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Right?
I stared down at the vial in my pocket. In the darkness of the inside of my coat, the vial danced with blue and violet light as if the herb couldn’t contain its own power. A set of footsteps dragged me out of my thoughts and back to the present. I looked up just in time to see Addie break through the crowd.
She came to a halt and bent double with her hands on her knees so she could catch her breath. In one hand, something glowed a brilliant gold. Flecks of green and blue tumbled from the light like glitter drifting to the ground.
“What the hell did you find?” I asked. My stomach dropped. “And what did you pay for it?”
Addie suddenly straightened. “I didn’t. We should get going.”
My spine snapped straight as my senses expanded. Deep in the market, someone shouted. People shoved through the crowds, caught sight of us, and jabbed their fingers in our direction.
Unfortunately, Addie’s back was to them. A man with green skin and curved tusks grabbed a nearby blade and brandished it. But when he saw me, his weapon sagged in his hand. His jaw slackened.
I’d been found out.
Hissing at Addie for her foolishness, I grabbed her by the arm and yanked her towards the exit. The crowd ignited with whispers of my name. Some hesitated while others rushed us. Addie yelped when a clawed hand tried to grab onto her puffer jacket.
Hilda stepped between Addie and the assailant and released her boggart form. A black shadow with hollow eyes and a jack-o-lantern mouth stretched high and lashed out with razor sharp claws. The assailant jerked back and grunted in pain.
I didn’t want to leave Hilda behind, no matter how much of a pain in the ass she could be. I had Addie in one hand and snatched Hilda’s shadow with the other before throwing myself backwards. I captured my fall as an in-between and threw us out of the market.
A part of me didn’t expect it to work. In fact, I came up against some resistance. It seemed the goblins had taken theft and fae powers into consideration. I ripped through their flimsy ward and fell into the hole I’d made. They couldn’t keep me here a moment longer.
Together, we fell onto my apartment floor. I crashed into the hardwood floor and heard a muffled crack. Beside me, Addie crashed into a plush rug, and Hilda slammed down onto my kitchen table. Honestly, Hilda looked a whole lot like the red caps that’d gotten wasted here right before I claimed the castle domain.
Wondering what I could have broken from such a short fall, I patted myself down in search of wounds. I realized, rather belatedly, that it wasn’t me that’d broken. An electric jolt ran from the top of my head down to my feet as I leapt up and patted down my pockets.
My front right pocket crunched when I touched it. Even from the outside, I could feel the thin pieces of glass trying to stab through the leather jacket. I cursed and yanked my hand away. A little bead of blood gathered on the tip of my finger as if I’d just touched a cursed spindle.
I muttered under my breath as I stormed into the kitchen to clean my hand. Prying the pocket open, I shone the light of my phone down into the darkness. The nightsmane was laced with tiny shards of glass. I didn’t know how to feel about it. The vision seemed like a warning for the future.
I should have heeded the omen, but I couldn’t bear the thought of giving up. There was too much on the line.
The sudden urge to nap tried to take ahold of me. If I did, I could take a flying ointment and walk into Rhoan’s dreams. I clenched my fist and fought against the urge to run back to him in my sleep. The apartment seemed so empty without him even though I could hear Addie and Hilda fighting in the background.
Could I salvage the nightsmane? Wilbur needed me to kill Beryl, but if I couldn’t even use the nightsmane anymore, then I had no idea what I was going to do. I couldn’t face her alone. The only way forward was with Rhoan’s help. If I didn’t have him…
The argument behind me died. I could feel two sets of eyes on my back. The tattoos along my shoulder blades quivered like a pair of nervous wings.
“Cerri?” Addie asked, suddenly at my elbow.
From the other side, Hilda asked, “Lassie?”
The garden of my arcana fell into a deep, dark night that left me chilled to my bone. Cold and hopeless, I slid my gaze over to Addie’s. “Was it worth it?”
She jerked back, confused.
I gestured to her clenched fist and the golden thing trapped inside her grasp. “Was. It. Worth. It?”
Addie’s brows furrowed. She bit her lip and lifted her hand to unfurl her fingers. In her palm sat a glimmering gold leaf. At first, I didn’t care. Then the power radiating from the thing in her hand caught me off guard. It slammed into me and shook me free from my despair.
Both of my brows lifted skyward as my lips parted.
“It’s a leaf from the tree of the world, Yggdrasil.” She stared at it reverently as she ran a finger along the edge of the leaf. Upon her touch, a portal to another world appeared in the silhouette of the leaf. “This is what originally gave me the power to alter fate. I gave it up to give the little leaf another chance on the world tree.”
My breath hitched. With power like that, I could do anything. I could defeat Beryl and break Rhoan’s contract. No one would be able to challenge me ever again. It would solve every single one of my problems all at once.
I nearly laughed. What were the chances that we would find something like that at the Goblin Market? It seemed to be a generous turn of fate…
