AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Verol looked ill at the pronouncement. Marquin looked resigned. “Do we have a deal, then?”
“We do.”
Chapter Eighteen
Worth It, and More
Apparently, if one ousted Veralna’s reigning queen of music in a public display, followed that up with an apprenticeship to the Lords Arrendon, and then ranked a black diamond with the Mages Guild, word of it would spread through Veralna’s elite by high noon the next day. No less than thirty letters had arrived at the Arrendon manor, and Fitz, who seemed to be the Arrendons’ shadow in town, had taken up permanent residence at the front door to prevent the runners from knocking endlessly.
Verol took one look at the growing pile of correspondence, one look at Clare’s wardrobe, and announced that they were going into town. Since Clare had a dress to return, she didn’t argue, and Verol didn’t comment when she asked him to take her to the cafe she’d eaten at the day before, because she only knew how to get to Chalen Mora’s shop from that location.
He did balk when she opened the carriage door onto the alleyway that led to Chalen’s shop. “Are you sure we’re in the right place?”
“Quite sure. I’ll only be a moment.” She grabbed the dress, trotted down the alley to Chalen’s door, and knocked.
A man opened the door. He was of a light build, soft black hair framing his face, his dark eyes narrowed. They fell on the dress in Clare’s hand and he relaxed. “So you’re the reason Chalen left at the morning bell with every finished item we have.”
“Am I?” Clare asked innocently.
He snorted. “When Chalen told me they’d loaned out that one” —he nodded at the dress— “for a promise you could do in a night what ten years of work hasn’t, I thought they’d lost their mind. For that matter, so did they.”
“And now?”
“Now I think you’re the reason I’m going to have needle pricks on all my fingers for the next month.” But he was smiling as he said it. Clare held out the dress, but he shook his head. “Chalen said if you came by to tell you to keep it. You more than earned it.”
She didn’t argue. If Chalen was moving their entire stock into town, then Clare had earned it. Unfortunately, it meant her secondary motive in coming here—namely the one that meant buying the wardrobe Verol insisted she needed from Chalen rather than from a shop in town—wouldn’t be possible.
“Does Chalen take requests?”
“For you? Sure. You need something made?”
“I need a lot of somethings made. With some…modifications I’d like to discuss with them.”
He shook his head. “Modifications. Why do I have a feeling you’re going to be a lot like our other private client?”
Taius. He had to mean Taius, and she almost asked. But it was better not to. Cutting ties the second they were formed—that was the safest way to live. She already had two ties she couldn’t sever for a full year. There was absolutely no sense in adding a third.
“When do you think they’ll have time for me?”
“Come back in a few days. Any time between the morning and noon bell.”
She nodded and turned away.
“And Clare?”
She looked over her shoulder.
“Thank you. Chalen hasn’t—they haven’t had hope. Not in a long time, and I didn’t think anyone could give it to them again. But you did. I won’t forget that.”
Clare wanted to laugh at the idea of her giving hope to anyone. Hope wasn’t a word she entertained, wasn’t something she had, something she’d ever had. She had determination, and stubbornness, and a refusal to be broken past the point of mending, but she didn’t have hope.
Yet this man—she didn’t even know his name, or what he was to Chalen—was looking at her like she’d plucked a star from the sky and given it to him. It felt like a joke Ferrian herself might have made—as if the hopeless could ever bring hope to anyone.
She made herself nod and walk away before she could say something stupid, or callous, or intentionally hurtful. She got in the carriage and let Verol pick their next destination.
Days of wandering the streets in Veralna had still not accustomed Clare to the wealth of glass in the city’s buildings. The only glass in Renault County had belonged to him, and even he hadn’t had all that much of it, because what was the point? All it did was get broken.
Here, glass dripped from structures as if it was as common as stone and just as easily replaced, but the store she currently stood before outdid all the others. The entire storefront was not only glass, but a glass so perfectly clear she could see through to the clothes displayed within.
