Chapter 24 Nerina #2
When he tilted my chin to meet his eyes, something inside me stilled. The tension in my shoulders melted; my chest tightened—not from fear, but from the way he held my attention.
For a heartbeat, I stayed in that feeling—his touch, his steadiness. Then the world crept back in.
And I moved with him instinctively, as if his shadow was the only safe place left to stand.
Shadeau swallowed us again. Dim lanterns flickered against walls slick with damp and shadow. Mist curled around our ankles like something alive, whispering over cobblestone. Every doorway seemed to watch us. Every alley loomed.
Alaric’s hand didn’t fully leave my arm—not really. His fingers hovered close, ready—the way they always were when he sensed danger before I did.
He led me through the maze—past figures wrapped in tattered cloaks, past merchants selling wares I dared not look at too closely.
The first market we reached was a chaotic sprawl of makeshift stalls beneath sagging canopies, their edges stained with time and ritual smoke. The air was thick with crushed spices and burning sage. Vendors whispered in a lilting, unfamiliar tongue..
A scrap of parchment fluttered against a post near one stall, its edges pinned with rusted nails. Cheap paper. Rushed ink.
Meant to be seen, not preserved.
The sketch was crude—heavy lines, uneven strokes—but the artist had lingered on the hair.
Pale.
Nearly white.
Drawn in loose, flowing strokes that caught the lanternlight even on parchment.
The face beneath was only half-formed—high cheekbones suggested, eyes left dark and hollow—but the shape of the jaw was right.
And the fall of the hair was unmistakable.
At the brow, half-hidden by shadow, a faint curve had been scratched in—small. Deliberate.
A crescent.
Someone had added cramped notes—details meant for hunters, not gawkers.
“CRESCENT MARK. DANGEROUS. WANTED ALIVE.”
My pulse thundered. I yanked the cloth higher over my face, fingers shaking as the world pitched beneath me.
I nudged Alaric’s arm—once. Light. Deliberate. He turned his head in the same direction.
I felt the moment he understood. His pace didn’t change—but his shoulders locked. His steps became quieter, controlled.
He didn’t curse. Didn’t react.
He only reached up and adjusted the scarf at my throat himself—firm, careful.
“Stay close,” he murmured. His voice was calm.
His eyes were not.
In that glance, I understood something else, too: he wasn’t only angry with me.
He was afraid. Not for himself. For me.
The guilt that followed cut deep—enough to feel like betrayal.
Beneath the sketch, bold lettering screamed a word I hadn’t expected to see attached to my name.
TRAITOR.
The word didn’t just label me.
It converted me—from mermaid to prize, from mystery to currency.
My skin went cold beneath the cloth, not from fear of judgment, but from the sudden, brutal math of it:
Everything had a price. And someone had decided what mine was.
Each shop offered a new kind of nightmare—some dim and desperate, others cloaked in velvet and candlelight.
Behind velvet curtains, vendors whispered over bone-carved relics and shimmering vials, each promising divinity bottled for the right price.
In one shop, shelves lined with cracked glass jars held floating things that stared from within murky liquid—eyeballs that twitched, fingers that curled when no one was near.
Another reeked of charred incense and something acrid; an old woman sat behind the counter grinding something in a mortar that oozed thick, black resin.
A merchant with sunken eyes and silver-threaded robes displayed enchanted maps, their ink shifting like living veins, revealing and concealing pathways when touched.
We moved on. Searched.
But every lead turned into a dead end.
Hours slipped by with no sign of the Eye—and no telling how much longer the potion would hold.
Frustration tightened Alaric’s jaw each time a merchant shook their head or tried to sell him something else entirely. The deeper we ventured, the heavier the air grew—thick with unseen eyes tracking our every step.
Voices drifted through the press of bodies—low, careless, meant for no one and everyone.
“…heard the bounty’s doubled,” someone muttered as we passed.
“Enough to buy a whole fleet of ships.” another voice replied, awe curling through the words.
My stomach twisted. I kept my eyes forward, willing my pulse to steady, my face to remain blank beneath the cloth.
My mark throbbed like it disagreed with my silence—as if fear fed it. The more I tried to disappear, the more my body refused.
Alaric’s hand tightened on my wrist—not enough to hurt. Just enough to anchor.
To warn me not to react.
One stall held a collection of cursed trinkets—coins that ensured misfortune, rings that bound the wearer to unseen forces, mirrors that never reflected truth.
The vendor was a wiry man with a hunched back and skin like worn leather stretched too tight over protruding bones. His wild hair framed a face carved with malice, eyes too knowing. He reeked of stale smoke.
