“The Widow Queen always was good with death curses,” said Baba Yaga. “Fortunately, I’m better.”
“He was taking Aiden away again,” said the little girl belligerently. “He should die.”
“If he hadn’t helped me,” said Aiden in a very calm tone, “I would have died.”
“She promised not to kill you,” Underhill said. “I wouldn’t lead her to you until she promised.”
Aiden looked at her, his face grim and sad. “Tilly, the Widow Queen didn’t have to kill me herself. The fae woman over there would have done it.” He lifted his shirt to display a red mark. “Adam knocked her away, and I scorched her with my fire. But in doing so, he left himself vulnerable. He saved me, and that gave the Widow Queen time to hit him with her spell.”
“She lied to me,” hissed Underhill—and like the thing that had attacked the tree house, her voice carried more than mere sound. “And she used magic. She broke her word.”
“So she did,” said Baba Yaga briskly. “She was always like that. She was after the artifact, I’m afraid. I told her that she had no business trying to keep something that powerful for herself.”
I looked up at Baba Yaga. I’d seen her raise someone from the dead once. “Can you bring him back?”
Baba Yaga shook her head. “Can’t do, dearie. At least, not right now. He’s not dead yet. Not like that other one. I could wait if you want, but what you want to ask me is whether I can break the Widow Queen’s spell.”
“Can you break the Widow Queen’s spell?” I repeated her instructions, my bloody hand clenched deep in my husband’s silver fur and my heart in my throat.
“Only with Underhill’s permission,” Baba Yaga said. “I keep my promises.”
“No,” said Underhill.
“Tilly,” Aiden snapped. “You aren’t being nice.”
“It isn’t nice to run away,” she snarled at him, and her voice made my chest hurt.
“I wouldn’t have run away if you hadn’t set the fae on me as soon as I got Outside,” he said. “On all of us. They all died, Tilly. They can’t come back because you taunted the fae, and they thought they could get something from us if they just took us far enough apart. No more Ice, no more Cloud, no more Terra. They died as mortals do. They cannot come back. But I can. I will. But you have to let Baba Yaga break the Widow Queen’s curse.”
I held my breath. He’d lived with her for centuries—he loved her, and she loved him back in her own way. His word would sway her more than anything I could say.
“If he dies, I will hate you forever,” he told her. “I will leave and never come back. And I’ll tell everyone I meet how mean you are.”
Underhill’s face flushed angrily, but I could see that the threat meant something to her.
“I’ll allow a bargain,” she said finally, folding her arms on her chest and obviously unhappy. “A bargain for the Witch’s service. A bargain I approve of.” She looked at me and smiled, a slow, cruel smile. “A life-for-a-life kind of bargain.”
Baba Yaga said, “Give me an unborn life, then, Mercy, so I may restore his.”
I put my hand over my belly—but I wasn’t pregnant. We’d talked about it but had decided to wait before we tried.
“An unborn life is acceptable,” said Underhill slyly, taking in my gesture and my expression.
“You can’t do that,” said Aiden in a low voice. “He’d never want to buy his life with another’s. Especially not his own child’s.”
I got up and went to the backpack and took out one of the hard-boiled eggs, chills sliding down my spine. What if I had just dismissed her remark over the phone? What if I hadn’t decided to bring them along? What if we had eaten them for lunch yesterday, as I’d almost suggested?
I handed Baba Yaga the egg. “One unborn life,” I told her, my voice shaky.
“Hard-boiled are my favorite,” she said, popping the whole thing, shell and all, into her mouth. “I can’t eat them much anymore at home. I keep telling her that just because she stands on a chicken leg doesn’t mean she is a chicken.”
Underhill looked back and forth between me and Baba Yaga. “You tricked me,” she said, looking at me like I was interesting. She looked at Baba Yaga and suddenly smiled—a smile that didn’t belong on a young face, so wise and joyous. She laughed and clapped her hands. “That was fun,” she said. She looked at me. “You should come visit me. We could play a lot of jokes on each other. It would be fun.”
“It could be fun,” I managed. That was the truth, right? The possibility existed that it would be fun—but I’d have put my money on terrifying.
Baba Yaga waved her hands at Adam—and he sucked in a breath of air so hard he choked, and the wolf convulsed, trying to breathe.
It hurt. I could feel it along our bond, but if he hurt, he was alive, so I didn’t mind. Much. I fell to my knees beside him and put my head against his heart so I could hear it beat. He coughed as the pain faded, and tried to get up. It took him two tries, but once he was on his feet, he shook himself briskly. I held him for a moment more.
He was alive. I breathed in, breathed him in, and believed. I wiped my tears—of fright and grief—and then loosened my hold.
“He’s okay?” asked Aiden, sounding, for once, the same age that he looked.
“Of course,” said Baba Yaga. “Everything was done right and proper.”