“I’m not the only fae or even the only Gray Lord who despises humans,” she said. “But I need a bigger power base to gain the support of the fae for my plans. They need to see me as a Power, someone who can back up her ideas with action. An artifact retrieved from Underhill, stolen from under the noses of the Council of the Gray Lords, would do nicely. As long as I do it before you hand it over, the other Gray Lords can do nothing but wring their hands. Retrieving artifacts that have fallen into human hands is an acceptable venture and not a crime at all.”

“I see,” I said.

“If you hand it over to me,” she said, “I’ll let you live.”

“It will void the bargain,” Aiden told me in a low voice.

I nodded. We had promised to do everything in our power to bring back an artifact. Handing it over just because we were outgunned wouldn’t qualify. I couldn’t remember all of the exact words, but I was pretty sure “even unto death” was in there.

“Why bring them?” I asked, nodding at her three minions. “You are a Gray Lord. It sounds like you’re going to take a stab at ruling the fae all by yourself—and you can’t take on the three of us without help?”

“She cannot use magic to attack us,” said Aiden suddenly. “Before Underhill let them come back, she made them swear not to use their magic here.”

“It matters not,” the Widow Queen said. “You are both unarmed, and the werewolf is no match for the four of us by himself.”

Aiden nodded. “Maybe that would be so,” he said, “if you were right about that unarmed part.” Aiden sucked in a breath and gestured with his hand. Flame spilled out of his fingers and— I didn’t see what he did with it; I was too busy dodging a bronze broadsword wielded by the man in green.

In martial art terms, a broadsword is by definition an outer-circle weapon. There has to be a certain amount of space between the combatants in order to properly swing a sword of that size. The Widow Queen had a rapier, which would have been harder to deal with, because a rapier is quicker and more flexible. Not that the broadsword was easy. Still, the first strike the fae aimed at me I dodged. I managed it not so much because he couldn’t have hit me, but because he’d assumed I’d be a lot slower than I was—and because he’d expected me to try to get away. I stepped into him.