Chapter 10
The bruises on my throat have turned interesting colors. Purple-green with yellow edges, like fruit left too long in the bowl. Mrs. Wickershaft keeps trying not to stare while she pokes through my paint jars.
"This blue is very... bold." She unscrews a lid, sniffs.
"Storm-blue. Two days of mixing to get it right." I pull my scarf higher. The silk one that won't stay put. "Goes with the disappointed clouds painting. See how they're slumping?"
She glances at the landscape. "The clouds look rather dejected."
"Well, yes. It's been that kind of week for everyone.
" I reach past her to straighten my brush display.
Twenty-four new ones this batch, all different sizes.
The lamb's wool came out especially soft.
"Mr. Grivven saves the best fleece for me.
Spring lambs. Much better than store brushes—those feel like painting with broom bristles. "
She picks up a medium-sized brush, tests it against her palm. Sets it down. Picks up another jar—my special ochre that took forever to get right.
"I'll think about it," she says.
She doesn't buy anything.
Fair enough. Not my best work—painted at dawn after sleeping maybe two hours, thinking about whether someone ate breakfast. The clouds do look dejected. Everything I paint lately looks dejected.
Gray Streak's pretending to shop for pottery two stalls over. He's been holding the same bowl for twenty minutes. His partner—young woman with sensible boots—at least moves between stalls occasionally. She bought an apple earlier. Good. Vitamins.
I squeeze past a customer to reach my paint display, my hip catching the table corner. Same bruise as yesterday. Really need to remember that table's narrower than my old one. My corset's digging in from sitting too long—the blue one that used to fit properly before I started baking at odd hours.
"Olivia!" Emil waves from his vegetable stand. "Your new customers are back."
"They're browsing." I reorganize my paintings for the fourth time. The original portrait's wrapped in canvas under my counter. "Very thorough browsers."
"Browsing." He grins. "That what we're calling it?"
I sell two small pieces before noon—a landscape where the hills look resigned and a still life of fruit that somehow seems disappointed. Together they'll cover most of my rent. Probably. If I don't buy more paint. Or vegetables. Or that nice cheese.
Plus one jar of cerulean to a young artist who actually understands my mixing process. She even bought four brushes, impressed by the lamb's wool softness. "Store brushes are too stiff," she'd said, and I'd nearly hugged her.
The afternoon crowd's thinning when Gray Streak finally approaches. He's still carrying that bowl.
"You could just buy it," I tell him. "Mrs. Prewitt makes lovely pottery. Very durable. Perfect for soup."
He sets the bowl down carefully. "Time to go."
"But I haven't—" The sun. Oh. Later than I thought. "Right. Yes. Let me pack."
I load vegetables into my basket, brushes and paint into another bag, carefully wrapping the glass jars so they don't clink. My finished brushes go in their leather roll. The wrapped portrait under my arm. Too many things. My hip bumps the counter—same bruise saying hello.
"We can carry—" Sensible Boots reaches for a bag.
"No, I've got it. Well, mostly. That turnip might escape but—"
"We're traveling by shadow," Gray Streak says.
"Oh." I clutch my bags tighter. "Right. Like yesterday. With the cold and the stomach dropping."
"You've done this before?"
"Once. Your boss was very dramatic about showing me the roof." I eye the nearest shadow. "Do vegetables travel well? Last time I didn't have vegetables. Or paint. Or anything breakable."
They exchange glances.
"You'll be fine," Sensible Boots says. "Just don't let go."
"Of the vegetables?"
"Of us."
Gray Streak takes my elbow. His grip's firm but careful.
"Deep breath," he says.
I breathe. "It's the landing that gets me. The part where everything reassembles and your stomach remembers which way is up."
The world disappears.
Still cold. That between-spaces cold that makes your bones ache.
My stomach drops—at least I expected it this time.
Everything's pressing and pulling and my vegetables are definitely not happy.
But I keep my eyes closed this time. Don't fight it.
Just let the shadows do whatever shadows do while I protect my turnips.
We stumble out behind the compound and I immediately drop a bag. Paintbrushes scatter across cobblestones. At least two roll toward a drain.
"That was—" I bend to collect brushes, world still tilting. "Do you do that often? How do you know where you're going? What if you end up in someone's closet? Or a wall?"
"Practice," Gray Streak says, steadying me when I wobble.
