“Uh?…Oh, yeah. Sure. He wants one,” she stammered, fumbling with the beads as if her fingers had forgotten what to do. “Sorry. Uhm, matching? What colour?”
I glanced at Thrax. He looked completely indifferent. Until he looked back at me, displeasure etched into every line of his face. Without breaking eye contact with him, I nodded at the woman. “Make his black.”
“No,” he disagreed instantly, a frown pulling his brows low. “There’s no way I’m keeping that.”
The merchant leaned forward, her voice syrup-sweet. “There’s no harm in trying on a couple bracelets. Anything would look good on you.” She didn’t bother to hide how her eyes swept over his body.
My smile turned polite in the most brittle sense of the word. I shifted slightly, placing myself between them. “He wants black, ma’am.”
“Oh—yes, of course.” She giggled lightly and began threading the beads.
I watched her loop three before I turned back to Thrax, only to find him closer than I’d expected. The tips of his boots were barely a breath from mine, my stomach tightening. I made myself meet his gaze, the steady weight of his focus making me feel uncomfortably warm.
“Where are your gloves?” I asked, knowing he never went without them outside the house.
He only shrugged.
My gaze dropped to his hands again, and my breath caught. I grabbed his left one before he could pull it away, turning it over. A thin red line stretched across his palm, healed but obvious. If his palm was injured weeks ago, I’d have seen it. But not catching it until it had completely healed?
Right. The claw marks.
Without thinking, I rose onto my toes, pushing back his hair to check his neck. My fingers grazed warm skin, sending an electric spark down my own spine. The bruises I’d seen earlier were gone. Completely gone. In less than a day.
“We’re touching each other randomly now, yeah?” he murmured.
I met his eyes, whispering back, “That’s rich coming from someone who cornered me in a library with a dagger to my nipple.”
“Hmm.” His lips tipped into a smug, knowing curve, no doubt recalling the moment in vivid detail.
I ignored the heat in my own memory and focused on the puzzle. “Where are the claw marks?”
“Gone.”
“But how?”
He shrugged. “Perks of not having a shadow, I guess.”
What?
I opened my mouth to push further, but the merchant’s voice called me back. I turned blindly, my elbow clipping a box of beads in the process, sending it teetering off the cart. My heart jumped.
Instinctively, my hand shot after it.
But the box stopped some inches from spilling on the ground.
It hung there for the briefest second, like time had stopped moving for it. Then reality snapped again, and it continued its descent. I caught it before the beads could scatter, my pulse hammering in my ears from what I was sure I’d just seen.
What the hell was that?
I handed it back to the woman, who accepted it with a grateful nod, completely unaware of what had just happened.
I turned to look at Thrax, but he was staring at the jewellery displayed on the woman’s cart. That box had stopped and continued, as though whatever happened to it had been a slip of control.
Did magic stillopenlyexist? Did anyone around here possess one?
“Your partner’s bracelet is done,” the woman said, drawing me out of my thoughts.
“He’s not—” I started.
