Pale.
Nearly white.
Drawn in loose, flowing strokes that caught the lanternlight even on parchment.
The face beneath was only half-formed—high cheekbones suggested, eyes left dark and hollow—but the shape of the jaw was right.
And the fall of the hair was unmistakable.
At the brow, half-hidden by shadow, a faint curve had been scratched in—small. Deliberate.
A crescent.
Someone had added cramped notes—details meant for hunters, not gawkers.
“CRESCENT MARK. DANGEROUS. WANTED ALIVE.”
My pulse thundered. I yanked the cloth higher over my face, fingers shaking as the world pitched beneath me.
I nudged Alaric’s arm—once. Light. Deliberate. He turned his head in the same direction.
I felt the moment he understood. His pace didn’t change—but his shoulders locked. His steps became quieter, controlled.
He didn’t curse. Didn’t react.
He only reached up and adjusted the scarf at my throat himself—firm, careful.
“Stay close,” he murmured. His voice was calm.
His eyes were not.
In that glance, I understood something else, too: he wasn’t only angry with me.
He was afraid. Not for himself. For me.
The guilt that followed cut deep—enough to feel like betrayal.
Beneath the sketch, bold lettering screamed a word I hadn’t expected to see attached to my name.
TRAITOR.
The word didn’t just label me.
It converted me—from mermaid to prize, from mystery to currency.
My skin went cold beneath the cloth, not from fear of judgment, but from the sudden, brutal math of it:
Everything had a price. And someone had decided what mine was.
Each shop offered a new kind of nightmare—some dim and desperate, others cloaked in velvet and candlelight.
Behind velvet curtains, vendors whispered over bone-carved relics and shimmering vials, each promising divinity bottled for the right price.
In one shop, shelves lined with cracked glass jars held floating things that stared from within murky liquid—eyeballs that twitched, fingers that curled when no one was near. Another reeked of charred incense and something acrid; an old woman sat behind the counter grinding something in a mortar that oozed thick, black resin.
A merchant with sunken eyes and silver-threaded robes displayed enchanted maps, their ink shifting like living veins, revealing and concealing pathways when touched.
We moved on. Searched.
