Page 18 of Shadowed

The door drifts open an inch.

"Right," I say to the door, to the candle, to the four pages folded against my ribs. "Here we go."

8

LILITH

Dawn hasn't arrived yet and I have four pages of terms written in my smallest hand by the light of one candle, because candles cost money and I am not wasting two on a hostage negotiation.

I've done this before. Not with Fae princes—with landlords, fences, the breed of Coalside middleman who thinks a girl with no parents is a girl with no leverage. They're wrong. I always have leverage. The leverage is that I am more precise than they are and more willing to sit in the uncomfortable details.

The door opens at the exact moment the sky goes grey. No knock. The Bramah turns itself the way it did before—levers seating themselves, bolt withdrawing—and he is in the doorway and the shadows come with him and the smell of stone and dark fills my flat like weather.

"You're punctual," I say from the floor. I haven't moved. I've been sitting cross-legged with my back against the children's bedframe for four hours, writing and not sleeping, and my legs are numb from the knees down.

"I have been in the hallway."

"For four hours?"

"Yes."

I file that under alarming and move on. "Sit down. We're going to go through this clause by clause."

He doesn't sit. He stands. The flat isn't built for someone his size—the ceiling forces his horns into a slight tilt, which should make him look ridiculous and instead makes the room look small. His shadows press against the walls like cats in a box.

"First. Lodgings." I hold up the paper. "Three bedrooms minimum. Clean water. Heating that works. Not Coalside, not Bridgemire, not anywhere south of the river. I want them in Stonegate or Coppergate—somewhere the air doesn't taste like the Greymarch and the landlords don't drink."

"Agreed."

Too fast. I note it and continue.

"Second. Food. Not charity-house food. Proper meals—meat twice a week minimum, fresh bread, milk that hasn't been watered. A weekly allowance for market purchases so Elena can choose what she cooks, because she has opinions about vegetables and suppressing those opinions will make everyone's life worse, including yours."

"Agreed."

"Third. Medical care. A real physician, not a barber-surgeon. Tommy has a winter cough that's been getting worse for two years. I want it looked at properly. I want medicine that works, not the penny-tinctures from the chemist that taste like turpentine and do nothing."

"My court has healers. They're considerably more effective than your physicians."

"Fae healers."

"Yes."

"Treating human children."

"The anatomy is compatible. The magic isn't species-specific."

I don't like it. I don't like anything about this. But Tommy's cough kept me awake three nights this week and the physician on Brick Lane wants two shillings per visit and I have been choosing between Tommy's lungs and Elena's shoes for six months.

"I want a human physician as well. Backup. In case your magic doesn't work on human lungs the way you think it does."

"Agreed."

I write it down. My hand pauses on the paper. The candle is between us and the light catches the edge of him—jaw, horn, the line of his throat, the white of his hair turned gold by the flame—and heat spikes low in my belly, sharp and wrong, and I press my knees together hard enough that my kneecaps ache. I am sitting cross-legged on a floor negotiating the welfare of my siblings with something that is not human and my body is—interested. My body is interested. In this. In him. During a transaction.

I write faster. Handwriting is reliable. Handwriting does not betray you.

"Fourth. Education. Elena reads everything she can steal and she's running out of lending libraries to rob. I want a tutor. Literature, mathematics, history. Not a governess—a proper tutor, someone who'll treat her like she has a brain."