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.”