Chapter 8
Cruithneach might have been disciplined and severe, but its morning market rose before Elara like a hoard spilled by a careless god.
Stalls clung to the cliffside in stacked tiers, wedged into ledges and switchbacks, their canopies stitched from mineral-stained cloth snapping in the high wind.
Broad-backed, horned pack beasts picked their way along narrow paths, baskets lashed to their sides, bells chiming with each careful step.
Carts rattled over grooved stone. Ropes creaked as goods were hauled up from the lower terraces.
The air churned with voices—bargains, laughter, the occasional curse when a deal soured. Merchants leaned from their stalls to shout prices down the tiers, arguing in a half-dozen accents as buyers countered from below.
Elara blinked into the cold light, trying—and failing—not to look overwhelmed.
She brushed her fingers along the nearest table: thin stone slabs laid with neat slices of cheese, spiced nuts, and a spiny fruit that smelled faintly sweet.
Farther on, a Turlaith male cracked open a heated clay pot, releasing a burst of golden steam.
She kept moving, taking it in while refusing to flinch when a vendor’s expression curdled the moment their eyes met hers. Without the solid presence at her back, she suspected she’d have been shoved off the mountainside before the next stall.
Reynnar didn’t touch her or speak—but he might as well have been a blade left bare, daring anyone to try what they so clearly wanted.
A merchant ladled stew from a stone cauldron, and Elara stepped closer—drawn by the warmth, by hunger, by curiosity.
She stopped short as a scent she hadn’t realized she’d missed struck her hard.
Charred fennel and onion.
Salt and smoke.
Roasted potatoes.
Her stomach clenched, sharp enough that she pressed a hand to her ribs. She leaned in. The broth simmered amber, tinged emberroot-red, thick with softened potatoes and ribbons of caramelized fennel and onion, darkened and glossy with fat.
Her mouth watered embarrassingly fast.
“Could I—”
When she looked up, the vendor was already thrusting a bowl into her hands.
“Oh—I…thank you.”
The Sídhe didn’t look pleased with his own generosity. His jaw worked as if he were chewing glass. His gaze flicked past her shoulder, and Elara followed it.
Reynnar stood a few paces behind her, regarding the vendor with a calm, level stare that suggested pulverizing granite would require minimal effort.
Ah.
He’d intimidated the poor male into feeding her.
She pinched the bridge of her nose and exhaled. “I—I don’t have any…” She hesitated, rummaging through a vocabulary she still did not fully grasp. “Coin? Or whatever currency you use here.”
Reynnar stepped up beside her. “He doesn’t need any,” he said mildly. Then he turned his head just enough to address the vendor. “Isn’t that right?”
The male’s grip tightened around the ladle. He looked at Elara, swallowed, and managed, “It’s…on me.”
Each word sounded as though it cost him a year of his life.
Mortified, she clutched the bowl to her chest and fled, nearly taking herself out on a stack of crates in the process. She didn’t slow until they’d cleared a side street and the market noise dulled behind them.
She spun on Reynnar. “What was that?”
His expression was a study in bland innocence. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“You bullied that merchant into feeding me,” she said, enunciating carefully, as if that might help him follow. “For free.”
“I did no such thing.”
“You stared him into submission.”
“I looked at him.”
“With murder.”
“With mild interest,” Reynnar corrected.
Elara glared at him, unconvinced—and starving. She raised the bowl, took a cautious mouthful—and nearly groaned. The flavor was rich, smoky, marrow-deep, with spices that warmed her from the inside out.
Reynnar arched a brow. “Worth the alleged bullying?”
She refused to answer. But the second bite did it for her.
Her eyes fluttered shut—
And when they opened again, they locked onto Kynra.
The warrior stood among the fringe of the market, half-swallowed by tattered hides.
She leaned against a pillar of basalt, a thin-bladed knife dancing between her fingers—catching the weak morning light with each deft spin.
Watching Elara with the kind of interest a serpent might grant a trembling bird.
Reynnar’s voice cut cleanly through the snare. “Come on,” he murmured. “She’s posturing. She won’t make a move. Not yet.”
Elara dragged her eyes away. “Well. That’s a comfort.”
He huffed something like amusement and nudged her forward. “Eat. You’re going to need the strength.”
“Why? Planning to shove me into another waterfall?”
“Not today.” He smiled. “We’re meeting Aoife and Caelion in the crafts district. If we’re lucky, Aoife hasn’t started a fight.”
