Alize twirled the stem gently between her thumb and forefinger.
“It is a rare thing,” she said quietly. I understood her meaning. So little grew in Velora anymore, let alone something magical. Alize leaned forward, returning the tiny plant to the dish of tea leaves. “Someone is on your side, witch.”
Witch. It lacked the ring of endearment when Alize said it, but that did not matter to my traitorous heart.My heart doesn’t beat. How can it be broken?
I did not care about a supposedly magical clover or Alize’s meandering thoughts about Maura and the fae king.
“If you are done tormenting me, I’d prefer to be left alone.” I buried my hands in the folds of my shift to hide how they clenched.
Alize rolled her eyes. “And I’d prefer if my brother returned to his homeland across the water rather than entangling himself in conflicts he cannot win. But neither of us is well placed to serve our own preferences.”
Garrick is here.In Velora, or Balar Shan? In the palace itself?
I don’t care, I reminded myself. If he valued his life as much as he led me to believe—not that I could trust anything that had happened between us in the Gates—he would stay far away from me. Because I would kill him for what he’d done, and I would survive the Lifebind just fine. It bound his life to mine, not the other way around, because I was the one who’d saved his life in the Mercy Gate. It was his debt to repay.
Alize watched me for three more heartbeats. My heart did not beat, but even after all these years, I knew their pace by buried human instinct. I knew my face showed the storm within me. I was too busy controlling my power and my mouth to master my face as well. She rolled her eyes and then disappeared back through the arch, not bothering to use her magic to cover her footfalls this time.
I did not move for several minutes, waiting to make sure she was well and truly gone. Only when my stomach yelled its angerloud enough to echo across the ornate tilework of the bathhouse did I finally move. I dragged the tray of food and tea closer to the center of my cell.
Alize was right about that, at least. Whether I ate or not, I wouldn’t die from hunger. But there was no reason to torture myself. Maura and the fae king had plenty of their own in mind, I was certain.
CHAPTER 4
GARRICK
Before
The sun was going down,but if I ran, I would beat it to the horizon.
My arms ached from shoveling grain, but I’d gone twice as long and as hard as any of the other boys, and the reward jingled in my pocket to prove it. My legs, however, were fresh as the water from the spring that hid in the forest behind our little house. Hut, more accurately. But ours. It was the first place that ever had been.
I crested the hill, and it appeared in the distance, a tiny speck amid the brambleberry bushes that made the land otherwise unusable. Those bushes were the reason we’d been able to afford the place at all.
One last dare to the sun—try to catch me—and I darted down the road. No more than a double-wide track, it would narrow when I crossed onto our land, where not even a cart could pass, nor needed to. The last rays of sunshine caught on the golden grasses that edged the last section of road. Another summer andI’d be tall enough to see over them, and I would have seen the man pushing through before he stepped into the road.
“Ho, Garrick!” he called.
Anyone else would have careened into the man, but my reflexes were faster than most. I skidded to a stop and kept my balance.
“Master Walden.” I dipped my head but not my eyes.
I was always wary of our neighbor. He’d never said an unkind word, but I’d once seen him kick his dog. I’d never asked my mother about it, nor mentioned it to her. Even I knew that the life we’d carved out on the edges of the village was precarious. She did not need to worry about our neighbors. If the worst Master Walden did was kick a dog… well, at least he traded the flour from his mill for my mother’s tomatoes. We hadn’t been hungry since we settled here. But I remembered hunger well enough to not mention the dog to my mother… even if I was unwilling to forget it.
He rubbed a hand across his stubbled jaw, making a disgusting squelch as he worked his mouth. Adding the word ‘master’ was a gesture of respect. Staring him down was the opposite. His reason for stopping me would determine how much one weighed against the other.
I rocked back on my heels, giving the impression that he was taller than me. He wasn’t. At twelve-years-old, my height was nearly as conspicuous as my silver hair. I’d learned that they made certain types of people uncomfortable.
“The alderman handed me this to pass along to your mother.”
Walden finally reached inside his vest and pulled out a folded and sealed letter. Its size and shape said letter, but the color… I’d never seen paper that color. It was a vivid scarlet. The same color as blood and sealed with gold wax. If the flakes in that wax were real, and I could melt it down and separate them out… mymind swirled with possibilities. The roof of our hut could be re-thatched. I’d have to do the labor, but we wouldn’t have to trade for materials. We could buy them outright, which meant our trades could go toward other valuable items.
I took the letter from Walden, my fingers already eager for the possibilities and not a single thought spared for what the letter might contain. Walden did not withdraw his hand.
I understood the unspoken language of trade.
There were two coins in my pocket, both tin. Not worth much to most people. But they were the difference between an extra shift and a night of rest for my mother. The gold in the wax seal, though… I did not know if it was real. If it was fake, and I passed the coins along to Walden, that would be worse than giving him nothing at all.
Walden would not try to take back the letter. But the next one might not make its way to us. Not that we’d ever received such a thing before.
