Page 30

30

R ebecca had no idea what to expect from this beyond the fact that it would be a once-in-a-lifetime show. Hopefully one that didn’t also contain any serious physical threat to the Peddler’s four newest visitors in her hall.

The readings themselves weren’t inherently dangerous, she knew that. But the results of what those readings revealed?

That was what started wars.

That was what had gotten Rebecca here in the first place.

The second Rowan plopped reluctantly down in the crooked wooden chair facing her, the Peddler rocked dangerously forward in her chair and extended a hand over the table, waiting for Rowan’s.

He eyed that hand warily, hesitating still.

She cocked her head and smiled again, though now the image of it made Rebecca think of worms emerging from their own rotting holes in the side of an apple.

“If my price is too costly for the Blackmoon Scion,” the Peddler crooned, “you have every right to decline and be on your way. Though I can assure you the information you wish to buy will be much harder to come by than this. From any other source.”

Well that was creepy.

Not only was the woman blind, but she’d instantly recognized exactly who Rowan was.

Definitely more than just an old-lady Peddler, wasn’t she. And not entirely blind, either.

Not in every way that mattered.

With a thick swallow, Rowan finally relented and offered the woman his hand.

As soon as they touched, the lines of flame along both stone walls of the hall erupted, flaring higher and intensely brighter in every direction.

Not exactly a comforting reaction.

Rebecca couldn’t help but gaze around at the result, trying not to move too much because the Peddler could obviously see them somehow, if not explicitly with her eyes. Then her gaze landed on Maxwell.

He raised his eyebrows at her, silent and watchful as ever yet clearly on edge, ready to leap into action at a second’s notice.

That steady constant here with her now, in a place like this, provided a certain level of comfort and reassurance for Rebecca to hold onto until they had what they needed.

But it wasn’t enough to put her completely at ease in the Peddler’s presence. She wouldn’t feel right again until they were out of here, in the fresh air and sunshine above, with this old woman and her damn squeaky rocking chair behind them forever.

If all went well.

Her rocking now abandoned, the Peddler hummed and nodded, tilting her head this way and that as she fiercely gripped the back of Rowan’s hand in a gnarled grasp and trailed the fingers of her other hand across his palm.

“You have many different roads available to you,” she muttered, her white eyes wide in excitement, a wide but distracted smile hanging a little crooked on her lips. “Some are more easily walked than others. Some will bring you happiness and fulfillment. Some will give you everything you’ve convinced yourself you’ve ever wanted.

“But only one will lead you to what you truly desire.”

Maleine smacked her lips. “How impressive. Only one road to what he truly desires. Power and influence? A throne , perhaps?”

Rowan jumped in his chair, craning his neck to look over his shoulder and fix Maleine with a blistering scowl.

But the Peddler jerked ferociously on his hand, yanking him back into place.

Her milky, blind eyes never once strayed from his face.

More than seeming thoroughly reprimanded without a word, Rowan looked terrified as he stared into her eyes.

“ Freedom ,” she added. “Follow that one road. Abandon all others, and their promises will be kept. Do this, and the freedom you desire will be yours. But you must open the cage. Let all the captive birds fly. Release the hold you’ve been tightly clenching for so long.

“The birds will fly free, but they will never come back, I assure you. Then you will have everything in return. The bird’s freedom is your own. The bird is not you, and you are not the bird, but the bird’s freedom is your own.”

Then she practically shoved his hand away from her.

Rowan launched backward into the chair with a heavy thump and grunted, stunned.

The Peddler returned happily to her knitting and rocking, gazing at the others as if oblivious to what fortune she’d just read. “Who’s next?”

Rowan scrambled frantically out of the chair, tripped, and tried to right himself with a desperate clutch at the crooked chair’s uneven frame. It wobbled dangerously beneath him, but he never stopped stumbling away from the Peddler as quickly as his stunned numbness could manage.

When he finally fell back in line with the others, the wobbling chair hadn’t yet stopped wobbling on the uneven stone floor beneath it. Then it finally stilled, and the only sound filling the hall beyond the creak of the rocking chair was Rowan’s quick, labored breath as he tried to straighten where he stood, looking uncharacteristically shaken.

That was more than just a reading. It had to be.

The old woman’s deceptive gaiety remained as her blind eyes settled on Maleine. “The eldest, I think.”

Rowan’s sister barked out a laugh and shook her head. “Oh no. I’m just here to watch.”

“Four have entered, four have approached, and four shall pay. Sit.”

The sternness in the old woman’s voice sent a shudder rippling through Rebecca.

Maleine clearly noted it as well. Her smile dimmed, but she shrugged and waltzed forward like none of this disturbed her in the least, still chuckling.

