Chapter 3 #2
At least I thought that’s what she was. When she spilled her basket of goods on the ground, there hadn’t been a single object that screamed wealth. Yet she could have easily stashed whatever she’d stolen somewhere else with the promise of returning later to collect them.
Hushed whispers danced on the tongues of two elderly women to my right. Something about their hunched frames told me they enjoyed their version of gossip. Reckless words they hid behind painted smiles.
Perhaps they knew something.
I dropped my glamour and took a step closer. “Ladies, where might I find the woman that goes by The Night Jewel?”
Wide eyes sought mine. Their once mocking grin, turning upside down. “Of course men like you would seek her out.”
My brow raised involuntarily. “Men like me?”
The woman with the olive-green satin dress and chestnut hair ignored my question. “She struts through here like she’s one of us. I wouldn’t let her within ten feet of my husband,” she muttered.
Her companion's icy grey eyes rolled. “I may never have met her, but I can tell you, she can scrub all she likes, but filth like that doesn’t wash off.”
The two women giggled like school girls hiding behind the bathhouse, waiting for boys to walk by. They clearly resented this woman—or perhaps it was jealousy spilling forth from their lips.
The chestnut-haired one pulled her knitted shawl tighter around her curvy frame. “She walks like her body’s worth gold, but it’s already been bought a hundred times over. If ever I was forced to talk to her, I would tell her she wasn’t welcome here.”
“Let her have the coin. No decent man will ever love a woman like that anyway,” the other woman huffed.
I opened my mouth to speak but no words formed.
Both women glanced at me down their noses and shuffled away.
Harsh words for someone they didn’t seem to know.
Must be nice, sitting on their polished pedestals, tossing stones from safety.
It was always the ones with clean hands that carried the dirtiest tongues.
My mouth pressed into a thin line. I couldn’t say why it unsettled me so much. Just a whisper of something wrong, something unfair.
But I had spent enough time in The Grey to know that the living could be just as cruel as anything that crawled out of Oscuro.
I’d seen men beat their wives and then pray the next morning. Seen neighbours starve while the wealthy threw feasts behind closed doors. Seen kindness too—but just as loudly as cruelty.
Matthias used to say the world wasn’t divided into good people and bad people. Just broken ones and the ones who helped them.
At the time, I hadn’t understood what he meant.
Now I was starting to.
I exhaled slowly, my gut still twisted. Whoever this Night Jewel was, I didn’t know her story. And I had learned long ago that the loudest opinions usually belonged to the people who knew the least.
Still, a quiet part of me wondered if there was truth in their venom . . . or if it was just envy and bitterness wrapped in silk skirts?
As the sun set, the crowds grew. I would have thought the bite of winter would send the Shadowkin scurrying home to their burrows, but the night seemed to wake something in them—something playful, almost magical.
Perhaps it was the blanket of silver pinpricks scattered across the black velvet skies. Or maybe it was something in the way the full moon bathed the streets in a sea of watery, silver light, inviting anyone who might have the courage to dance in her beams.
“She’s here,” a man on my left whispered harshly.
I flicked my gaze towards the centre of the marketplace, following where some folk were pointing. My eyes locked onto a figure. Cerulean hair, and twin sapphires. The Night Jewel. She was here.
My heart quickened, but not in a way that brought joy or happiness. No, it was something foreign. A feeling deep in my chest, like something was knocking on a door I hadn’t dared to open before.
Tonight she looked different. Not only in the way she dressed, but by the way she walked too. Her hips swayed seductively, yet I caught the slight limp with every step she took. Her stride had been steady the last time I saw her.
I slipped through the bodies at the edge of the crowds, sticking to the shadows. I needed to get closer, but it was almost impossible. A man stood by her side, his frame towering over her, yet he’d meet me at eye-level.
His scowl was possessive, like he’d snap the neck of anyone who dared touch her without his permission. He scanned the crowd, and, with a single look, ensured no one dared to get too close to the blue-haired beauty.
She sauntered through the street like she owned District Five: Black silk clinging to her breasts and figure like a second skin. Blue hair spilling about her shoulders, each curl perfectly held in place.
My gaze travelled over her, noticing everything from the scarlet rouged lips, the coal lining her sapphire eyes, and the black satin ribbon tied around her pale, delicate throat.
Women threw scowls in her direction, yet men gazed with hunger bleeding from their eyes.
The realisation struck me like dawn breaking through fog.
I leaned in, head tilted, watching her hips sway—how the fabric of her dress clung tight across her breasts, straining at the seams. She wasn’t a thief.
Or perhaps she was, just not of jewels. She stole hearts—the weak ones, the willing ones.
This woman owned the night and everyone who dared step into her domain.
A prostitute. And a very alluring one, at that.
So, this was her.
The woman the king had asked me to watch—a streetlight draped in silk, drawing in shadows like moths to a flame. Every part of her walked like she knew the eyes that followed. There was no hesitation in her heels, no shame in her smile.
She wasn't some wealthy aristocrat like I'd assumed. She was a working girl. A harlot.
And now I was meant to follow her?
A bitter taste crept up the back of my throat. This wasn’t what I signed up for. I hunted evil, patrolled Veils, chased Thorns through hellholes and dragged them out by the wings. I wasn’t trained to tail women with perfume soaked skin and painted smiles.
But the king never got it wrong.
There had to be more to this. Something I wasn’t seeing.
She didn’t fit the type. There was a grit beneath the elegance, something purposeful in the way she carried herself.