He followed behind me, as I perused the large piles of tea at the next stall and then again as I inspected the goods of a swordsmith.
The excavators at the Citadel would die to get their hands on some of these artifacts.
I wished I could just transport them all back across the River and bury them across Astola. I stopped to look at the gold bangles at the next stall, and a tall peri with golden hair and skin darker than the bark of a eucalyptus tree leaned forward to greet me. But when her eyes caught on my bangles she froze, a frown tilting her face.
“Where did you get Tashuna gold like that, human?” Her voice was ageless, and reminded me of spongy moss with how soft and heady it was.
I knew that my mother’s bangles likely had magic in them, especially after they’d helped me with the dead halmasti when I’d burned inside it, but to hear it confirmed that they were Tashuna gold felt like a secret part of me unlocked.
My mother kept these for me. She’d been here. And then she’d gone back to save us.
I clutched my wrist to my chest. “They were my mother’s,” I said, not bothering to keep that private.
Kiyan’s attention was on me, the weight of his gaze trying to dig deeper, discover all my secrets.
But this secret even I didn’t know. He was welcome to find the answer that I wanted myself.
“Your mother had access to peri gold, then?”
“I don’t know where she got them.”
The peri held her hand out, gesturing for my wrist. She had such a calm air that I didn’t question it when I handed them to her. She examined the two thick bangles, tapping them.
“Hmm. One is missing.”
“What?” I looked at the two wide gold bands on my wrist, trying to see what she was talking about.
“Look.” She pushed the bangles together on my wrist, then twisted them so that they aligned. I gasped when she slowly turned them at a certain angle and the partial engraving of a jasmine appeared. The top petals lined up perfectly, together forming one third of the same type of engraving as on the vault in Astola, as the emblem on Kiyan’s pin.
“Just missing the stem.” She tapped on them again. “Then you’ll know what their power truly is.”
I gaped at her, emotion inexplicably rising up in me, my eyes burning. “Thank you,” I said, though it couldn’t encapsulate what she had made me feel with this simple knowledge.
“You don’t want any of my wares, not with those on your wrist.” She turned to her next customer.
Kiyan was quiet beside me as we walked through the rest of the bazaar. “Did you know your mother gave you peri gold?”
“No. I had no idea.” It wasn’t exactly a lie. I hadn’t been aware of their importance until fairly recently, but I still didn’t know where I stood with Kiyan enough to be totally honest with him.
Our conversations at the river last night and while we rode side by side had made me understand him much more than I wanted to.
We were two sides of a coin on each side of the River.
Only, it scared me what he was willing to do for his Court. Who would he kill, what depths would he go to? Was that the same level I was prepared to go?
“Come over here, I saw something you’ll like.”
He guided me to a stall filled with books piled atop each other like a library. Some were leatherbound, with intricate detailing on the spine—lotus and jasmine flowers, carvings of hearth sprites and river crocodiles. A giant hardback book sat on display, a hand painted gharial on the cover, it’s long snout and jagged teeth set in gold. Some volumes had blackened edges, or were stained red with dye, designed like I’d never seen before. Titles jumped out at me, histories and journals, folktales and song collections that I was itching to get my hands on. Others had clearly been made with magic and had green curling vines sprouting from the spine, or words that seemed to disappear as I read them. Most written in ancient fae, but I spied some in the common tongue. I wanted to dive into the pages and never come up for air.
“By the River,” I exhaled, barely able to breathe.
“I take it that’s a good thing.”
I gripped Kiyan’s arm with a squeak when I saw a compendium of peri magic, my heart in my throat. “A very, very good thing.”
He chuckled, his laughter rumbling through him, causing him to shift closer to me. Tearing my gaze away from the books at the table, I glanced up at his dark eyes, the lanterns from the festival making them glow warm and bright. We were very close, so close I could see the tiniest dimple in his left cheek and the hint of a smile.
He nodded towards the books. “What are you waiting for?”
