Chapter 3
Evie’s head falls limp against the apothecary’s spare bed. Her lips are as blue as a sapphire.
“What poison?” Beula asks, her apron already on and her dark curls pulled back in a tight bun.
I blanch. “I have no idea.”
“Who shot her?” She drapes a damp cloth across Evie’s forehead.
“A trap.” There is no going back from this, no hiding it. “In a barrow.”
Beula glares at me with only a fraction of the judgment I’ll get from my parents.
“You took your sister into a barrow?” She mutters prayers to Elowyn as she pestles herbs in a mortar with a severity I’ve never seen in her.
Beula is the best healer between Slagbend and Mythos because even death at her doorstep doesn’t faze her. This urgency scares me.
“Can I help?” I plead. Evie is too weak to open her eyes. Every breath is a rasp, and sweat trickles from her pores.
She thrusts a needle and catgut at me. “Thread this. There’s nothing else, unless you can materialize a bezoar from thin air.”
Oh, goddess. My hands tremble, and my grip is weakened by the gash in my shoulder. I miss the eyelet once, twice, thrice. I suck in a deep breath and thread it. Beula unbuttons Evie’s tunic, then slices her skin around the arrow.
A bezoar. I know where to get a bezoar.
Beula removes the arrow and takes the needle from me.
“I’ll be back with a bezoar,” I tell her. “Keep her alive. Please. She doesn’t deserve this.”
“She deserves a wiser sister.” Beula harrumphs. She knows the barrow was my idea. It should be me bleeding and shaking on that bed. Me. “You need to get that shoulder wound treated first—”
“There’s no time!” I argue. I sprint outside as fear surges inside me.
I’ve raided so many barrows to give my sister the life she deserves, but now I’m her undoing.
There’s no time to dig up my stash of coins in our root cellar.
What I have in my pack is worth far more than a bezoar.
But it doesn’t matter. I’ll pay anything to save her.
The stableboy flinches as I fling open his door. “Help me get a horse ready,” I order. “I’ll pay when I’m back.”
He throws a bridle on a dappled mare, but I don’t waste time saddling her. I mount her and spur her forward into a gallop. The journey is a blur, my hope fraying until the docks come into sight.
On the outskirts, I find a ramshackle stable. There, I dismount the mare and untether coins from my pouch into the stablemaster’s hand. The ride has aggravated my clotting wound into an aching throb, but I shove the pain into the deep recesses of my mind.
The entrance to the black market warehouse is guarded.
Before I reach the thugs, a towering figure steps into my path.
His body is built like a bull’s, so perhaps he’s an orc.
A cloth mask covers his entire head except for a thin slit that reveals silver eyes.
His unblinking gaze pins me. He has the look of someone who would maim rather than take no for an answer.
He thrusts a yellowed paper before me with an inked sketch of a face. Written boldly above it is WANTED WITH PROMISE OF REWARD.
I expect to see a thug with a smashed, crooked nose and a brutish scowl, but the face is handsome. A straight nose with a subtly downturned point leads to full lips and a sharp jawline. His tousled curls are shaded dark, and the male’s expression is keen, intelligent, and calm.
It’s the same cloaked man who grabbed my arm in the market days ago.
Unease creeps along the back of my neck. I was right to flee from that man. Anyone on a wanted poster is no one good.
Still, the masked stranger’s cold gaze does little to convince me he means well. I won’t give him information without knowing what the cloaked man has done.
I shake my head and sidestep past him. His eyes narrow as he watches me. Then he turns and shows the sketch to the goblin in line behind me. The abundance of unsavory characters here never fails to unsettle me.
“Let me in,” I demand of the two thugs at the warehouse entrance.
The orc snorts, but when I toss him a quartz crystal, his eyes widen. He opens the warehouse door, and I hurry inside.
At a stall with eclectic items arranged inside glass cases, I stop.
Pearlescent seashell shards surround a tuft of silky, snow-white hair.
Below them is a tiny finger bone, and I pray to Elowyn that it didn’t belong to an infant.
I know I’ve found who I’m looking for—someone who deals in potion ingredients, both mundane and dark.
Someone who’s willing to take goods from a tomb as payment.
“What do you see, child?” a wavering voice croons.
I want to tell her I’m not a child, but I hold it in. The words won’t do me any good here. I scowl as I search for the vendor. Where is she? I step under the dark swaths of fabric that form an awning over the stall.
Stacked crates hold countless vials with liquids of every viscosity and color.
Some even glow. But it’s the vendor that makes me pause.
