Chapter Eight #2
It’s strange, but I don’t feel the scars I saw earlier on his hand. I realize I didn’t feel them when we shook hands either. Perhaps they’re worse on the other one.
Soren brings me first to a vendor selling curios from overseas. “She’s the real deal,” Soren whispers. “And one of my few friends in the market. A bona fide treasure hunter. These are all authentic. No forgeries.”
“How do you know?”
“It’s my business to know. Come see this,” he says. He holds up a dagger. Its blade is black and roughly carved from some kind of shining metal I’ve never seen before.
“Obsidian. Volcanic glass, likely from the Enez Islands. Practically useless as a dagger. But it’s quite nice for a fire-born.”
To hone their magic, maybe. I’ve heard of items that can do that, although Adria thinks it’s all superstition. I’m not sure why he’s telling me this though.
He offers the dagger to me. “I’m not fire-born,” I say.
“More for me, then. She’s underpriced this by a lot,” he says. He slips a few coins to the merchant without negotiating.
It’s not uncommon to share your magic school with strangers, at least not in Nithyria.
But Nithyrians are somewhat more tolerant of the shadow-born than the Selarans are from what I’ve heard, largely on account of our vital role in keeping Nithyria fed before the war.
Soren seems friendlier to the shadow-born than most, though I’m not certain if that’s because he respects them or simply finds them useful.
I find myself wanting to tell him. There’s something about the way he talks to me, the way he looks at me, that makes me want to tell him things, that makes me want to abandon my caution and just let myself be comfortable around someone for once.
But I don’t. Not yet.
Instead, I ask Soren about the vendor selling the pastry with walnuts and pistachios, and he knows exactly the place.
It’s as delicious as Typhon said, if a bit sweeter than I’m used to.
I offer a bite to Soren, and he takes it.
He’s close enough that I can hear him crunching as he eats.
There are people all around us, giving us little room to stand.
Someone pushes into me, pressing me against Soren.
“Sorry,” I say, my words muffled by his chest. The muscle there is surprisingly firm, and there’s a lot of it. He must get quite a workout hauling his imports up from the docks.
And he smells really nice, like incense and some of those unnamable spices.
I want to ask him what they are. I want to know him, every little detail.
“Watch your step,” Soren says to the man who pushed, a warning in his tone. Then he gently moves me back from him. “Are you alright?”
“I’m fine,” I say, but to be honest, I’m a little breathless. I haven’t been in close proximity to a man in…well, a bit too long. A year at least.
And the last man who shared my bed was thin and bony, one of our stable boys, someone around my age. Nothing like the body of rock-solid muscle I just felt pressed against me.
“You have a little—” Soren reaches for my face but stops his hand short, gesturing to the side of my mouth.
Crumbs, I’m sure. “Here?” I ask, trying to reach it with my tongue.
He laughs. “No, not quite.”
I reach into my pocket for my handkerchief, but when I retrieve it, I see that it’s still stained with the boy’s blood.
“Let me,” he says, and he pulls a handkerchief from his pocket.
It’s clean and white, a nice linen fabric, and he dabs it at the corner of my mouth.
My lips part involuntarily from the contact. I look up into his good eye, and it’s warm and soft as he cleans my cheek, a shy smile tugging on his lips.
I wonder what it would be like to kiss him.
It took my mind a moment to get used to the disfigurement of his face, but now that it has, I’m growing fond of it. Here is a man with character. A man who has seen battle, if on the wrong side. A man who survived.
No, he’s not perfect like Ronan, but he’s nice. Approachable.
And I’m unable to stop thinking about how his body felt pressed against mine.
I think about asking him if there’s somewhere we can go.
I’m not certain of it, but from the way he touches me—gentle, but with an edge of hunger, like he’s having to stop himself from going further—I think he would agree to it.
I don’t have long before I need to get back to the palace, but these things never seem to take as long as I’d like anyway.
But we’ve only just met, and there’s still so much more of the market to see.
I let him guide me through it. He takes me to a fruit-seller and a butcher and a purveyor of fine fabrics, to a booth with rare books and parchments and to a stall with perfumes and oils, which I may or may not have sampled in an effort to find the one he’s wearing.
At a small cart owned by a water-born, he buys me a flower, a desert rose.
It has little fragrance, but it’s lovely to look at, a soft pink edged with brighter color. I tuck it gratefully into my hair.
