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“Did she strike her head?” Asger’s voice was muffled behind his mask. Beneath his dark hood, a few locks of crimson hair fell out the longer he studied our little thief.
I dropped to a crouch and gripped her jaw. Strange, but she didn’t whimper, didn’t flinch, merely breathed deeper, faster, and looked at me with a burning disdain. “Have you been taking up residence at the palace? There for the prince’s selections perhaps?”
Cy snorted and stroked his hawk’s beak. “Goddess knows the halls are teeming with suitors waiting to dig in their claws. By the by, what a curious claw this darling has.”
The bastard winked—knowing exactly what sort of spell was done to shift fingers in such a way—until a frown tightened over my mouth.
“You’ve already met?” Gwyn’s sing-song voice flowed from behind the silk of her scarf like a laugh.
“Briefly,” I grumbled and faced the woman again. “I’ll ask again, do you come from court as a suitor?”
“No.” She held up her inked hands, as if surrendering. “The woman in the woods said?—”
“The woman? You disturbed Gaina?” What a trickster Gaina had become. “Why should I believe you? For it was Gaina who sentmeto the star tent. So, I wonder, which of us did she desire to take up the arm ring? The one to whom it belongs, or a little thief?”
“I didn’t disturbGaina. Well, I stepped on her flowers, which I don’t think were entirely her flowers since is it really fair to claim an entire forest?” The woman scrambled to her knees, eyes narrowed. “She laughed at me, told me the direction to go, and called me a weird pet name. Now, I’ve had the misfortune of dealing with you, and frankly, I’m not certain if you’re some delusion my subconscious has fashioned from all the pricks I’ve known in the past, and I’mtruly locked in a comatose state, or if you’re real. Honestly, I’m not sure which one I’d prefer at this point.”
By the skies, she chattered a great deal. “Now I must consider if you not only robbed me, but tried to bring harm to Gaina, a woman who, I assure you, I hold in much higher regard than your life.”
Instead of pleading, the woman’s full lips bared. “Thanks, but I understood how much you valued my life when you mutilated my hand. I didn’t hurt the woman. She gave me that bracelet—arm ring—and told me to find the glass star.”
“Gaina might be up to her tricks again,” Gwyn whispered.
True enough. Tricks they may be, but Gaina was no fool—she always had reason, whether it be a vision of fate, or for her own enjoyment, it didn’t matter. She made her moves with the calculations of a battle mage.
What did she want me to gain from colliding with a woman as this? Her eyes were closed; she kept shaking her head, muttering.
She was crumbling.
“I think mind rot has her,” I murmured to the others.
The woman’s eyes snapped open. This near, free of the dimness in the star tent, I could see them clearly. She had eyes like the meadows in autumn—gentle knolls of golden grass with touches of green stems and a burst or two of lavender.Familiar.
“You said that before, and like everything else you say, I have no idea what you mean.”
She was baffling.
“Oh, she’s rotted in the skull,” Cy said with a chuckle. “Poor little cricket. Princey probably sent her out here as a sacrifice to keep his gilded court free of blight.”
Gwyn tapped my shoulder. “Air is thickening. Torrent will grow violent soon, and you know we’re expected to show our faces.”
We were out of time.
I propped one arm onto the top of my bent knee. “I propose a trade, woman.”
She rolled her shoulders back, tossing a lock of her hair aside. “I’m listening.”
“I’ll restore your hand, with no lingering ails, for your satchel.”
Her nose wrinkled as though she breathed in a rancid breath. “It’s all I have. Not a fair trade.”
“I find it immensely fair.”
Truth be told, there was merit to the notion. Her markings gave her clout—whether it was honorable or not was yet to be known—and she clearly had something of worth in that hideous pouch.
For all I knew it could be a stolen artifact she planned to present to the crown prince, an offer he could not refuse if she were truly here to barter for a claim to the throne.
The more I thought of the possibility the missing stone might be tucked away on this strange woman, the more I needed to see inside that damn satchel.
