As the sun rose, the market came to life. Canvas awnings stretched crookedly over wooden stalls laden with cabbages, bolts of wool, and iron cookware. City folk jostled between mud-spattered carts carrying baskets, avoiding the beggars crouched over gutters. Children darted underfoot, chasing stray pigeons through the press of bodies, a few picking pockets along the way.
It was a colorful display of humanity against the city’s gray stone backdrop. I longed to share in its vibrance, to feel like I truly belonged, but my magic, my otherness, forced me to keep my distance. The city had never known what to do with a misfit like me—too much mage for the peasants, too little for the Assembly. I didn’t belong in either world, half-in, half-out. And there could never be a place for halves in a city torn apart by its own biases.
I braced myself against the crowd’s emotional assault as my first customer of the morning walked toward me. Judging by his fine leather jerkin and the sword hanging at his belt, he was a mercenary.
The rich aroma of foreign olive oil clinging to his skin told me he’d just left the fortress’s luxurious baths. His charming smile and confident swagger suggested a man who would flirt, buy a couple of my tinctures, then leave, annoyed he couldn’t buy me as well.
This was normal. The emotions roiling off him were anything but. Anger. Jitters. Lust that was so closely commingled with pain, I could barely separate the two.
My magic gulped it all down like wine gone to vinegar.
This mercenary was half-feral. His emotions painted a picture of a man who committed a constant stream of violence yet had faced little to no consequences for it. I needed to proceed cautiously.
“Two coppers for the vial, Ser,” I said, pushing the pain-relieving tincture toward him. My voice held steady, but the glass trembled, betraying my fear.
“One,” he said, deliberately loud enough for nearby ears. “And it’d better work, witch. Or I’ll be back to burn the lies out of you myself.”
I wanted to scream my frustration at the top of my lungs. Tell him I wasn’t a witch. Witches faked having a spark of the gift to put money in their pouches. I hadrealmagic. The true extent of which was a secret, known only to my family.
Yet, in this city, it made no difference. Being poor was enough to warrant his lack of decency toward me.
I accepted the copper because the hollow in my stomach was a more pressing need than preserving the tatters of my pride.
The mercenary smiled, showing all his teeth. Then his tainted interest in me climbed up my chest and wrapped its fingers around my throat. If I wasn’t cautious, I knew this man would be waiting for me after sundown to finish what his eyes had already promised.
But the moment the mercenary’s calloused fingers brushed mine, a large, gloved hand came into view just over his shoulder. With a sudden, brutal yank, the mercenary was pulled sideways and backward, the force of it audibly knocking the wind from his lungs.
I let out a tiny, surprised squeak as my heart pounded in my chest. The mercenary’s eyes, once swaggering and smug, were wide with terror. I staggered back under the tidal wave of his choking fear.
A towering figure stepped into view, black tunic draped with a blood-red cloak, trimmed in gold. The fabric screamed power and money. He had to be a lord, or someone higher in rank. The gloved hand hadn’t let go.
I couldn’t see what unfolded in the next second, but the sound was unmistakable: steel sliding into meat with a wet, violentcrunch. Then, the bone-snappingcrackof something vital breaking.
With a dullthud, the mercenary’s top half collapsed forward onto my stall.
Vials shattered, scattering herbs and glass across the stall. I stood frozen, staring dumbly as his torso slid across my counter, painting it red. Below the table, his legs hit the ground with a soddensmack. Blood spilled in both directions like someone had split a wineskin onto the cobblestones.
When the scene fully registered, my magic surged up in my chest. It tore out of me in a silent scream of feeling. The desperate, involuntary cry demanded peace, stillness,no more.
A wave of calm more powerful than anything I’d ever cast engulfed the market.
And just like that, everything I’d done to make myself easily overlooked and meek failed. The stares, the judgment, speared into me from a hundred different eyes.
The executioner staggered back half a step, avoiding the spreading pool of blood. He recovered quickly, but his next movements were stiff compared to the feline grace he’d shown in cutting a man cleanly in half.
Ignoring me completely, he barked at unseen helpers, “Clean this up!”
Only then did I realize that Mage Assembly guards were stationed a mere twenty paces away. They’d made no attempt to intervene, and they still hesitated to act, like they were stunned by my magic or his brutality.
Trying to focus on anything other than the corpse right in front of my face, I stared at the mage’s cloak. It wasn’t right. Where was the dark purple of the Assembly?
I didn’t have time to puzzle it out. A glint of steel caught my eye as the executioner crouched, reaching for the mercenary’s belt. Those same gloved hands, miraculously unmarred after committing such a brutal killing, rifled through the dead man’s pouches.
“You rob him too?” I snapped, though my voice trembled with something closer to despair than anger. I added a late, squeaky, “My Lord.”
His head turned slowly, as if he were unaccustomed to being addressed. Glacial blue eyes, dancing with a wild light I’d never seen the likes of before, lifted to mine. He trapped me with his stare, a predator assessing if I was danger, dinner, or something else entirely.
His gaze drifted to the iron pendant hanging around my neck, the mark of a lowly mage. A smirk replaced his scowl, as if he’d just gotten the grand joke. “Why not?” he asked, his deep voice dry with dark amusement. “He doesn’t need it anymore.”
