Page 83 of Fierce Highland Magic

Green.

The Green Woman stood at the corridor's edge.

Her hood shadowed her face. Her hands hung loose at her sides. She did not speak—her posture still, her whole presence as silent as the market was loud.

Lyra stopped beside me. The Green Woman raised one arm.

Her finger pointed inward. Toward the market's center. Toward the distant glow that hung between the tents like a heart behind closed ribs.

The Heart-Lantern.

Third sign.

I counted them in my head. The first, when Lyra stood at the hinge choice. The second, when she stripped the guest-claim. And now this—the final pointing, the last direction the Green Woman could give.

After this, we navigated alone.

The Green Woman's arm stayed extended for one breath. Two. Three.

Then she lowered it and was gone.

Lyra's breath came out slow.

"That was the last one."

"Yes."

"No more guidance."

"No."

The word landed between us. The market's noise filled the silence—the low hum of transactions, the distant chime of bells, the sound of a world that kept consuming whether we moved or not.

We kept moving. The path narrowed. The vendors thinned. The light continued to drain, gray spreading through the air. Every lantern we passed was dimmer than the last. Every shadow was deeper.

Footsteps behind us.

I turned.

The Keeper of Bells emerged from the space between stalls. Gray robes trailing cold. Silver rope coiled at his belt. His fingers moved at his sides, counting something invisible. The air went colder where he passed, and the lanterns nearest him dimmed to ember-glow.

He didn't look at me. He didn't look at Lyra. He looked at the space between us, the way he always did, as though measuring a distance neither of us had agreed to cross.

"Eleven," he said.

The word carried without rising. Flat. Weighted.

"Eleven tonight. Eleven."

The count had risen. Two more consumed while we stood at the Loch being honest.

The Keeper's fingers stilled.

"Eleven," he said again. "Eleven." Then he moved past us, gray robes whispering against the cobblestones, trailing silence behind him like a hem.

The night was thinning. I could see it in the way the shadows stretched longer, the way the cold the Keeper brought did not lift after he passed.

Two more people emptied while I told Lyra about the bargain I had made. Two more turned to inventory while she held my worst truth and did not step back. Two more added to the invoice I had been trying to pay for a century.