a knife to aid in cutting down a deer. You could do it with your bare hands, should the need arise.”

“Never cleaned a deer, but I get what you’re going for.” She turned her attention to the apple. Okay. Cool. Change it.

“All magic is an extension of will. All that separates those who wield the unseen arts are who they draw power from and what tools they use to channel that power.” He was still so close to her. She had to fight the urge to lean back into him. To want to feel his arms circle around her. But he’d probably just shove her to the floor.

“And I have spooky spider fae magic. Cool.” She stared at the apple. Fae magic was nature magic. That probably made it easier, right? As opposed to like…a rock. Though she supposed rocks were a part of nature. Steel, then? Well, steel was made out of things that were from nature.

Shit, this was going to get confusing.

“I—well—” He didn’t seem to know what to do with that description. “In…so many words…”

“But the tome doesn’t seem very nature-y. ”

“Grimoires have served your kind for a long time, though I admit they are seen as a bit of a…corruption of the art to many of your elders, made only by those who would risk being shunned. The ability to store such power and knowledge on the page, when it should pass between mother and child, tutor and student, is offensive to many in this world. Many have suffered for their creation.”

She had to look at him. The way he said those words—he’d lost his calm, I-just-work-here , professor-ish demeanor. There was an emptiness in his eyes that was as deep as the void.

Yellow-gold eyes met hers. He captured her chin, firmly but not roughly, in his hand and turned her attention back to the apple. “The task at hand remains, little butterfly. You have a lesson to finish.”

A shiver ran down her spine. The message was clear— drop it. But she couldn’t. She just couldn’t. “Who are you, Serrik?”

“Someone with whom you have allied yourself and who seeks to see you become a power that no one will meddle with. One whom you have no choice but to aid.”

Yeah. For now. “Sorry. But I don’t have the tome with me.”

“You do not. But you have me, as I said. You are surrounded by the source of magic you can now tap into. It will be enough to do this small task.”

“If you say so.” She let out a wavering breath. “Change the apple…”

Rolling her shoulders and cracking them, she focused on the apple in front of her.

Focus. Change the apple. She had everything she needed. She just…she could do this. Right? Right.

Focus.

Change the apple somehow.

Make the apple do something.

Do. Something.

Do.

Something.

Anything.

It wasn’t that the apple exploded.

She’d done as Serrik had requested and not done that.

Not exactly.

Ava screamed all the same.