Page 37 of Fierce Highland Magic

"Good," she said. "Sufficient."

She reached across the counter.

"Wait—"

Her fingers touched my forehead.

Cold.

It wasn't temperature-cold. Absence-cold. The cold of something being removed, a drawer sliding open inside my skull and something being lifted out.

Then nothing. I opened my eyes.

The stall was the same. The vendor was the same. The bottles still glowed on the narrow counter, and the smell of copper and burnt sugar still pressed against my skin.

I reached for the memory.

My mother. Hospital. Last goodbye. She had looked at me, she had said my name, she had—

The face was gone.

It wasn't blurred or faded. Gone. There was a shape where it had been—the shape of a hospital room, the shape of a hand in mine, the shape of a word spoken. I knew there had been a face. I knew I had loved it. I could not see it.

I could remember remembering.

That was all.

The hole was worse than the tea. The tea had been a small thing, a sweetness lost. This was load-bearing. This was the beam that had held the ceiling up, and now there was only the absence of it, the space where grief used to anchor.

I gave because I couldn't bear not to.

The thought surfaced from somewhere below conscious decision, simple and certain and terrible. Not because it would save Nessa. And not because it was the right thing to do. Because the alternative—walking away, walking toward the Gate, leaving a girl who couldn't even want to be saved—was a thing I couldn't make myself be.

"The courage is released from consignment," the vendor said. "The transaction is complete. That was fairly done."

I turned away from the stall.

Nessa stood where I had left her, three rows back, between a tent selling storm-jars and one selling something that made a sound like a child crying. Her face was still pleasant. Her eyes were still flat.

Then they weren't.

The change came like a tide reversing. Color flooding back into a photograph. Her flat eyes filled with something alive, and the first alive thing wasn't gratitude.

It was terror.

"No," Nessa whispered. Her voice had changed—higher, sharper, trembling at the edges. "No, no, I didn't ask for—I didn't want—"

"Nessa—"

She backed away from me. Her hands came up, warding. Her whole body had changed posture—no longer still and pleasant, now coiled like an animal that has just remembered it can be hurt.

"The bells," she said. "I can hear the bells, I can hear them coming, they're going to ring again, they're going to—"

"You're safe. The transaction is complete. The courage is back, it's yours again—"

"I don't want it." Her eyes were wild now, darting between stalls, between shadows, between all the things she had described in her flat bright voice without flinching. "I don't want it, I sold it to make this stop, and you—you put it back, you put it all back—"

She was shaking.