Page 9

“You wound me. Here, it seems a quiet morning. Very little chance of a scuffle or, dare I say, a kerfuffle. Let’s take a turn around town, shall we?”

I exchange a look with Aunt Meena but she only shrugs, a small smile on her lips.

“Fine,” I say.

Eoin turns to Darragh, “Mind if I take a break?”

Darragh waves him off without looking up, focussed on arranging his wares. Eoin shrugs off the heavy sack on his shoulder before offering his arm to me, bowing low in exaggeration. I sigh but take it with the ghost of a smile.

We make our way through the market at a leisurely pace, passing yet more empty stalls. Eoin’s pomander is more subtle than Darragh’s, but this close, I can catch the scent, dark and honeyed. The bark of a sugar tree found only in the Whispering Mountains.

“How goes your travels?” I ask.

“Business could be better but nothing a smile and a bit of charm can’t fix.” Bravado drips from his words, coating the doubt underneath.

“What of the famine?”

“Ah, now, that’s a heavy word to use.” He shrugs. “We’ll get by. Werewolves always do.”

I twist my lips and look up at him.

“You can be honest with me, Eoin,” I say. “We are friends.”

He stops short, pulling me into the gap between two crooked houses.

“More than that, I’d say.” He grins wolfishly, canines flashing. “Friends don’t often take a tumble in the storage shed, do they?”

Eoin’s eyes glitter a dark amber, his arms wrapping around my waist. My eyes trace over his features, strong and handsome. As I always do when he visits, I wait for the feelings to follow. The attraction is there, certainly, but feelings…

I gently pull away from his arms, putting space between us. His grin flickers once, like a candle flame threatening to go out. But he withdraws, putting both hands up, and takes astep back.

“Fair enough,” is all he says.

Behind him, I spot the glimmer of armour and my heart stutters. The guards will be collecting their tax from the Bazaar merchants.

“Come,” I say to Eoin. “Follow me.”

We hurry back the way we came, away from the approaching guards before they can spot us. I lead us over the crisscross of bridges, deeper into Old Mossgarde. Not for the first time, I wish I could keep going. Just keep running further and further from the guards and the king. Further still until I reach the Roaming City of Frostalm and I am finally safe.

Instead, we stop at my small sanctuary on the outskirts of Mossgarde. Slightly out of breath, I sit on the wooden platform and slot my legs through the fence, letting them dangle over the swamp. Eoin sits cross-legged next to me, his legs too large to fit through the gaps of the rails.

“Friends,” he says after a lengthy silence. He rolls the word around in his mouth as though tasting it for the first time. “You don’t find many of those on the road.”

“You have found one here,” I say truthfully with a smile. He smiles back, his boastful grin gone.

“Then I am a lucky man indeed.”

Our affinity may be bereft of the romantic pull I had hoped for, but Eoin’s companionship is still valuable to me. He is a good manwith a curious soul, and I am often enraptured by his tales from across the realm. From the honeylemon trees that hang over the clay homes of Coalsburgh to the steam and metal of Frostalm, I drink in each detail of lands so different to mine. He has even visited the quaint village of Caldercruix, the Old Home of Witches, where many still remain. I think of them often, content under thatched rooves in a mild climate. I wonder what would have been if my mother and aunt had not chosen to settle in Mossgarde all those years ago.

We bask in a companionable silence, broken only by the sounds of the swamp. Firebugs hover over the surface of the water as the platform creaks under us. The thick treetops rustle overhead.

“For our kinship, you can be honest with me,” Eoin says softly. “What’s your plan here, Shivani?”

“What can you mean?”

He waves a large hand in the direction of town, eyebrows raised.

“Are you to run from the guards forever? Hide out here in abandoned homes?”