Just like that, reality crashes through me with a vengeance. The unexpected blow sends me stumbling, reeling, and I fall forward, knocking into the mirror before righting myself. Flashing a dazed smile. Pretending I tripped on my hem. Sharp thorns scratch my hands, but I hardly feel them. Hardly feelanythingas claws clench my heart and squeeze and squeeze and—
The last boy.
My throat constricts, emotion clawing to the surface, but I swallow it back down again.Not here. Not now.I force myself to release the mirror. I force myself to turn, to—to smile again. To just keep smiling.
“Whatever happened to that charming lad?” Gerald sinks to the settee beside Harold, heedless, crossing a bare foot over his knee as if settling in for a pleasant conversation. My breath hitches. My heart pounds. “I hope he found a wife or husband of his own?”
Harold pats his hand affectionately. “She came with a different man?”
“Oh yes. Remember? It was the same day the Illuminated Library was robbed. They shut down the isle,” Gerald explains to Arion. “Citizens aren’t allowed to leave their doorsteps once the alarms sound. We were worried about Zephyra and her handsome friend, of course, as they seemed foreign to our shores, but we could only hope they found shelter elsewhere. The isles are safe enough during an attack, so long as you understand to take cover. Dryads handle all criminals here. Lucius himself created them.” His voice drifts as he reminisces on the worst day of my life. “They cleaned the mess up rather quickly,” he muses, “but I never did see you again, Zephyra, dear.”
The mess the mess the mess—
“I… we… hid,” I manage through shallow breaths, and with a start, I realize my palms are bleeding. The blood looks foreign, strange, shocking upon my skin as the shoppe lists to one side. In some distant part of my mind, I watch as the thorn pricks heal over. As Arion heals them and his own. I shake my head to clear it, but it doesn’t help. I need to leave. Now. “We hid in Lucius’s Temple. And the—the alarms frightened us, so we left.”
“Don’t blame you,” Harold says. “Those alarms even frighten me.”
Mistaking Arion’s sharp eyes on my face, Gerald says, “Fear not, my sweet. The boy was handsome, but not quite as…muchas you are. And thereissomething about you, isn’t there? I can’t quite put my finger on it…”
Arion ignores the compliment, still searching my face for answers. I stare back at him without expression, refusing to give him a single one. Though the cord burns between us, I pretend not to see it. Pretend it’s not flashing white with past terrors. Unfortunately, Arion notices. He moves forward as if to take my arm. When I step aside quickly, his mouth hardens. “Thank you again for your hospitality,” he tells the shopkeepers. “We need to be going, but we’re forever in your debt.”
“Oh no.” With surprising speed and agility, Gerald leaps to his feet, and his umbrella somehow materializes in his hand. He waves it under Arion’s nose like a sword. That nefarious grin is back, his mustache twisted in a snarl. “Oh, no, no, no. We do not deal in ‘thank-yous’ and ‘debts’ here, my good sir.”
“No, no, no, no, no,” Harold echoes, springing upright as well. His kindly face is no longer warm and welcoming, buthard, and he seems much less fatigued than he did a moment ago. When he smiles, it’s all teeth. In my semi-fugue state, I imagine they look rather sharp. “You will leave this shoppe as paying customers, or you will not leave at all.”
Arion’s brows contract at the abrupt change in atmosphere. “Are you—threatening us?”
“Not a threat!” Gerald pokes him harder. “A promise to all thieves! Criminals do not survive Greenwood shores.”
“We aren’tthieves.” A muscle in Arion’s jaw flexes as he struggles to remain calm. He could kill them in an instant. Which would, of course, wreck everything for us.
Sensing the thought, the bees overhead swarm louder, closer, watching us with lethal intent. Arion exhales an even breath and continues, “We didn’t come here with ill intent, but we also didn’t agree to purchase anything either. As an old friend of Zephyra’s, you sought us out—”
“‘Friend’!” Harold shrieks the word in derision while Gerald spears Arion in the chest.
“You agreed to a purchase when those clothes touched your body,” Gerald snarls, “and we do not deal with pilferers and swindlers.”
“Pilferers and swindlers?” Arion’s wings flare in quiet menace, but the men still cannot see them, cannot understand who they’ve provoked. Not like the vines overhead. They unfurl faster now, reaching for Arion’s throat as the bees swarm in earnest. His wings beat them away before they can land a sting, and his hand curls around the lowest vine, twining it around his knuckles and pulling. Hard. It snaps free with a shudder, and when he speaks again, his voice is cold. “I beg your pardon, sirs, but we are not the swindlers here.”
Gerald sneers, gesturing to the tree we are currently all standing inside. “Dinah thinks otherwise.”
“Dinahcan take the clothing back.” With a furious glance in my direction, Arion moves to shrug out of his shirt, but I shake my head, backing away hastily—from him, from the shoppe and the bees and thevines. My eyes dart to the ceiling, to the walls, where Dinah’s branches start to crack and move. Its fingers and elbows sharp. Unforgiving.
Unbidden, I see them covered in blood.
“Zephyra,” Arion says, voice low, but I shake my head faster, stumbling backward now. Almost to the exit.Away.I need to getaway, and—and I never should’ve come here. I should never have opened this door.
“Just pay them,” I hiss.
Scowling at my tone, Arion digs into his pocket without hesitation. He pulls a handful of heavy gold coins from thin air, but I don’t care if they’re real or fake or magic. All that matters is the branches have stopped twisting, the vines have stopped reaching, and Gerald’s and Harold’s genial smiles have returned.
If only Jacin’s blood would stem so easily.
Before anyone else can speak, I turn on my heel and flee the shoppe.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
ZEPHYRA
