That defiance made sense to me.
Eli added, “We will go to Elphame. We will present ourselves to my family and world. . . unless you can tell me you don’t feel the same. Do you care for me?”
“Obviously.” I sighed loudly. “But some people are not meant to have children. I am n--”
“Did I ask that of you?”
“No but—”
“So, shall I tell His Majesty that we will be there for Yule? Or am I wrong about your regard for me? I can sever our tie, return there, and allow my uncle to select my future bride.” He sounded calm, but I heard the trickle of fear in his voice. “Or you can make a bargain with me.”
The thought of it, of Eli bedding and wedding another person, made my jaw clench. I couldn’t, wouldn’t send him away. “We are a terrible idea, Eli.”
“Do I go home alone or do you feel as I do?”
“You’re . . . not wrong about my feelings,” I admitted. I was the least romantic, least appropriate choice for a man like Eli, but for reasons that I didn’t understand, he liked that he had my heart. “A wiser man would leave me.”
“I’ve never claimed wisdom, my dear Devil’s Cake.” He reached out and took my hand, and I knew that he was relieved. He sounded happier as he added, “I like danger, passion, a foul temper, talent for violence, fierce loyalty. I prefer warriors.”
“My sword is yours,” I swore. “You have that. No matter the future, you will always have that.”
“Then I’ll wait for the rest. Your heart. Your body. All of you, love. I want all of you.”
I shivered again. We both knew he had a lot of my heart, and the only reason he didn’t have my body was this damned engagement. The trouble with faeries, I was discovering, is that they have the patience to go along with their longevity.
I twined my fingers through his, keeping hold of his hand, even though I felt like a child for wanting to hold hands. My reaction to this touch was far from childlike, though. Touching Eli made me flush and my heart race. We’d kissed and had the sort of heated admissions that ought to be headier. This, though, was about my heart. His heart. Admitting that we wanted to find a way to be . . . more. That was scarier than sex or lust ever could be.
“So”—I cleared my throat—“what’s this bargain?”
He laughed, and the sheer wickedness in that sound had my thighs clenching against the instinctive urge to yell, “Take me now.” Instead I took a steadying breath and said, “Eli . . .”
“Date me.”
“What?”
“Date me until Twelfth Night, and you will earn a favor,” he said. “Anything you ask of me. One request. Whatever you most desire on that day. I won’t say no.”
I rolled it over in my mind. Anything? I could end the engagement. It seemed so simple. I stared at him and said, “Faery bargains are never this simple.”
“Maybe this one is. All you need to do is truly date me,” he said. “Not think about forever. Just . . . date me as if the rest wasn’t a factor.”
Part of me knew what he was implying. Most of me thought I could manage it. No rules, no strings, meant that we could revel in the thing between us.
“So, no rules? Just no holding back. We . . . date.”
“And on the sixth of January, you have one favor,” he clarified.
I paused, rolling it over in my mind. Twelfth Night, the Masquerade Ball that started Carnival season, was on January sixth. That was roughly a month from now. Between now and then, however, were a lot of events. Chanukah began in ten days. Yule and Christmas were roughly ten days later, and then New Year’s Eve in six more days, and then the Twelfth Night Masquerade Ball six days later.
“Why are you offering so many details?” I asked. The last bargain he’d offered me was without much clarity.
“Because, Geneviève, I want you to understand the terms.” He steered us onto the bridge, taking us out of the city into the ghost zone.
Something about the ghost zone, what was once the suburbs of most cities, was eerie. It was simply a ghost town of sorts, one that existed beside most cities. If you were brave enough or foolish enough, you could scavenge there; those who left their homes there, did so without taking most of their possessions. But the risk of draugr encounters in the ghost zone was high.
After the ghost zone was the Outs. I grew up there. Nature. People with more guns than sense. That was where Jesse and I met, neighbors in the Outs. My mother, Mama Lauren, was still there. I thought briefly about Chanukah. I’d have to take Eli to meet my mother if I agreed to this.
“Date, as in I play nice at the Yule presentation and you are at my side for any event during those weeks,” I clarified.
“More or less. I want you to be yourself, but without thought or discussion of the future,” Eli added.
“But any event?” I pressed. “You mean you’d meet my mother?”
“I would like that.” His hand tightened on the steering wheel. “That, however, is not my primary goal. I just want . . . to be in the now with you.”
I glanced at him, enjoying the moonlight on his profile. There was something about those cheekbones that just made me want to touch. Something about Eli that I barely resisted. My voice felt too loud even though I was whispering when I said, “If I didn’t think about the future, we’d already have been naked, bonbon. . .”
He grinned at my use of one of his pet names for me and said, “All the more reason to date me.”
I sighed.
Eli glanced at me then. “Give me these days. Let me be in your life. We were so close to progress, and then this”—he gestured between us—“engagement stalled us. I want us to be as we were.”
My throat was parched with the wave of need he brought to the forefront of my every nerve, but I still had to add, “Whatever happens is not precedent-setting. When January sixth comes, we . . . reset.”
He chuckled. “Expected, and accepted.”
“Agreed, then,” I said shakily. “I agree to your terms, Eli. We will date.”
“I look forward to courting you,” he said in that damnably calm tone, which meant that he was hiding his emotions.
I knew for sure then that I was fucked somehow, but the deal was done. I was going to let Eli into my life.
I swallowed hard and tried to sound just as calm. “For tonight, let’s see what disaster awaits us at Beatrice’s door.”
Chapter Four
A little later when we arrived in The Outs, the region that was once called Slidell, I had to concentrate not to send out a summons to the dead. I was on edge, and my magic was akin to a malformed pipe lately. Sometimes, I tried for a trickle and ended up with a flood. Sometimes, I tried for a stream and received a few droplets.
If I let my magic out tonight, I would wake the dead.
Or beckon the again-walking.
My affinity with death was an affront to some people—the faery king included—and I couldn’t entirely blame them. I had a pheromone that meant the not-living found me irresistible. Not in a weird lets-get-naked way . . . okay, sometimes that way, too. Mostly, though, that response was because I was powerful, and power gets many a motor revving.