“Anything? Even chocolate from Nicosa?”
He nodded, and his ears flicked.
Celeste shook her head with a grin as he must have been joking. Nicosian chocolate was considered a delicacy even in Clarriseau, and her home island was just about as far north as merchants ever took it since the taste hadn’t caught on in the mainland realm.
“So, you’re familiar with the Accursed Wastes?”
She bit her lip, afraid to have given that away. “Only the most awful parts of it.”
“Hmm. Been to a lot of places?” He leaned on the counter as he closed her satchel. “And none of ‘em are quite right, I reckon?”
“I can never stay,” she heard herself saying, and then looked about frantically for a distraction. “Do you have a broom?”
Baylen cocked a brow. “A couple actually.”
“Could I borrow one? There are shards of glass on the road, and they should be cleaned up before someone gets hurt.”
“Oh, that.” He passed her bag across the counter with a chuckle. “The lampposts keep bursting. I’d clean them up myself, but Geezer says don’t touch the evidence yet—he’s doing research. Nice of you to offer though.”
“Research?”
“The lights are arcane, and they’ve been fine for years under Geezer’s watch, but then they just started exploding, say…about a week ago? Every night a group of them just goes wild, like the magic gets too big for the container it’s kept in.”
A week ago was when Celeste showed up, but she wasn’t going to accidentally admit that too. “Geezer,” she said carefully, hoping it was an endearment, “is a mage?”
Baylen gestured to the shop’s front door. “Sure is. Lives in that little shack just across the way. Keeps a lot of the village running. Well, best he can, considering the conditions and consideringhiscondition.”
The knot in Celeste’s stomach went tighter. She thanked the minotaur man and hurried off with her heavy pack.
Outside, she wandered out of sight of the Horn of Plenty’s front window and found one of the lampposts. Shards of glass littered the ground, catching the midday sun. No one was about, so Celeste ran a finger over her locket and called out the tiniest bit of arcana to feel for what happened. Identification was difficult enough for her, but the magic left there was so messy, she was unsurprised it had led to broken glass.
She quickly stuffed her senses away and hustled to the resident dairy, a house at the south of town with a field full of goats. At least there were no cows, a slight relief as she’d asked Baylen, of all people, where she could acquire milk.
The amicable woman who ran the dairy traded jokes about how Celeste couldn’t possibly eat all of the cheese and butter she had just purchased, and if she did, where would she put it on her wiry frame? Celeste could only titter back, smart enough to not say she had a huge, probably very hungry man locked up in the place she was returning to.
Heavily laden with provisions and worry, she hurried back, and this time she noted the lampposts along the roads, covered in dried-out, thorny vines and each of them shattered.
CHAPTER 6
HAVE YOUR CAKE AND EAT IT TOO
Reeve lay on his back, arms and legs sprawled, and stared up at the vaguely hazy ceiling. Trapped. He was well and good trapped—not to mention on the verge of concussed from all the crashing into the floor he’d been doing—and he had exhausted nearly all of his options trying to be free of that vile witch’s lair.
“How did this happen?” His throat was dry, eyes weary, and he wasn’t exactly sure when the sun had risen which was not at all like him, but the curtains in the sordid chamber that had become his prison were covering most of the stained-glass windows, and dark arcana refused to allow him to draw them back.
“Well, she overpowered you.”
Reeve rolled his head against the floorboards to glance over at the Obsidian Widow Maker lying beside him. “Shewasquite strong.” It sounded even more miserable than he’d imagined when he thought it.
“So are you,” said the sword. “Strong enough to choke someone whose neck is about as thick as my hilt.”
Reeve groaned. He could barely grab her, let alone choke her. Even if she was a witch, though she had insisted intensely otherwise, she was still a woman. And a pretty one at that. Though he knew he should be an equal opportunity slayer of evil, it did not feel entirely…right. “Maybe I should have listened to what she had to say.”
“Do you remember the last time you listened to a villain monologue?”
Reeve blew out a long breath, and the tip of one of his curls bounced against his brow. Baron Whitmore had been exceptionally deceitful—he wasn’t even really a baron. “Of course I remember. I got stabbed in the thigh, and if not for Flint, I’d be dead.” On Reeve’s other side lay his whittling knife, which thankfully could not speak, as far as he knew, and an old fish bone he’d been working on carving into a griffin. It wasn’t turning out anything like the one he’d seen back home in Bendcrest, and he was considering giving up on it. “It’s just…I might have figured a way out of here if I’d listened to her.”
“Is that really why you wanted to let that witch blather on?”