Elara ate mechanically as they moved on, her mind half on the food, half on the knife glinting in the corners behind her.
And not just the knife—after the exchange with the merchant, she became acutely aware of how many eyes were on her.
Sídhe on the tier above had gone still. A butcher across the path paused mid-cut, cleaver held aloft like a frozen judgment.
Even the pack beasts seemed to quiet, their bells chiming softly as they shifted.
She felt the market’s gaze settle on her, heavy as a flock on wire.
Reynnar shifted closer—half a step, a shadow at her shoulder. “Best be on our way.”
They descended from the upper tiers, following carved stone ramps that spiraled into the crafting district.
The air changed as they went—heat pulsing up through vents in the mountain, turning the cold wind strange and damp against Elara’s skin.
The stone underfoot warmed, and the scents shifted from smoked meat and crushed herbs to iron and ash and something sharp and clean, like lightning.
The crafting district opened wide.
Forges gaped like open maws, soot-black stone framing their glow.
Smiths hammered starlight-infused steel, sparks scattering like embers across the terraces as the ring of metal on metal echoed through the air.
Sculptors coaxed light from blocks of ice-glass—antlers, wings, spiraled knots taking shape beneath careful hands.
And beneath it all ran a low vibration of song, workers humming into the stone, listening for the resonance that told them the work was true.
Aoife stood at a weapons table, examining a set of obsidian-edged daggers. Caelion loomed at her shoulder, arms crossed, expression flat, unimpressed by everything around him.
Aoife’s gaze lifted as they approached. “At last. Did you lose your way, or was Reynnar monologuing again?”
“He does that,” Caelion said.
Reynnar kept his eyes forward. “I despise you both,” he said flatly, though there was no real heat in it, only the dry resignation of someone long accustomed to being outnumbered.
Aoife grinned and, without waiting for permission, hooked an arm around Elara’s shoulders and pulled her in. The embrace was brisk—smoke and cold air clinging to her clothes, snow carried in on a mountain wind. “You look less like death,” Aoife declared. “Good.”
Elara huffed out a laugh. “High praise.”
Aoife drew back and eyed her face. “Still overwhelmed?”
“Is it that obvious?”
She shrugged. “If you’re paying attention.”
Caelion’s gaze lifted, scanning the district. “We’re being watched.”
Aoife didn’t bother to look up. “We’ve been watched since we arrived.”
Elara’s stomach clenched. “Kynra?”
“Among others,” Reynnar said.
The stew in her hands suddenly felt too heavy. She followed Caelion’s line of sight up the tiers, to the ledges and shadows and watching faces she could not quite make out.
“Interesting,” Aoife murmured. “You’ve already started a cult.”
Reynnar exhaled through his nose. “If this is a cult,” he said, eyes still scanning the crowd, “it is a remarkably inconvenient one.”
Aoife’s mouth curved. Caelion’s didn’t.
Reynnar’s hand hovered near Elara’s back—not touching, but close enough that she felt it. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s talk somewhere quiet.”
Elara had never set foot in a tavern, and she decided—immediately, and with the kind of certainty that only arrived when she was out of her depth—that she hated them.
Not because she disapproved of drink or noise or people seeking warmth where they could find it.
It was…subtler than that. Taverns were built for bodies that knew where they belonged—for elbows that understood how to claim space without apology, for laughter that didn’t feel like it might draw the wrong kind of attention.
She possessed none of that.
Noise pressed in from every direction, layered and unpredictable.
Conversations collided. Chairs scraped. A mug shattered somewhere to her left, followed by cheers a heartbeat too late to soothe her nerves.
Elara’s shoulders drew in before she could stop them.
Breathe. In through the nose. Out through the mouth.
Slow enough to quiet the instinct insisting she was in danger.
The tavern was warm in the way a living creature was warm—breathing, damp, crowded. Brine and smoke hung thick in the air beneath the smell of wet wool, rendered fat, and earth tracked in on heavy boots. A hearth crackled in one corner, its low red flame hissing softly over resinous pine.
Elara sat with her back to a wall because Reynnar had put her there without saying a word, and she had been too tired to argue about it.
Aoife lounged opposite, legs crossed at the ankle, posture loose in a way that promised she could rise and kill without spilling her drink.
Caelion chose the seat with a view of the single exit and most of the windows—because Elara was beginning to notice that that was something Caelion always did.
Tracking.