Page 36 of Fierce Highland Magic

I couldn't have both.

Chapter Six

Lyra

"The sound of rain on a tin roof," I said. "A specific roof. The shed behind my grandmother's house. I can give you that."

The vendor's stall was narrow. Cramped. She stood behind a counter lined with glass bottles, each one holding something that pulsed with faint light. Her fingers were silver-stained, her eyes patient in a way that made my stomach turn.

"No," she said.

"It's vivid. I remember the exact pattern of it—the way the drops hit the corrugated metal, the rhythm when the wind shifted—"

"No."

Behind me, somewhere in the press of bodies and lantern light, Nessa waited. Flat-eyed. Pleasant. Running out of time.

I tried again.

"My father's laugh. The specific one—the surprised one, when something caught him off guard and he couldn't hold it back. That has to be worth—"

"The face of someone you love." The vendor's voice was soft. Almost kind. "Nothing less."

"That's not a tier. That's not how pricing works. There should be gradations, there should be—"

"There are." She tilted her head. The silver stains on her fingers caught the light. "You have offered me gradations. None of them are sufficient."

The bell was coming. The air tightened—a pressure building, like the moment before a storm breaks. The Keeper of Bells had counted five. The sixth would seal Nessa's courage permanently. Dissolved. Used for parts.

I tried the third alternative.

"The shape of my childhood bedroom," I said. "The exact layout. The window, the placement of the bed, the way the light fell across the floor in the morning—"

"Pretty," the vendor said. "Insufficient."

"Why?"

"Because you could lose it and still be yourself." Her patient eyes held mine. "The price for courage is a piece of yourself. Not a decoration. Not a pleasant memory you take out on quiet evenings. Something load-bearing."

I stood at her stall with the hole where my grandmother's tea had been and the pressure of the coming bell and the knowledge that the Gate lay in one direction and Nessa lay in the other.

The face of someone you love.

I knew which face. I had known since Nessa told me the price. I had been circling it, offering alternatives, buying time I did not have, because once I named it there would be no taking it back.

My mother's face at the last goodbye.

The hospital room. The machines. Her hand in mine—thin, so —when had her hands become so thin? The light through the window turning everything amber. The way she had looked at me and said my name, just my name, the last time she said it, and I had held that moment like a coal in my chest for three years.

I could not lose that.

I could not.

The bell was coming.

"The face of someone I love," I said. My voice came out soft. Controlled. As if I were discussing market projections. "My mother. At the hospital. The last time I saw her. The exact way her face looked when she said my name."

The vendor's eyes brightened.