Page 34 of Fierce Highland Magic

"It is three answers. You are only hearing one."

I took a step toward her. "Who are you?"

"I am what remains when the fair was fair." She tilted her head. The ivy shifted. "I am the door that was sealed. The tongue that was bound. The keeper before—"

She stopped.

Mid-word. Her mouth still open, her breath still moving, but the sentence cut off as cleanly as a thread snipped by scissors.

Her eyes closed briefly.

"I cannot say that name," she said. "Forgive me. The binding holds."

"What binding?"

"The one that keeps me here. The one that keeps me useless." Her voice dropped lower. "I see the whole board, traveler. Every piece in its place. I know how the game ends and where the flaw lies and what must be done to spring it."

"Then tell me."

"I cannot." Her hands lifted, palm up, showing me their emptiness. "I am permitted three signs. Three directions. Three truths that are not quite truths. Ask me a question, and I will show you the semblance of an answer. Do not ask for clarity. Clarity is what I am forbidden."

The market noise pressed in around us. The smell of burnt sugar and copper and something darker underneath.

"Where do I go?" I asked. "To get out of here. To reach the gate before dawn."

The Green Woman turned. She pointed. Not toward the edge of the market, where the Gate had sealed behind my car hours ago. Toward the center. Deeper in. The direction Mòrag had refused to carry me.

"Inward," she said. "Not out. The door you seek—"

She stopped again.

Her jaw worked silently. Her eyes squeezed shut.

"The door you seek is not the door you—" The words twisted. Broke. Reformed. "You want the way home. No. You want—"

Silence.

The Green Woman opened her eyes. They were wet.

"One sign spent," she said quietly. "Two remain. Use them wisely, Accord-child. Use them before the last bell rings."

"Accord-child?" The word caught in my throat. "What does that—"

She was gone between one breath and the next. The space where she had stood held only the smell of green things growing.

"Rowan," I said. "What did she mean, inward?"

He had come up beside me without my permission. His face was carefully neutral, which meant something underneath it wasn't neutral at all.

"The center of the market," he said. "The Heart-Lantern. It's—"

A bell rang.

One note.

The sound cut through the market like a blade through water. Every lantern flame bent toward it. Every conversation stopped. The woman with the feathered mask froze mid-gesture. The thoroughfare held its breath, bodies still as standing stones, and somewhere a glass jar rolled off a table and shattered without anyone moving to catch it.

"That's five tonight," said a voice from everywhere and nowhere. Thin. Old. Weighted with counting. "Five."