Page 11 of A Thief Among Fae

It’s the same cloaked man who grabbed my arm in the market days ago.

Unease creeps along the back of my neck. I was right to flee from that man. Anyone on a wanted poster is no one good.

Still, the masked stranger’s cold gaze does little to convince me he means well. I won’t give him information without knowing what the cloaked man has done.

I shake my head and sidestep past him. His eyes narrow as he watches me. Then he turns and shows the sketch to the goblin in line behind me. The abundance of unsavory characters here never fails to unsettle me.

“Let me in,” I demand of the two thugs at the warehouse entrance.

The orc snorts, but when I toss him a quartz crystal, his eyes widen. He opens the warehouse door, and I hurry inside.

At a stall with eclectic items arranged inside glass cases, I stop. Pearlescent seashell shards surround a tuft of silky, snow-white hair. Below them is a tiny finger bone, and I pray to Elowyn that it didn’t belong to an infant. I know I’ve found who I’m looking for—someone who deals in potion ingredients, both mundane and dark. Someone who’s willing to take goods from a tomb as payment.

“What do you see, child?” a wavering voice croons.

I want to tell her I’m not a child, but I hold it in. The words won’t do me any good here. I scowl as I search for the vendor. Where is she? I step under the dark swaths of fabric that form an awning over the stall.

Stacked crates hold countless vials with liquids of every viscosity and color. Some even glow. But it’s the vendor that makes me pause. She sits behind a table, her spindly fingers laced together, showing nails that are long and yellowed like talons. Gray, stringy hair obscures most of her face, but her bulging eyes indicate what she is—a hag. An unseelie fae.

Just my luck. “I’m not here to trade my firstborn or my happiest memories,” I tell her.

“Then what do you offer?” she croaks. Nothing on her face betrays her reaction.

I swallow. “Ancient artifacts. Or gemstones.”

Her nails clack together. “And what do you seek?”

“A bezoar for an unknown poison.”

“A bezoar that negates any poison will fetch quite a price,” she states.

“I’m prepared to seek elsewhere.” That’s a bluff. I don’t have time.

She inclines her head, her wiry hair shifting against her gray cloak. “Show me your wares, human child.”

I fight a grimace as I set an assortment on her table. It’s a small enough amount that I can keep my eyes on everything.

She picks up the fae statuette with her nails like they’re tongs. I didn’t notice in the barrow that its eyes are twin topaz. The hag gazes at it with keen interest, as if the statuette might suddenly blink. “This is the goddess,” she murmurs.

Icons and worship of Danu were banned when Avedor annexed the Hollowlands as its territory. The brutal War of Burning two hundred years ago ended with the treaty that decreed the fae would revere our laws and customs as their own.

“It’s one-of-a-kind,” I tell the hag. It’s probably true.

Another customer approaches the hag’s stall and peruses her wares, his midnight blue cloak swishing down to his waist. My heart pulses as I realize it’s the same man who asked me about the cuff on Evie’s birthday. The one who grabbed my arm. The one who guessed that I raid tombs.

The man from the wanted poster.

Only now do I realize he towers over me by at least a head. Underneath his cloak, he wears a black tunic with a plunging neckline that exposes his toned chest. The short sleeves reveal strong arms that I didn’t expect on his willowy figure. There’s something off about him, something that unsettles me.

I hug my pack against my stomach. When he pauses at the edge of the table, I realize it’s my items catching his interest, not the hag’s.

“Do you know what that is?” the man asks, nodding to the statuette. “What it means?”

“I know what it is. None of your business.”

“These statues are carved by fae mothers,” he says. “It’s believed that if the talisman is kept under their child’s pillow, they will be warded from disease and misfortune.”

The hag’s head cocks like a bird’s, her focus on him now.