Chapter 6 #2
Staying with Cedar was safer, less likely to mess her head up more.
Vesper hated how much she had to convince herself not to ditch Cedar and go back to her apartment to fight with Bellamy.
She could just fuck and then leave… get it out of her system.
She’d never spent the night with Cedar before. Their relationship wasn’t like that.
It would be better if she didn’t risk any run-ins with Bellamy, though.
Vesper groaned, ignoring the looks she got from people passing on the street.
This was not a debate. She had to stop thinking about Bellamy like that.
Vesper had just let her win too recently.
That was all this was. Bellamy—like she always did—took that win, and wormed her way into Vesper’s brain, and wouldn’t fucking leave.
Finally, Vesper turned down a wide, cobbled road.
The storefronts on either side were pristine and welcoming—a far cry from the back roads she’d been skulking through to get here, where everything looked like it was falling apart.
Now she was on the street, which was every healer's wet dream.
Each shop held something for a person's health or healing.
This avenue was specifically designed to look like somewhere you’d want to go for healing, whereas the streets she’d just come from held the… less savory gambling houses and underground fight pits. Those buildings had looked like the trouble they provided.
She’d recently finished a book on integration of Illusion magic within Design magic’s architecture.
A fascinating read. And now she knew that every structure in the city was designed to look exactly how it did to invite the clientele the owners wanted.
Hence the clean white bricks with glossy windows and well-maintained flowers of the shop she was about to enter.
When she pushed open the door, a soft ding sounded overhead. She didn’t need to talk to anyone, though. She bought exactly four items from this store and knew where each of them was stocked. Vesper walked between aisles until she reached the off corner display.
The price for sutures had increased since she’d last bought them a month ago. Vesper snatched the pack off the wall. Bellamy was definitely paying for this.
The old man behind the counter was gruff and unimpressed with her purchase as he rang her up, grunted out the number, and accepted her handful of notes. She stuffed the sutures in her back pocket, mentally mapping out the way to her next destination.
She strode by the herbalist’s shops with their quaint, red-brick exterior and vines crawling over the walls.
The distinct smell of jasmine was suffocating, lingering in her senses until she passed the pubs.
Chipped brown paint and broken windows, which the owners had stopped fixing a long time ago, was a stark contrast to the other tidy row.
Here, a sour aroma—just as distinct—wafted through.
No doubt from too many mugs of spilt booze.
The stale alcohol overpowered the lingering jasmine.
When she finally found the tiny back-alley street lined with shabby buildings that oozed bad intentions—and not the fun kind—she knew she’d made it to the right place.
The road was barely wide enough for two people to walk comfortably side by side.
The entire area had the unwelcoming feeling of being back in the Magickless district.
Vesper suppressed a shiver as she entered the first black-brick shop. It had chipped paint, and several skulls were clustered together, sitting askew over the door. And, was that raven real or fake? Its six cold, unblinking eyes seemed to follow her.
Vesper didn’t scare easily—it took a lot to spook a professional assassin—and she wasn’t scared now. She was just wary. The whole area was off-putting, and she hadn’t visited in… well, since whenever the fuck she bought the last antidote.
She loathed the idea of being seen entering a poison shop. Vesper was an assassin, a damn good one too. She never had to stoop to such petty levels. Unfortunately, the only place to replenish her antidote was this shop, so she had to suffer through it.
The smells hit her first, her eyes adjusting slowly to the abysmal lighting of the interior.
She tried not to gag as rotting flesh mingled with lavender and lilac in the air.
The combination formed a particularly nauseating aroma.
She would never understand the herbalists who chose to work on poisons. Always smelled horrendous.
Wasting absolutely no time with the shelves, Vesper strode up to the counter instead, telling the young herbalist that she needed a nettlethorn antidote.
It wasn’t a cure-all, but nettlethorn tended to counter the vast majority of non-magic laced poisons, so it was a good investment to keep around, just in case she might need it.
Like today, apparently. Now, as she stood there awkwardly waiting at the counter, trying not to vomit, she remembered just how much she fucking hated Bellamy.