The Fake Dating Spell novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: The Deal
In the cloakroom Tavish names his price, and in his sleigh they cast her old prank spell with a kiss; the thread comes up gold, not silver.
The cloakroom smelled of wet wool and old perfume.
Wynne got through the door first and spun around, and Tavish Morrow shut it behind him with one hand.
"I'm sorry," she said at once. "I'm so sorry. I'll tell the Sight-mage it was a mistake. I'll pay whatever exile costs."
"Exile costs everything," Tavish said. "Sit down."
"I can't sit. I just lied to the Queen."
"You lied to three hundred people. The Queen was only one of them."
He leaned against the coat rack, which creaked, and crossed his arms.
He was even bigger up close.
"Why me?" he asked.
"You weren't looking at the dais."
"That's the reason?"
"You were the only one not laughing," Wynne said.
Something moved in his face, too quick to read.
"I'm not laughing now either," he said. "Do you know why the Council wants me at Court this week?"
She shook her head.
"There's a decree. A Warden who is unwed at Twelfth Night gives up his garrison."
He said it flatly.
"Three times they've offered me a bride. Three times I've said no."
"Why?"
"Because I'd have to live with her," Tavish said.
"The Northern Keep has four hundred soldiers who haven't been paid by this crown in a year."
"And a wife would hand your Keep to the Chancellor's friends."
"A wife I chose would not."
Wynne stared at him.
"You stood there for ten minutes and you saw all that?"
"I saw a woman with a ring on her finger and a face like someone had hit her," he said.
"And I saw my own way out."
He pushed off the rack and came a step closer.
"Here is the trade. You keep your pride and I keep my Keep. We stay betrothed until Twelfth Night. Then we part."
"Fake," Wynne said.
"Fake."
"The Sight-mage reads truth. She will see through us before the soup."
Tavish looked at her for a long moment.
"You're a spellwright," he said. "I bought a frost charm that you wrapped. The thread on it was better than anything Aventine ever signed."
She flushed.
"You noticed that?"
"I noticed the wrapping was perfect and the man who sold it was a fool."
She laughed before she could stop herself, a cracked, startled sound.
Then she went still, because an old idea had come to her.
"There is a spell," she said slowly. "I wrote it at school for a dare. The Show-Love."
"Show-Love."
"It joins two people with a thread of light that anyone can see."
She rubbed her forehead.
"Silver means a couple, for show. Gold means one of them truly wants the other. That part was a joke."
"And you never tested it."
"I never tested any of it."
"Will it fool the Sight-mage?"
"She reads for lies. A thread of light is a thing she can see and weigh, not a lie she has to hunt for."
His eyebrows rose a little.
"What does it need?"
"A shared roof until it ends, and a kiss to seal it. Both of us willing."
She had meant to say it lightly.
It came out in a very small voice.
Tavish's gaze dropped to her mouth and came back up.
"My sleigh is outside," he said. "I'd rather not do it in a coat closet."
The sleigh was black and low, with lamps that threw wide gold circles on the snow.
The driver took them through the empty streets without being told where.
Wynne sat on the far side of the bench with her notebook open on her knee.
She had carried the small working notebook in her sleeve for two years, because Lorcan said clerks should always have paper.
She wrote the spell out by lamplight, the way she remembered it.
Her hand was steady, which surprised her.
"Give me your wrist," she said.
He held out his left arm and pushed back the cuff.
His pulse was visible under the skin, strong and a little fast.
She laid her own wrist against it and drew the first line of the working with her fingertip.
The air between them warmed.
"Now the kiss," she said.
"Where?"
"Anywhere. It has to be real enough that we both mean to be bound."
"That's not an answer."
"The mouth," Wynne said, and heard herself.
He lifted his free hand and put it along her jaw.
His palm was rough and very warm.
"You can stop me," he said.
"I know."
He kissed her.
It was not a showy kiss, and it was not a kind one.
It was slow, and sure, and his thumb moved once along her cheekbone.
Her breath left her all at once.
She had not known a mouth could be that careful and that hungry together.
Light poured up between their wrists.
It was a bright, thin line, and it wrapped twice around her arm and twice around his.
Wynne pulled back and stared.
"It's meant to be silver," she whispered.
The thread burned the color of a candle flame.
It was gold.
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