4. Chapter 4
Sally does make a mean beef stew. The tenderized meat melts in my mouth and warms me from the inside out. I inhale the entire concoction and chug down my glass of ale before the rest of the patrons even have time to open their mouths.
“You sure were hungry, you poor thing!” Sally appears above me, clucking her tongue like a mother hen.
“Are you from around here?” She refills my dish with more steamy meat and smiles with such genuine curiosity, my heart softens in retreat.
I suppose I’ve become so accustomed to being an extension of Eric, who’d been an extension of his father, who’d been an extension of the gods, that any would-be friends have always maintained their distance, only speaking to me in feigned cordialities.
And before Eric, well… that’s another story.
I set down my spoon and glance around. It doesn’t appear that anyone is eavesdropping on our conversation, likely because I chose a discreet table in a shadowy corner, far away from the lurking eyes of the innkeeper.
“I was from around here,” I admit, picking apart my loaf of bread.
“What happened?” Sally gasps, her eyes flickering with what I assume to be thoughts of tragedy: fires, flooding, roach infestations.
“My boyfriend kicked me out.” I stuff the chunk of bread in my mouth.
Sally sits down, her chair scraping across the floor with an ear-splitting screech.
If she wasn’t already giving me her full attention, she certainly is now.
“We have a position open for head housekeeper,” she reveals, her eyes as big and bright as the lilacs embroidered on her apron, which I imagine she hand-spun herself.
“The gig comes with free room and board. Plus, I’d love to have a friend around.
You know, someone to talk to other than the brooms.” She giggles to herself.
I mull over the prospect. How wonderful it would be to have a steady stream of income and a place to call my very own. But there’s just one caveat. “This job,” I say hypothetically, “it would require bloodproofing?”
Ugh. I hate that word. Bloodproofing. It feels like a lopsided punch to the face, lobbing my whole world upside-down and sending all of my hopes and dreams scattering across the universe.
Because the truth is, as much as I’d like to accept Sally’s conditions of employment, as much as I desperately need to accept them, I can’t even surmise a smile.
Because I cannot possibly prove that magic runs through my veins in order to gain willful employment.
“If it’s the Needle that makes you queasy, I know how you feel,” Sally says, twiddling her thumbs.
“Unfortunately, bloodproofing is a law ordained by the gods themselves. On the bright side, it’s only but a pinch!
And once it’s over, you’ll have a job, a place to stay, and a fine salary.
” She sweeps up her concerned frown with a polite chuckle and smooths her perfectly pressed apron with her stubby fingers.
My attention falls to her ring finger, which is, in fact, ringless.
Sally isn’t married either. She must feel completely panicked right now.
“Right. Of course. I understand.” I lift my empty glass in a toast. “After all, we must pay patronage to the gods and thank them for the employment opportunity.” And weed out all those pesky non-magic folk.
“Isn’t that the truth!” Sally beams. “If it weren’t for the gods, the dragons would’ve gulped us all up ages ago.”
I swallow down my last bite of bread in silence, my stomach nearly bursting at the seams. It feels like an eternity passes before I speak again, the warmth in my voice breaking down to crumbles of resolve.
“Thank you for your kindness, Sally. I will take your offer into consideration and let you know by the morning.”
“If your hesitancy about workin’ here is because of Frank…
” Sally trails off in a hushed whisper. “Just know that he’s not so bad once you get used to him.
” Her gaze cuts across the tavern toward the slimy innkeeper, who’s double-fisting two pints of beer and burping louder than an ogre who mistook a bloodmagic bomb for a snack.
“Yes, he’s just adorable,” I remark.
“He smothered me at first,” Sally continues, “but eventually, he got bored and moved onto tormenting someone else. Now he hardly looks at me.”
“Tormenting?” I cock a brow. Poor Sally. I knew I should’ve stabbed that toad-licker straight through the gut the moment we met. I would’ve scattered his organs amongst the weeds out back for the vultures to pick at.
“Men like him are abhorrent,” Sally explains in haste as she scoops up my empty plate.
I follow her frazzled gaze toward Frank, who is now weaving around chairs and tables, stomping our way.
His expression is so uncharacteristically giddy, I wonder whether he’s just shit gold or something.
