Page 193 of Bedeviled

I guess when you’re a ruler, meddling in another kingdom might be mistaken for an invasion.

Still.

I flick my gaze over him. “You don’t strike me as the sort of person who follows the rules.”

“Yes, but there’s finesse to breaking them, you uncultured simpleton.”

“Wow, you dusted that insult off from waaaay back in the closet, grandpa.”

“Says the woman married to the two-thousand-year-old sorcerer.”

I open my mouth, but no retort springs forth. “Can’t you just place an enchantment on yourself?” I eventually say.

He folds his arms and leans back against the crypt’s door. “Wow, I can’t believe I never thought of that. I’m sure there’s no way the fae have countermeasures in place to see me coming.”

“Okay, so I’ll go in alone.” That’s what I was planning on doing anyway.

The Bargainer assesses me. Finally, he pinches the bridge of his nose. “This is such a mess.”

“Does that mean you’re coming with me?”

“I’m so weak.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

CHAPTER 46

The Otherworld is everything folklore said it would be.

That is, ethereal.

The colors are somehow both softer and more vivid, the smells are sharper, and the magic. The forest around me is steeped in it. From the tops of the soaring cedar trees to the carpet of flowers at our feet, all of it thrums with power.

I take a few short steps away from the ley line the Bargainer, Nero and I just exited from, and I breathe deeply, drawing in the smell of wet earth and pine.

“This is the Flora Kingdom?” I ask.

The Bargainer looks tense as he stares out at the world around us. “Part of it.”

Here it appears to be sunset, based on the long shadows and the rosy, dappled light.

Nero spots a white rabbit in the distance and bounds after it.

What a little menace he is.

The thing that strikes me most about this place, however, is the serenity. More specifically, the serenity that comes when very few people are around.

“How far are we from the House of Scrolls?” I ask curiously.

“I have no idea.”

My head whips to the Bargainer, and I look at him askance. “What do you mean you have no idea?” As I speak, my voice rises.

“We took a back door portal to another kingdom’s land,” the fairy says slowly. “One whose secrets I am not privy to⁠—”

I scoff at that. “You know a lot of mine.”

“—including the whereabouts of a certain, highly restricted place where the Flora Kingdom houses their judgments.”