The Beast King's Bargain

The world had not actually tilted.

Elara knew this because she could see the shelves behind him, perfectly straight, perfectly stationary, every book exactly where she had put it. The world had not tilted. She had.

"Three hundred years," she said.

"Yes."

"You've been searching for me."

"Yes."

"For three hundred years."

"That is what I said."

She set down the books she was holding—carefully, deliberately, because her hands were doing something unreliable and she did not want to add dropped books to the list of things currently going wrong. She placed them on the nearest shelf. She straightened them. She bought herself four seconds and used them to locate something in the vicinity of composure.

"You're insane," she said.

Something moved in his expression. No offense—something quieter than that. The particular look of a person hearing a thing they expected to hear and finding it no less difficult for having expected it. "Possibly. It doesn't make it less true."

"I don't know you."

"I know."

"I have never seen you before in my life."

He looked at her steadily. "Haven't you?"

The question landed somewhere in her chest and stayed there, pressing. Because the honest answer—the answer her rational mind was not willing to give and her body seemed to have already decided on—was that she was not entirely sure. That there was something about him that tugged at her in a way she had no language for. Not recognition exactly. Something older than recognition. Something that predated language.

She ignored it.

"No," she said firmly. "I would remember."

"You would think so." A pause. Something complicated moved through his expression, there and gone. "That is precisely the problem."

He reached into his coat.

Elara did not step back. She wanted to—every instinct she possessed was currently providing her with detailed instructions on backing toward the door—but she held still, because she had spent twenty-three years being controlled by her instincts and she was exhausted by it, and also because the note in her journal had said don't run and some irrational part of her was apparently taking that seriously.

He held out his hand, palm up.

In it sat a ring.

Small, silver, set with a stone that shifted as she looked at it—violet to black to silver to something she did not have a color word for. The band was carved with symbols she had never seen. Ancient-looking. Intricate. The kind of symbols that felt like they meant something specific and significant rather than merely decorative.

She recognized it.

The recognition hit her like cold water—sudden and total and deeply unwelcome. She had never seen this ring. She knew this ring. Both of those things were true simultaneously and she did not have a framework for how.

"Where did you get that?" Her voice came out quieter than she intended.

"You gave it to me." His voice was careful. Steady. "Three hundred years ago. You said to keep it safe. That one day I would need to return it."

"That is not possible."

"A great many things that are not possible are true regardless." He watched her face. "You recognize it."

"I don't."

"You do. I can see it."

She looked away from the ring, from him, at the middle distance between them, where there was nothing to look at, and that was precisely why she was looking at it. Her chest felt strange. Her hands, pressed flat against her thighs, had stopped their visible shaking and moved on to a deeper internal tremor she liked considerably less.

"Even if I believed any of this," she said. "Even if I took everything you just said at face value—what do you want? Why come here? Why me?"

"Because you are in danger," he said. "Real danger, from something you don't understand and can't see and can't fight, and I am the only person who can tell you what it is."

"And you're telling me this out of the goodness of your heart."

"I'm telling you this because if I don't, you will die in eleven months." He said it simply, without drama, which was somehow worse than if he had tried to make it land. "And I have spent three hundred years making sure that doesn't happen again."

Again.

The word sat there between them.

Elara opened her mouth to respond.

The shop bell chimed.

Both of them turned.

Mira stood in the doorway with a basket of pastries over one arm and the specific expression of someone who has just walked into a situation and is rapidly triangulating how much danger is present. Her eyes moved from Elara to the stranger and back to Elara with the speed and accuracy of someone who had been reading Elara's face for five years and could do it in low light.

"Elara," she said. Carefully. "Everything alright?"

"Fine," Elara said.

"It doesn't look fine."

"It's fine, Mira."

Mira set the pastry basket on the counter without looking away from the stranger. Her free hand moved to the counter's edge, where her rolling pin—which she had apparently brought with her, which meant she had come directly from the bakery, which meant this was a check-in visit disguised as a delivery—was within easy reach.

"Who are you?" she asked him.

"A friend," he said.

"Elara doesn't have friends who look like you."

A faint pause. "How do I look?"

"Like trouble," Mira said pleasantly. "Of the expensive, dangerous, ancient kind. No offense."

"None taken." He sounded, very slightly, like he might be amused. It was difficult to tell. His face was not a particularly readable face under ordinary circumstances, and these were not ordinary circumstances.

Mira looked at Elara. "Should I get the constable?"

"No," Elara said quickly. Then, because she owed Mira more than that, "He says he can explain the episodes. The blackouts." She watched Mira's expression shift. "He says he knows what's been happening to me."