We narrowly avoid a merchant selling Nithyrian wines that I recognize from occasional visits to our market and that would almost certainly recognize me. I explain that I’ve been home too recently to miss the flavor.
I notice that there are stands that we avoid, including most of the ones selling anything made of gold, of which there are fewer than I had imagined there would be, and a stand selling ornamental masks like you might wear to a ball that I certainly would have stopped at had Soren not warned me against it.
“His are the best masks on the market, but he’s not worth the trouble, believe me.”
By the time we’ve covered maybe a quarter of the square, the sun is slipping behind the city walls. It’s certainly dinner time, maybe past it even, but I feel no hurry to return to the palace.
I don’t want this day to end. I’m trying to remember a better day than this, and I can’t.
I know I should go back; I just don’t want to. Ronan isn’t even there, and I’m sure Adria can make up some excuse once she realizes I’m still occupied in my reconnaissance mission.
I haven’t forgotten my duty. I could never forget my duty. But has there been a day in all my life when I was able to do what I wanted?
“Is there anywhere good to eat around here?” I ask Soren.
He grins and takes me by the arm. I like the familiar way he handles me. It never feels pushy or uncomfortable. It’s natural, like we’ve known each other for years rather than hours.
I wonder if I’ve ever felt this at ease with someone I’ve just met.
Soren makes one last stop before bringing me to the tavern. It’s at a small shop off of the main square that looks to sell ribbons and jewelry, though again, little that’s made of gold. I wonder if the Guild keeps it out of the hands of the common folks on purpose.
I twist my mother’s ring on my finger, hiding the crest of her house in case it’s recognizable to the owner. The air is warm and stale inside, as if we’re the only ones who’ve passed through the door in recent memory.
There’s no one behind the counter.
Soren calls into a darkened doorway. No one answers, but there are footsteps on the stairs.
“We’re closed,” says a woman’s voice. “Oh, it’s you,” she says when she spots Soren. She’s an older woman with leathery skin and graying hair, maybe around Larus’s age. “You haven’t heard? Vesper’s not been here in a week. You know how she is.”
“A week?” asks Soren. There’s concern in his voice.
She? Is this a friend of Soren’s?
Or a lover?
My heart flutters at the thought, which is ridiculous. Why should I be jealous? I’ve only just met the man. I have no claim on him.
“I’m sure you’ll find her soon enough, at the bottom of a bottle somewhere by the docks. Or rotting in one of Ronan’s cells.” The woman spits at the ground.
My interest is piqued. An enemy of Ronan’s, or at least someone Selaran who isn’t among his admirers.
And someone willing to say it out loud, bold as anything.
“But a week…” says Soren softly.
“I know,” says the woman. She sounds as if she’s on the verge of tears. “You think I don’t know that? She’s my daughter.”
“I’ll find her.”
“You better,” she says. She looks at the door. “And don’t come back here until you do.”
We leave in a hurry. Back in the street, I look to Soren for an explanation.
“One of my shadow-born. A young woman, maybe around your age.”
I try to ignore the way my heart skips a beat when he calls her his. “She’s missing?”
He nods grimly.
I’m not understanding. She’s just reporting on some of his competitors’ dealings from what Soren said. “Do you think one of your competitors did something to her?”
“I don’t know,” says Soren. “But I intend to find out.”
“Could the city watch help? Or maybe Ronan’s guards?”
I honestly don’t know if there’s a difference. The guards I’ve seen so far in the streets of Faros are dressed about the same as the Royal Guard: chainmail, leather bracers, black cloaks. They just lack the gold crest on their mail.
Soren laughs bitterly. “Not for some lowly shadow-born girl. If her mother were rich, maybe.”
Lowly shadow-born. That’s what I am to these people. By birth, I’m noble, but I’m from the house that started the war. And I’m just a shadow-born.
Does Soren think the shadow-born are lowly? Maybe he does secretly look down on them like everyone else.
It shouldn’t matter. I’m never going to see him again after tonight, and he doesn’t even know my real name.
But I have to know.
“I’m shadow-born,” I say.
“I know.”
How could he possibly know? I haven’t told him what I am, haven’t used my magic in front of him. Had he guessed it from my personality?
“What gave me away?”
“The way you looked at me when I talked about the shadow-born earlier. I knew you either were one or hated them, and if you hated them, you wouldn’t have shown any concern for Vesper. Or for Nico, for that matter.”
“Do you hate them? Us?”