Yellowed teeth showed through a smile that didn’t reach his eyes as he leaned forward like a vulture scenting death. Fingers long and crooked as driftwood tapped an erratic rhythm atop parchment stained with ink and God-knows-what.
Every inch of him radiated deception. And delight in cruelty. A man who would trade souls for the right price. And enjoy it.
He offered Alaric an obsidian dagger laced with bone. “Forged in the breath of the Void,” he rasped.
The blade pulsed faintly in his hands. Alaric stared at it for a beat too long, then turned away.
The seller laughed in his throat. “Not your taste?” he rasped. “Perhaps something more intimate, then.”
He gestured behind him—toward a narrow building with red lanterns strung over the door, smoke curling from the windows like ghost fingers.
“A night with a mermaid, fresh from the deep. Or perhaps you fancy faeries? Werewolf? We have all sorts.”
My stomach turned. I followed his gesture and caught sight of the carved entrance—intricate and cruel. Behind the red-lit windows, shadows moved. Laughter muffled and wrong. Sobbing.
The vendor licked his lips, eyes glinting. “I’ll watch your companion while you go in.” He took his time looking me over.
My mark flared beneath the fabric—searing, pulsing. I felt it rise in me then: ocean and stars and storm I didn’t yet understand. Magic surged toward my fingertips.
Mermaids. Fae. Werewolves. All manner of supernatural beings forced into servitude—powdered skin, spell-laced perfume, suffering dressed up as seduction.
I didn’t know what was worse—the fact that this place existed…
Or that there was a line wrapped around the building. Humans, mostly.
Just standing there like they were waiting for bread, not bodies. Their eyes gleamed with hunger, mouths curved in eager, grotesque smirks.
Alaric stepped forward in a blur, fast enough that the vendor flinched.
In one smooth, dangerous motion, he seized the dagger the man had been peddling and pressed it to his throat.
“Look at my companion like that again,” he growled, voice low and lethal, "and I’ll decorate this street with your guts."
The vendor’s grin faltered. He raised his hands in mock surrender, but the gleam in his eyes remained.
Alaric eased the blade away—not back to its owner. He turned it in his grip until the hilt faced me. “Here.”
I blinked, the market noise fading to a dull hum. “What?”
A flicker of a smile touched his mouth. “Consider it… payment for the disrespect.”
The grip was warm from his hand when I took it. The blade was plain but perfectly balanced.
Not a trinket. A weapon.
Alaric stepped back, the vendor still staring after us, pale as fish-belly.
“If anyone in this city looks at you like that again,” he said—loud enough for the man to hear—“use it.”
I could end him. One move and I could fill his lungs with salt and drag him beneath the surface of his own shadow.
But I couldn’t. Not here.
Not with so many eyes.
I didn’t know what would happen if I lost control. And I couldn’t let anyone see what I truly was.
So I swallowed it down—burning like seawater boiling in my chest—knowing if I let it out…
I wouldn’t stop until this whole place drowned.
My mark flared beneath the cloth, heat pulsing like a warning. I pulled the scarf tighter around my face and shoulders, fingers trembling.
I didn’t speak. I couldn’t.
Rage and disgust twisted inside me like a storm.
This was what the world saw us as—commodities. Trinkets for their pleasure. Pretty monsters to be packaged and sold.
I wanted to scream, to tear down the blood-red door, to rip the rot from the bones of this place. I clenched my fists until my nails bit skin, biting down the fury that threatened to consume me.
They could’ve taken me.
If Alaric hadn’t found me first… I might’ve ended up here.
And then—my mark betrayed me.
A soft glow pulsed beneath my cloak, faint but unmistakable, like the rhythm of my heartbeat.
I yanked the fabric tighter, but it was too late. A quiet gasp came from somewhere behind the stall. Someone had seen.
A figure moved in the shadows, posture changing like they’d just found something far more valuable than anything sold in this wretched place.
Alaric tensed beside me, his grip on my wrist tightening. He didn’t look at me, but I saw the way his awareness shifted the way his hand drifted—just slightly—toward the hilt of his blade.
"Stay calm," he murmured, voice lower now, urgent. "We need to leave—now."
My pulse quickened.
"We can't just leave," I said, my voice tight with emotion. "Those creatures—those people—someone has to help them."
Alaric didn’t look at me. “There’s nothing we can do,” he said, quiet but unyielding. “I told you what to expect here. I told you there are worse things they can do than kill you. We can’t save them.”
"So we just leave them?" I demanded. "After everything we’ve seen—after everything we’ve survived—you’re telling me we let that happen?"