Page 21 of Fierce Highland Magic

"You knew that woman," Lyra said.

"Which one?"

"The memory vendor."

"I know everyone who has tried to rob me."

"That was not what I meant."

"No, but it was more interesting."

She glanced at me.

Rain had dampened the dark curls at her temples. Her jacket was still wet at the shoulders. She had a smear of mud at one knee from the road outside the gate. No market clothes, no token, no proper charm against the listening things that moved between the stalls.

She had no business being here. I should have left her at the gate.

The thought held for half a second. Then something inside me closed around it. I blinked.

Only the shape of a door that must not be opened.

I turned away from the thought before it had the chance to become anything I could not afford to carry.

"She was trying to sell me a memory," Lyra said.

"She was trying to sell you the idea that a memory can be purchased without being taken from somewhere else."

"What would she have taken?"

"Depends what you offered."

"I didn't offer anything."

"Good."

"You sound surprised."

"I have known mortals who would have traded a limb for less."

"Then they had poor risk management."

"Most people call it grief."

She stopped walking.

The crowd flowed around us, careful not to touch. A woman carrying a tray of glass hearts dipped her head and passed. One heart cracked as she moved, and a thin blue note escaped it like a breath.

Lyra looked at me with an expression I could not immediately arrange into a joke.

"Do you?" she asked.

"What?"

"Call it grief."

The word struck too near something without becoming the thing itself.

The market blurred at the edges.