Page 17 of Fierce Highland Magic

"That establishes the second point at most."

The vendor's smile turned patient.

"Then perhaps something useful. A moment of courage? The exact route home? The face of a person you miss?"

I leaned against the post of the stall opposite. Lyra's shoulders went still.

Lyra did not flinch. She gathered herself in smaller ways: fingers closing around the strap of her bag, chin lifting a fraction, every word spoken to her requiring inspection for hidden clauses.

The silver thistle at her collar caught the light.

I looked away from it.

Three stalls down, the fox-faced vendor studied me with the easy patience of a creature who had smelled blood in the water and found it unexpectedly fine.

I smiled at her.

She smiled back.

The pale line at my throat gave a quiet throb beneath my collar.

I had spent enough standing for one night.

The guest-claim hung around me like wet cloth. Every debt Lyra avoided was still mine to carry should she incur it; every hand stretched toward her became a calculation with my name at the bottom. The market had not objected when I claimed her. The market did not object to most things.

It simply kept accounts.

The vendor at the memory stall lifted a second vial.

This one held no mist.

Inside the glass, dawn spilled over a yellow kitchen table. A cup of tea steamed beside a chipped blue bowl. A woman's laughter rose and faded before I could catch the sound clearly.

"The last morning you were truly happy," the vendor said.

Lyra's hand moved.

Only a little.

Not toward the bottle.

Toward the silver thistle at her collar.

I straightened.

The vendor's black eyes brightened.

"Not the memory itself, perhaps," she went on. "Only the knowledge of it. You need not even tell me whose face you hope to find."

Lyra did not answer.

The market did. Lantern flames tilted toward her. Somewhere beyond the stalls, a small crowd quieted in the way crowds always quieted when someone was close to a bad decision.

I could have let her make it.

That was the sensible thing.

I had no business spending another scrap of standing on a mortal who had appeared in the market wearing a thistle I could not look at for more than a breath at a time. I had given her one rule. I had bought her a measure of safety until dawn. It was enough.