But her laughter now carried far more wariness than amusement.

“I can sit. Fine.”

Before Maleine had even touched the seat of the chair, the Peddler cracked up laughing again. “You do like to rock the boat, don’t you, Maleine?”

The elf woman froze, bent halfway toward sitting, and didn’t laugh again. When she settled in the chair, the rigid line of her back revealed all her casual amusement and callous joking had now been rendered flat and empty. Useless here, in front of the Peddler.

“ You’re not even supposed to be here,” the old woman added. “More for me, I suppose.”

Then she extended her hand, waiting.

When Maleine slowly reached out, her own hand visibly trembled.

Moving faster than ever, the Peddler roughly snatched Maleine’s hand, like a venomous snake striking its prey. The flames cutting along the walls flared up once more time, scattering shadows with their blinding light before dimming almost imperceptibly.

The second the Peddler touched Maleine’s palm with her outstretched fingers, her smile disappeared, and she began the reading.

She spent even less time investigating and silently musing over Maleine’s fortune than she had Rowan’s.

“Oh, you are far more important to the Threads of Fate than anyone’s ever realized,” the woman crooned. “Including you. Your path has been set, yes, but to play your part and fulfill your own destiny, you must plan every move, take every step, with perfect precision . Many lives, maybe even entire kingdoms, depend on your choices.

“A bit of advice, child. Many will try to sway you or change your mind. They will tell you you are wrong. But you know what you want, and when you seize it, such greatness will be achieved…”

The fires along the walls died and dimmed again, just as before, and the Peddler released Maleine’s hand with another violent shove.

After a moment of sitting there and studying the old woman, Maleine rose from the chair and practically skipped back toward the others, her chin held high and her haughty smile fully returned. “Well that was better than I could’ve hoped for. I might actually like this fortune-telling stuff.”

Rowan scowled at her. “You said it’s all bullshit.”

“Oh, don’t get your panties in a bunch just because your fortune sucks.”

Clenching his fists at his sides, he tilted his head, closed his eyes, and grunted beneath the effort of not attacking his own sister in the Peddler’s hall.

Rebecca hardly noticed, though, because she was too focused on the sight of the old woman turning her white eyes onto Maxwell next.

He stiffened again, even before she crooked a finger at him. “Step forward, shadow.”

Maxwell and Rebecca both felt the weight of those words simultaneously before sharing a knowing look rippling with the same thought.

Only shifters used that term. Even Rebecca hadn’t known about it until they’d reached the Sparta pack’s compound.

How would anyone else know, especially this woman?

As if that one word had wrapped him in a completely different type of spell, Maxwell dutifully stepped forward toward the chair.

Rebecca nearly leapt after him. “Hold on—”

The shifter lifted a gentle hand to stop her and nodded. “It’s fine.”

He might have believed that, but Rebecca didn’t.

She had to let him sit at the Peddler’s table, though. The old woman had made that perfectly clear. Four would enter, and four would pay.

One more time, they were forced to bear the entirety of something they wanted no part of, and something told her this would be particularly uncomfortable to watch.

In the same way with the others, as soon as the Peddler took Maxwell’s hand, the fires flared along the hall. But with him, the old woman refrained from searching his palm with her fingers and said nothing for a long time.

Scrunching up her face, frowning, turning her head from side to side, the woman took so long to utter a single word that Rebecca’s seedling misgivings took root and grew.

Something was wrong.

Was it because he was a shifter, and this Peddler using old-world magic couldn’t get through to him?

Then the Peddler’s curious frown deepened into perplexed surprise. “ This is interesting…”

Maxwell heaved a massive sigh and bowed his head. “I understand. You see nothing, because there is no fortune to be read. My fate is sealed.”

With a little chirp of surprise, the woman cocked her head toward him, her milky eyes settling on his face, then burst out laughing.

She cackled so loudly, her mirth so complete and overwhelming, it felt like the entire hall around them rumbled its deep, stony laughter right along with her.

Or maybe it was just seconds from falling apart and crumbling down on all of them…

When the woman’s cackling died, she abruptly clamped Maxwell’s hand in both of hers, not once touching his palm with her gnarled finger, and looked him dead in the eyes. “The shadow moves without face, or fangs, or fur.”

The words sent a devastating shudder rippling through Rebecca. No matter how much fire existed in this hall, everything was suddenly, terribly cold.

“But the heart has more power than the shadow could ever hope to realize,” the Peddler added. “You will never have a pack. You will never run with those of your own kind again. But the thing you fear most has already come to pass, and you are still here.

“Let the shadow die, and the heart that stands in its place will move worlds .

