Page 20 of Fierce Highland Magic

I did not touch my throat.

Never give the market the satisfaction of watching you check your wounds.

Across the thoroughfare, the fox-faced vendor smiled openly.

Lyra looked at my throat. "What was that?"

"Nothing worth buying."

"That is not an answer."

"It is a very good answer. You simply dislike it."

The memory-vendor placed the vial back in its velvet nest with careful, furious precision.

"Go, then," she said to Lyra. "Keep your empty hands."

Lyra's mouth tightened.

"I intend to."

"Do you?" The vendor looked at the silver thistle. "How long do you think you can?"

I put a hand at the small of Lyra's back and guided her away before the question could find somewhere to settle.

Her spine went rigid beneath my palm.

I removed my hand at once.

"Apologies," I said. "I forgot you prefer to be dragged by the wrist."

"I prefer not to be moved by strangers at all."

"An admirable standard. Difficult to maintain here, but admirable."

She walked beside me after that.

But that wasn't the same as with me.

Beside me was different. Beside me meant she had not accepted my direction; she had simply decided the path happened to be the same. I let her have the distinction.

The thoroughfare curved ahead. Burnt sugar and wet stone on the air. A cold draft from a tent selling ice that never melted. Somewhere a cart scraped over cobbles, and the sound carried strangely, as if the stones themselves were listening.

Get her to dawn. Close the ledger.

That was the arithmetic. Simple enough. A clean mortal could cross the market if she learned quickly enough. When the gates opened, she would go home, and I would have done nothing more than spend a little standing I could ill afford.

Lyra walked ahead of me, refusing to look at the stalls on either side. No visible debt trailing behind her. No market scent of a promise gone sour. She moved as though the air did not owe her anything and she owed nothing to it.

I committed to steering her more fully.

It would cost me. The vendors tracking my debt would smell the expenditure. By dawn, if I was not careful, I would have traded my remaining standing for the privilege of watching a mortal woman walk out of a gate that would never open for me again.

I chose it anyway.

Behind us, the fox-faced vendor's soft laugh followed through the crowd.

I did not look back.