Page 35 of Fierce Highland Magic

Nessa looked up.

For the first time since I had met her, something crossed her face that wasn't flat pleasant interest.

"Oh," she said.

Just that. Oh.

"Nessa." I stepped toward her. "What is it?"

"The next bell seals my sale." Her voice was the same bright even tone, but something underneath it had shifted. A hairline crack in glass that had looked solid. "The vendor who holds my courage—she's had it on consignment. Trying to find a buyer. If the next bell rings and no one has purchased it, the contract finalizes."

"Finalizes how?"

"Permanent. The courage gets dissolved. Used for parts, I think. I'm not sure. I never asked."

The ice in my chest spread to my limbs.

"When is the next bell?"

"Soon. They come closer together near dawn." Nessa shrugged. "It's fine. I don't mind. I can't mind. That's the whole point."

I looked at Rowan.

He was looking at me with an expression I couldn't read.

"Can someone else buy it back?" I asked. "The courage. Can someone else purchase it and return it to her?"

"Yes," he said slowly. "If they can meet the price."

"What's the price?"

Silence.

Nessa smiled at me. Patient. Gentle. Wrong.

"It's a true memory," she said helpfully. "Something you would miss. The vendor told me once, when I asked what it would cost to undo what I'd done. She said it was expensive, because courage is useful, and useful things don't come cheap."

"How expensive?"

"Something you would miss terribly. Something that matters." Nessa tilted her head. "The face of someone you love. The sound of their voice. A moment you've held onto because letting go would feel like dying."

I thought of the hole where my grandmother's tea had been.

I thought of the hole that would be left by something larger.

The Gate lay behind me, through the market's twisting paths, past the stalls and the vendors and the watching things that moved between the lanterns. Three trades' worth of safe passage. The direction I had paid for in memory.

Nessa stood in front of me, bright and flat and peaceful in her terrible way.

The center lay beyond her. Inward. Where the Green Woman had pointed.

"Lyra," Rowan said quietly.

I didn't answer.

The next bell would seal her forever. A woman who had traded away her own courage because she was too afraid to keep carrying it. A woman who couldn't want to be saved because wanting required the thing she'd lost.

The Gate lay in one direction. Nessa lay the other.