“When you hear the woven tapestry of life past, present, and future unraveling itself to you, when darkness embraces you with open arms, do not turn away. That darkness is everything, shifter. And the heart will stand. Though the shadow disappears, the heart will stand .”

She released his hand with both of hers, a simple and brisk opening of her fingers, as if she’d picked up a hot coal without realizing it.

Maxwell studied her pale, milky eyes, then dipped his head toward her with a new level of respect no one else had previously shown.

The Peddler returned the gesture.

“Thank you,” he rumbled.

“And so polite .” The woman chuckled. “I do love a man with manners.”

That one took the cake for a weird-ass fortune-telling, but Rebecca couldn’t let herself think twice about it.

What she felt from Maxwell now soothed what remained of her cautious suspicion.

Everything is fine.

That was the general feeling surging through their connection, at least. If he wasn’t worried about the strangeness of his own reading, Rebecca would just be grasping for straws trying to find something else to worry about herself.

The second he stood from the chair, though, the blazing strength of their connection flaring up like the lines of flame along the walls made her reel beneath the assault.

She hadn’t noticed a chance in what she’d felt from him before he’d sat in that chair or during his reading, but now she realized it had dampened. Their connection’s returning strength, almost as if it was brand-new again, convinced her of that.

Like it had been plugged back in after she’d never noticed someone had unplugged it in the first place.

Then the shifter’s reactionary emotions bombarded her simultaneously.

Complete and total surprise. Relief. Confusion, definitely. A tiny seed of hope he seemed to want to smash back down again for fear it would outgrow everything else.

Rebecca staggered beneath the force of it all but recovered herself with a hissing inhale as he returned to stand beside her.

He wouldn’t look at her but stared off toward the back wall, contemplating something she couldn’t identify.

“You okay?” she whispered.

“At this moment? I cannot say.” When he finally turned to look at her, the stunned blankness on his face melted into his usual stern determination, and he nodded. “Surprise, more than anything else. It will fade.”

“Okay. If you’re sure.”

Maxwell nodded and faced forward again, buried deep beneath his own heavy contemplation.

She wanted to believe him, and she certainly trusted him. By now, she had to.

If there was any issue, he would tell her later. That had to be enough.

“Last but certainly not least,” the Peddler said happily, fixing her blind eyes on Rebecca and extending a hand. “Come sit with me, Laen-Cáir .”

The elven title put Rebecca instantly on high alert again, even before she noticed the look of surprise Rowan exchanged with his sister.

Any elven word on the lips of someone most certainly not an elf was strange, not to mention the lips of an old Peddler woman who shut herself up in this underground chamber.

“Come, come,” the old woman repeated, rocking back and forth. “I’ve been looking forward to this for quite some time.”

Great.

Rebecca was in for it now.

Was this the fortune the Peddler actually wanted in exchange for the prophecy’s hidden location? Or would it be just as illuminating, just as valuable, as Rebecca holding the original prophecy in her own hands and reading it for herself?

Though she walked softly toward the chair, the entire hall echoed with her every footstep.

Were the others standing there behind her, holding their breaths? Or did she only imagine this suffocating silence?

Either way, Rebecca reached the chair, lowered herself into it, and studied the old woman’s smiling face. She couldn’t help but ask the next question flittering through her mind. “If I wanted to know something very specific…”

The Peddler clicked her tongue and shook her head, extending an ancient hand over the table. “It doesn’t work that way, child. You know this.”

Child …

Another shudder rippled down Rebecca’s spine at the sound of such a familiar catch-all name coming from this woman.

Most people who’d called her “child” had no idea how old Rebecca truly was. But the Peddler?

Rebecca had a feeling this woman was much, much older than her. Definitely older than most others if not all magicals on Earth. Significantly older than the vast majority of old-world magicals on Xahar’áhsh, even.

She offered a half-hearted shrug. “I still had to ask.”

The Peddler nodded. “I know.”

Dropping her gaze to the woman’s open, waiting palm, Rebecca gently lowered the back of her hand into it.

The woman’s hand clamped down around hers like a vice, gripping Rebecca’s like claws before she jerked Rebecca forward with unimaginable strength and nearly yanked her out of the chair.

Flames erupted everywhere, all over the hall, not just along the walls where they’d been flickering but above and below them as well, across the floor, down from the invisible ceiling high above.

They surged higher and brighter than ever as these two hands made contact, almost as if the Peddler now had everything she wanted and was ready to burn her visitors alive inside her own life-sized oven.

Rebecca couldn’t stop staring at the woman’s face—the wide, cruel, madwoman’s grin spreading farther than should have been possible across the Peddler’s lips.

Then, before her eyes, the woman began to change.