He refused to be invisible.
Silas perched on the curtain rod above, and as Felix twitched his fingers idly, the bird responded, preening its feathers as if they were real and not wisps of smoke.
There were only a dozen or so patrons tonight, all wielders, and he knew each by name. He didn’t bother hiding his magic—at least not the legal one—from them. Should someone new enter, the bird looked detailed enough to pass as a real raven.
A voice pulled his attention. “Hard day’s work, is it?”
Felix tilted his head to look up at the girl, who appeared upside down from his perspective. Marlow was a wispy thing with saucer eyes and olive skin and ash brown hair that hung almostto her chin, still in the process of growing out from the cropped cut she’d kept for most of her life.
She wore a simple beige dress he’d never seen her in before with buttons up the front and a white folded collar. The style was a few seasons old, the fabric worn thin in places. Clearly second-hand.
Marlow’s outfit choices varied daily between soft skirts with heels and dark ensembles with trousers tucked into soft leather boots. Whether she appeared gentle or lethal, he figured, depended on her mood. As a healer, she was always both.
“You getting paid to sit now?”
“I’m off early,” he shot back.
“Well, get up off your arse. Your girlfriend’s at the bar looking for you.”
“She’s not my girlfriend, Mar.” With a subtle flick of Felix’s hand, Silas dissolved into smoke overhead. He tipped his head further and caught sight of the girl between the shoulders of the nearest table’s occupants. She was hovering near the bar, honey-blonde hair pinned back with careful neatness.
Sarah Farrows stood out, not just in her demure appearance and fine garments, but in the discomfort painted on her face and the lack of rings in her light eyes. She wasn’t a wielder. In fact, she came from a noble family that, like most, despised them.
After their brief meeting at the festival, Felix had gone out of his way to ensure their paths met again. The Farrows house held the sort of influence that opened doors otherwise sealed tight for people like him.
Marlow rolled her eyes. “Right, well, the girl whoisn’tyour girlfriend is looking for you.”
Felix spread his hands out to his sides. “Am I difficult to find? Do I need to hold up a sign?”
Marlow’s nose crinkled. “She’s scared. This place is intimidating. Doubt she’d risk losing sight of that front door.”
He sat up and swung his legs around to hang off the bench. “Isit?”
The Raven’s Perch was cozy and welcoming. A gathering spot for wielders and the few decent folks who didn’t mind their company. There were some boorish regulars, sure, but he’d never considered it to be intimidating.
“For someone like her, yeah,” Marlow said.
Felix supposed some might take issue with the symbol of Arunas, the Goddess of Magic, above the front door; an open eye with a halo of sunbeams encircling the pupil. To many, she was a betrayer deity, not one to be worshiped.
And the portrait of Aesran Erynda, her face studded with knives like a grotesque pincushion, was hardly a warm welcome for someone like Lady Farrows. Wielders had no love for the nobility. Then again, few from Felix’s station did.
He shrugged. “Fair enough.”
But he didn’t care what Sarah Farrows thought of it. The Raven’s Perch was his favourite place in the world.
It was thanks to the pub that he and his ma had gone from not knowing where their next meal would come from to having a steady income, though it was still barely enough to keep the place running. He’d won the deed from a grey-haired gentleman with a gambling problem across town three years ago.
Felix had cheated, of course—with quick hands, not magic—but if the man had known he’d lost to a wielder, he still would’ve called the Watch and had him arrested.
Back then, the pub was a ruin on the border between the Conaeld and Copperhill Districts, with a different name and a hole in the roof, but Felix and his ma made something incredible from it.
“What’s she doing here, anyway?” Felix asked.
Marlow dropped onto the bench beside him. “You could ask her.”
“Been doing my best to avoid her.”
She fixed him with a serious look. “You wanna break off whatever unhealthy thing you guys got going, then grow a spine andtellher.”