She sits behind a table, her spindly fingers laced together, showing nails that are long and yellowed like talons.
Gray, stringy hair obscures most of her face, but her bulging eyes indicate what she is—a hag. An unseelie fae.
Just my luck. “I’m not here to trade my firstborn or my happiest memories,” I tell her.
“Then what do you offer?” she croaks. Nothing on her face betrays her reaction.
I swallow. “Ancient artifacts. Or gemstones.”
Her nails clack together. “And what do you seek?”
“A bezoar for an unknown poison.”
“A bezoar that negates any poison will fetch quite a price,” she states.
“I’m prepared to seek elsewhere.” That’s a bluff. I don’t have time.
She inclines her head, her wiry hair shifting against her gray cloak. “Show me your wares, human child.”
I fight a grimace as I set an assortment on her table. It’s a small enough amount that I can keep my eyes on everything.
She picks up the fae statuette with her nails like they’re tongs. I didn’t notice in the barrow that its eyes are twin topaz. The hag gazes at it with keen interest, as if the statuette might suddenly blink. “This is the goddess,” she murmurs.
Icons and worship of Danu were banned when Avedor annexed the Hollowlands as its territory. The brutal War of Burning two hundred years ago ended with the treaty that decreed the fae would revere our laws and customs as their own.
“It’s one-of-a-kind,” I tell the hag. It’s probably true.
Another customer approaches the hag’s stall and peruses her wares, his midnight blue cloak swishing down to his waist. My heart pulses as I realize it’s the same man who asked me about the cuff on Evie’s birthday. The one who grabbed my arm. The one who guessed that I raid tombs.
The man from the wanted poster.
Only now do I realize he towers over me by at least a head.
Underneath his cloak, he wears a black tunic with a plunging neckline that exposes his toned chest. The short sleeves reveal strong arms that I didn’t expect on his willowy figure.
There’s something off about him, something that unsettles me.
I hug my pack against my stomach. When he pauses at the edge of the table, I realize it’s my items catching his interest, not the hag’s.
“Do you know what that is?” the man asks, nodding to the statuette. “What it means?”
“I know what it is. None of your business.”
“These statues are carved by fae mothers,” he says. “It’s believed that if the talisman is kept under their child’s pillow, they will be warded from disease and misfortune.”
The hag’s head cocks like a bird’s, her focus on him now.
“And who’s to say its luck won’t work on someone else?” I ask. “Either way, it’s beautiful.”
“The color of the eyes represents the season the child was expected in,” the man continues, ignoring me.
“Orange for autumn, blue for summer, black for winter, and green for spring. So while it’s one-of-a-kind, it’s certainly not rare.
” He gestures at the statue, jeweled rings adorning his long fingers.
The hag’s gaze darts from ring to ring until it settles on the bone-shard-adorned band.
“That doesn’t mean they’re easy to acquire,” I cut in. “Avedor doesn’t let just anyone enter the Hollowlands. And why venture there when you can purchase it from me?”
The man exhales a breathy laugh. “Desolate, war-ravaged cities are akin to graveyards. It’s sacrilege in Avedor to disturb the dead. And selling a spiritual charm like it’s a trinket demonstrates a profound lack of a moral compass. Not that morality runs strong in a place like this.”
The hag doesn’t speak, but the way she slowly sets down the statuette sends a burst of panic through me. “This doesn’t concern you,” I snap at the stranger.
“Doesn’t it?” He lowers his hood. His brown, messy curls frame an angular face—high cheekbones, a straight nose, and dark lashes that bring out the gold in his hazel eyes.
A short scar runs down the left side of his cleft chin, free of the dark stubble covering the rest of his jaw.
But what catches my attention are his pointed ears. Fae ears.
“Your grace,” the hag rasps. She hops off her stool and curtsies, then peers up at him with an eerie gray-toothed grin. “What brings the prince of the High Court so far from his hollow? And without your crown?”
Those words ripple like a spell across the market.
Heads turn. Some stare openly, while others hurriedly retreat into shadowed stalls.
I hear the words dangerous and monster hissed amongst the crowd.
However curious the onlookers may be, they give the fae prince a wide berth.
My urge to do the same wars with my stubbornness.
Rumors of the fae royal family have traveled even to Nettlerock.
They say Queen Tetriona is as merciful as death’s cold grip, as gentle as a raging hailstorm.
Deitra, the Crown Princess of the High Court, is said to be as cutthroat as her mother.
She not only formed a forbidden fae legion but also commands it. Then there’s Queen Tetriona’s son.