"I should practice walking first. Regular walking. Without shadows." I count brushes. Missing one. There—under that puddle. "My vegetables survived though. Mostly. That cucumber looks traumatized."
The back door's already open. Sensible Boots helps gather the last brushes while Gray Streak does that thing where he pretends not to be amused.
"Thank you for the transport," I tell them. "Very efficient. Slightly terrifying. My turnip definitely has opinions now."
They leave me at the entrance, probably to report successful delivery of one artist without losing vegetables to the shadow realm.
The compound's halls are cleaner than yesterday. Someone actually followed my suggestion about the cobwebs. The death-smell is fading too, replaced by something that might be lemon oil. They listen. That's nice. Terrifying, but nice.
The corridors feel narrower than I remember. Have to turn sideways at one corner to avoid a weapons rack someone's moved. My basket catches anyway, rattling something expensive and stabby.
I know he's there before I see him. The shadows feel different when he's around—heavier, more interested.
"You came." His voice from the doorway makes me drop another brush.
"I said I would." I turn, clutching my wrapped portrait. He looks better. Color in his face that isn't exhaustion-gray. Different clothes too—still black, but cleaner. "Did you eat breakfast?"
His expression does something complicated. "Are we really discussing my meals?"
"Someone has to." I set down my bags. "I brought vegetables. And paint. The vegetables aren't for painting. Well, I might paint them later, but they're primarily for eating."
He steps aside to let me in, and I catch his scent—something dark and expensive with undertones of soap. Do shadow users have special soap? Is that a thing?
"The portrait," he says, eyeing my wrapped canvas.
"Right. Yes." I thrust it at him, then pull back. "It's yours. I mean, you're yours, obviously, but the painting. Of you. Should be yours. No one else has seen it, I promise. Well, Mrs. Harwicke saw it but she was too busy complaining about her nose to really look."
His hands are careful taking it. Long fingers, pale, with those shadow scars I noticed before. Good hands. Artistically speaking. Very paintable.
He unwraps it slowly.
The silence stretches. I count my brushes again. Still missing one.
"This is how you see me." Not a question.
"That's how you looked. That night. All tired and pretty and—" I stop. "Pretty tired. Very tired. Exhaustively tired."
He's still staring at the painting. The light from the window catches his profile and my fingers itch for charcoal.
"No."
I blink. "No?"
"No more portraits." He sets the painting against the wall with excessive care. "This one is enough."
"But I need to paint you properly. With actual sitting. And better light. And you knowing you're being painted instead of just..." I wave vaguely. "Lurking attractively in moonlight."
"I don't lurk attractively."
"You absolutely do. It's very atmospheric. But terrible for color accuracy." I'm already calculating light angles. "One session. Maybe two. Just to get the details right."
"No."
"Why not?"
He turns to face me fully. The shadows around him shift. "Because the last time you painted me, you nearly destroyed everything I've built."
"That's a bit dramatic."
"You put my face on public display."
"I put art on display. It happened to be your face. Very different things." I adjust my bags. "This time would be private. Just you and me and some decent north-facing light."
"Absolutely not."
"But—"
"My people already think I've gone soft. Sitting for portraits like some—" He stops.
"Like some what? Someone who exists? Someone who has a face?" I set down my vegetables with a thump. A turnip rolls out. "You do realize you're not actually made of shadows, right? You're a person. People get painted. It's very normal."
"Nothing about this situation is normal."
"Well no, usually my subjects don't threaten to murder me first. But we've moved past that. Growth!" I retrieve the escaped turnip. "Besides, your people don't think you've gone soft. They think you're finally eating vegetables."
"Same thing."
"It's really not." I study him, how he's holding himself. All sharp angles and tension. "What are you actually afraid of?"
His shadows flare. The temperature drops. "I don't fear anything."
"Everyone fears something. I fear running out of cerulean blue. And spiders. And that my bread won't rise properly." I tick them off on paint-stained fingers. "See? Very normal."
"I'm not sitting for another portrait."
"Fine." I start looking around the room anyway. "This lighting is terrible. How do you even see? No wonder everyone squints. We should clean these windows."
"Did you hear me?"
"I heard you. You're not sitting for a portrait. I'm just observing the architectural sadness." I run a finger along the windowsill. It comes away gray. "When was the last time anyone cleaned in here?"
"That's not—we're discussing portraits."