Sally dashes off like there’s a fire in the kitchen, leaving me alone to deal with the fire raging within me.
“I was just leaving,” I say, standing.
But Frank plops down onto a seat, stretches out his limbs, feigns a yawn, and then digs around in his pockets, revealing a crumpled-up piece of parchment which he proceeds to toss onto the table before me.
I freeze, instantly spotting the queen's emblem on the letterhead—two halves of a golden heart.
“If that’s what I think it is, the answer is no.
I’m not going to marry you. You’re going to have to find someone else.
” I scowl. And leave Sally the hell alone.
I roll my eyes and prepare to retire to my room, but Frank’s idiotic grin widens, putting my curiosity in a chokehold.
Unable to help myself, I sit back down and swipe the page off the table.
The meat of the document is the queen’s marriage law, hot off the press, which I’m all too familiar with.
But the bones, the backside, that’s an entirely different story.
It’s a hand-made sketch of a woman with giant gray eyes and long dark hair who looks exactly like me.
Hell, she is me. Wait. This isn’t part of the original document.
It’s been tainted. “What’s this?” I slap the page back onto the table, suspicion threading between my brows.
“It seems that your boyfriend possesses a taste for wyrm drops.” Frank snatches the page right back, appearing ready to burst wide open from the delicious secret he’s been keeping.
I stare at his very punchable face in sullen silence, still unsure what my imaginary boyfriend’s preference for exotic drugs has to do with this uncannily well drawn-out sketch of me.
Frank stuffs a toothpick into his mouth, then swirls it around with nonchalance. “Surely you remember the son of Lord Graves?” he asks me.
“Eric?” I sputter out.
Frank’s smile grows wider than the gorge currently tearing its way through my aching soul.
“Yeah, that’s the one.” He burps, his breath smelling like rancid mead.
“Your good ‘ole pal Eric has been purchasing wyrm drops from me over the last few months.” He withdraws a little pouch from his back pocket—a transparent sack containing a pile of marbles caked in syrup-like jelly with an iridescent sheen.
Marbles that make its user higher than a feather caught in a gust of wind over the Leviathan Sea.
Wait. Did Frank seriously come all the way over here to goad about selling Eric wyrm shit?
Is he joking? “What does that bag of shit have to do with me?” I ask, resisting the urge to stuff it straight down Frank’s windpipe and listen to him gurgle out a scream.
Screw his secrets. Watching him choke on wyrm shit would be far more satisfying.
Frank tucks the questionable bag and its gag-worthy contents back into his pocket.
“It has everything to do with you.” Another swirl of the toothpick.
Another disheveled, malignant grin. “After your little boyfriend couldn’t make his last payment, well—” mid-sentence, he props his legs on the table “—we had to come to a different sort of… arrangement.”
“Not that it’s any of my business…" I trail off, eyes narrowing. “But Eric’s family is rich. He could dive into a chasm of bloodmagic and never reach the bottom. What do you mean, he couldn’t make his last payment?”
“Seems like his good ‘ole pa cut him off,” Frank recalls.
I envision Eric’s father catching his son with drugs, and my fists involuntarily clench at the thought.
How had I failed to see what was happening right in front of my eyes?
Why had he not confided in me sooner? If he’d been struggling with an addiction problem, perhaps I could’ve helped somehow.
Is that why his father forced him to break up with me?
Had he assumed this was all my doing? But that doesn’t make any sense…
Eric has never been high around me. I would’ve noticed.
Frank uses the sketched portrait of me to fan his sweaty face. “Luckily for Carrot-top, I accept other forms of payment,” he says, a malignant smirk spreading across his face.
My spine tenses like a drawn bowstring. “What other forms of payment?”
Frank removes his toothpick and sets it on the table, his gaze drifting toward the drawing before flicking back up to me.
“I knew you were her the moment I laid my eyes on you. Your boyfriend has quite the artistic talent.” He pauses to survey my reaction with a satisfied uptick of his lip.
“You didn’t know he could draw, did you? ”
“Seems that I didn’t know much about him at all,” I admit through gritted teeth.
The silence that follows is pleasantly undercut by the warm aroma of maple-scented mead.
However, that’s where the pleasantries stop.
If only Frank would get to the damn point already, then perhaps I’d be able to unleash this anticipatory panic burning its way through me.