Page 197 of Bedeviled

“If a supernatural drinks lilac wine,” the Bargainer says, “it will transform their mortal magic into fae magic.”

That’s why the fae guards had succumbed to Memnon’s power when they otherwise shouldn’t have.

Further realization slams into me. This is the missing piece of Eislyn’s scheme. Of course. She couldn’t use Memnon’s power for her own ends when he had mortal magic. But if it were to be transformed…

My breath catches when I think of the vast expanse of Memnon’s magic—from his ability to read and manipulate minds to the way he can kill entire armies in an instant. And now he’s bonded to Eislyn and fully under her control.

Fuck.

“That’s not all,” the Bargainer continues. “If a mortal is given lilac wine, it imbues them with the lifespan of a fae. It makes them, essentially, immortal.”

Maiden, Mother, Crone.

Now it makes sense why Memnon would rule by Eislyn’s side. It would be his power that would terrify and intimidate an entire kingdom, not hers.

It’s a brutal, awful plan. But if it worked, Eislyn’s hold on the Flora Kingdom would be absolute.

I’m still reeling from these revelations when the Bargainer says, “Ask me again what was in that purple drink Eislyn gave you.”

I pause on the stairs. I can feel myself paling as my eyes move to his.

“What do you mean?” I say.

“I think you know what I mean.” The look he’s giving me ratchets up my nerves.

“You think that Eislyn…?”

“Gave you lilac wine?” the Bargainer finishes for me. “Oh I do think that.”

“What?” I barely breathe the word.

“Sugar, when I first met you, you shouted Stop at me and put power behind the word. And it worked on me. Of course you drank lilac wine. How could you not know that?”

I balk at him. “I asked you about the drink,” I accuse. “You were the one who never told me about what it was.”

“Well I’m telling you now.”

I glare at him, even as my mind jogs over all the strange and recent idiosyncrasies of my magic. Like the way the color of my power turned iridescent following the wine, and how mortal magic stopped working on me, and how my connection with Memnon became one-sided until…until Eislyn captured him and made him drink lilac wine.

Fuck. Fuck.

“Why would Eislyn give it to me if she wanted to kill me?” I say. It makes no sense.

“Fae are immortal only in name. We can die by a blade just as easily as a human can,” the Bargainer says.

Still. “She wouldn’t knowingly give me any advantage over her,” I insist. “Eislyn hates me.”

“Maybe she wanted to be sure of what she was dealing with,” he argues.

Eislyn’s earlier words come back to me.

“I thought we might share a rare vintage together—one you might be familiar with.”

Could she have believed that I already drank the wine at some point in the past? It would explain why she thought I had been alive for all that time. Maybe she had simply been testing me to better understand who and what I was.

And under the logic, it wouldn’t have mattered that she fed me the wine, not when she intended to then have Memnon kill me.

Goddess, but this is a wretched situation.