Alora knew a boy once with brown eyes so warm she felt like she’d melted every time they focused on her. These eyes were not like those. They were an attractive color still, a mossy green, and framed by dark lashes and smudged with kohl, but they were also penetrating. Like a deep winter cold or the jab of a needle. She didn’t know what possible cause she’d given for him to narrow them at her.
Her skin pricked where his eyes landed. Because even though he stared with a gaze like frostbite, he was also decidedly handsome. As inexceptionally.Perhaps the most handsome man she’d ever matched stares with. Her hand pressed to her throat a moment, coaxing it to widen. “Excuse me, but why would you have such a creature in your shop?”
“Peculiarities,” he said, gesturing around. His hair was darker than hers, wet and tousled, like he’d just come in from the blowing rain. A brief and outrageous thought entered her head that she should run her fingers through it and set it to order. “Can I help you find something? A cursed ring? An heirloom dagger? A potion to poison your fiancé’s former lover?” At thelast suggestion, he nodded to the glass enclosure to the right of him, all manner of potions bottled and stoppered, and a sign that read:Don’t see what you need? Ask the proprietor.
Alora’s mouth fell wide in shock. “I would never kill someone! And had I planned to, I certainly wouldn’t purchase my weapon in a shop easily traced. I’d be the worst sort of criminal.”
“How would you do it then?”
She frowned at the lift of his lips. Scowled upon realizing he was mocking her. His hard eyes seemed to focus on her soft curves, the flared cut of her skirt, how perfectly incapable she looked of murder.
Alora was hungry and tired from her walk in the sun. Her temper had shortened rapidly because of it. She’d little energy for this smirking shopkeeper, no matter what she thought of his eyes. She scowled her fiercest before turning, certain there must be another building more amiable than this to wait out the storm, but a quaking crack of thunder stilled her steps.
“Quite the weather we’re having.”
Alora glanced over her shoulder, watching the shopkeeper drink from his cup.
She could spew small talk until her voice cracked when it suited, but in this moment, she would not. Instead, Alora rolled her eyes, determined to keep her back to him. That was, until she noticed a suspicious plant vining up the wall.
“Is that...” She stepped closer, enough to see the tiny blue thorns and the just-as-small blue flowers on an otherwise deep green vine. “It is! That’s a Dirededron. A Grave Digger! Did you know if you jostle it the spores will settle in your lungs and kill you in a terrible way?”
The shopkeeper’s expression remained lazy and unconcerned, the sight of which irked her endlessly. This was why dust encased the place, why no labels were printed, and why no more than two lamps showcased the shelves. He swirled the contentsof his mug. The smoke drifted upward. “It’s a good thing I don’t jostle it then.”
Alora could only stare. She took him in, standing there. His black trousers and black boots, his back to a rickety-looking staircase leading to somewhere above, and a doorway which must lead to either storage or a back entrance or both. Her eyes narrowed. He lifted one dark eyebrow.
“What?”
She raised her chin. “Nothing.”
“You certainly aren’t staring as if it’s nothing.”
A scoff left her lips even as her neck warmed. “It’s only that I am used to paying attention to the contents of a room. I know when something fits in a space. And when it doesn’t.”
“Cheers to your accomplishment.” He raised his cup. But while his tone had once again turned dry, his eyes seemed to skewer her in place.
“You don’t fit here. Where is the real owner of this establishment?”
“I am the owner.”
“A joke, surely. You couldn’t be further from someone I would imagine bent behind a counter dallying in ledgers. No matter that the place is in desperate need for rearranging, among other things.” She had a hundred ideas to turn this shop into something if not admirable, then at least passable. A good cleaning to start. And more lighting. Perhaps sconces, with adorable patterns etched into blown glass…
“And where do you imagine I belong? I’ll ignore the jab at my configuration, for your sake.” He reclined against the staircase, ankles crossed, studying her as closely as she did him. Aside from his eyes, which glittered as they speared her, he was devoid of color, endlessly dark.
It unnerved her. “In a shadowed alley. Maybe in possession of one of thoseheirloom daggersstealing others’ hard-earned money.”
She was only half-serious, but his lips lifted. “Nights can be very long. Who says I don’t entertain both lifestyles?”
Alora ground her teeth, refusing to let him bait her. But sometimes her refusals weren’t enough. She latched on. “You admit to being a pickpocket?”
“A pickpocket? In Enver? Where strangers clap one another’s shoulders with a smile, and ladies sing “good mornings” from their balconies? Hardly satisfying; they’d probably wish me well.”
Alora, who’d most definitely sung aloud while watering flowers atop her terrace, blushed. A color which deepened when he made a great show of examining her person, from her boots to her head. “If I were a betting man, I’d say you smile at everyone.”
She laughed, incredulous, then preened. “Yet you’ve not received one. You should be disappointed as I’ve been complimented on my smile many times.”
The proprietor reached once more for his cup. “You’re smiling at me right now.” Alora, realizing her error, clacked her teeth together. “And you’re right. I would have been dreadfully disappointed.”
“Don’tmockme.”
