Page 22 of Fierce Highland Magic

There was a room I did not enter in my mind. A door I did not touch. A voice on the other side of it.

No.

I smiled before the silence could become visible.

"I call it bad accounting," I said. "It sounds less tragic at parties."

Lyra held my gaze for another moment. Then she began walking again. I followed.

A clever person would have taken the opening and stepped away. A sensible person would have let her find some other guide, some other shelter, some other fool to claim responsibility for every gleaming thing she nearly accepted.

Instead, I angled us away from the central avenue and toward the older quarter of the market, where the tents crouched beneath the ruined kirk wall and the merchants were too busy with serious bargains to bother with fresh prey.

It would cost me.

Everything did.

The line at my throat pulsed beneath my collar as though it approved of the calculation.

Three stalls down, the fox-faced vendor changed direction.

I noted the movement.

So did Lyra.

"Is someone following us?" she asked.

"Possibly."

"That answer is worse than the ones you usually give."

"Then I'm improving."

"Rowan."

"Don't look at him."

"Why?"

"Because he will interpret it as interest."

She looked anyway.

The fox-faced vendor bowed.

His face was hidden behind lacquered red wood, long-snouted and smiling. His hands were gloved in white. Between them, he held a small gold scale.

One pan was empty.

The other held what looked like a strip of silver skin.

Lyra's step faltered.

I caught her elbow before she stumbled. This time, I let go quickly.

"Keep walking," I said.

"What does he want?"