Page 4 of Until the Heart Stops (The Oylen City #1)

T he second gift arrived a few nights later.

Sunset was probably my favorite time of day—it was the last little snippet of freedom before a long night ahead.

I took my time wandering through the other stalls of the Souzterain, nodding at acquaintances and stopping to peruse different pieces.

Amulets glittered in the dying winter light, opalescent stones hummed, waiting for magic to channel through them.

I touched an elegant ruby teardrop strung on a silver chain to symbolize Amayah’s sacrifice to her lover, and couldn’t help but smile.

I hadn’t forgotten the blond vampire. Not that I pined over him, but there had been a few times, on the edges of dreaming and waking, where I’d wondered what it would be like to be desired by such a creature.

What it would be like to peel back the layers of one so rigid to see what lay beneath.

My lovers had always been gentle, even the brief dalliance I’d had with a female alpha of a neighboring Lycan clan had been so.

Part of me thought the blonde vampire would be anything but.

It was merely an amusing thought, something to daydream of, especially when I struggled to sleep.

Easier to slip into imaginary worlds than face my own.

Rent was due. Adrienne had a cough. Noah had been forced to work two back-to-back shifts hunting a swarm of venefica and had returned covered in cuts and bruises.

I paused at another booth, eyeing the healing salves and coughing tonics.

Three hundred oyista for each—six hundred total.

That was almost a third of our rent. Not for the first time I thought about the beautiful inkpots in my bedroom that would fetch almost triple that.

A pang of guilt slithered through my stomach.

I hadn’t sold them yet but I would tomorrow morning, first thing.

“Hello, my girl,” the shop owner crooned.

My throat bobbed. “Hello, Cora. How’s business?”

I let the rest of the question hang in the air between us: how has business been since the most recent raid?

The old woman leaned back with an elbow resting on her counter, head tipped up toward her silver awning, the same color as her thick braid that slid off her shoulder.

“Oh, it’s fine. I’ve got a regular clientele with the Darcay Pack needing luynaverso every moon cycle to help keep their mental control during the shift.

Between them and a handful of Vyenurs, I’m doing just fine. ”

On a superficial level, the Covenant had been kind to the Lycans, providing them hunting grounds and places to transform at the full moon.

If they swore their loyalty to the Covenant, they were even provided with jobs.

And yet even as the Covenant gave, they took away.

Elixirs like luynaverso were vital for a Lycan to stave off self-inflicted injury, but the Covenant had all but outlawed it.

Cora didn’t ask how my business was. Everyone knew the new dens most likely under the control of the Covenant were strangling Risqeu by the throat.

But it was kind of her not to draw attention to it.

Instead, she touched a small phial of cough tonic, the bright blue liquid sloshing beneath the wax-sealed cap.

“I heard Adrienne coughing something fierce. You here for her?”

A spike of adrenaline lashed up my spine. “Oh, yes, but I’ll come later if that’s all right. I left my coin purse at the stand.”

Cora’s wrinkled brow furrowed, deepening the tanned grooves of her face. “I’d be happy to?—”

I made a show of looking up at the dying sun. “Must be off. So wonderful to see you. Noah or I will be back later, yeah?”

And before she could offer me any sort of kindness, I slipped through the thickening crowds and toward Risqeu lan Serang .

Drawing the silver knife out from my corset, I dragged it across my palm and flicked the blade across the ground and the wards my grandmère had set so many years ago.

They shimmered and dropped, but the burst of magic across my skin made the corners of my eyes burn.

Just for a brief moment, it felt as if she was next to me, tugging my curls into submission and whispering stories of the old gods.

That was when I found the box.

It was silver, just like the bag had been, with a beautiful filigree clasp on one end, sitting on my counter as if it had been waiting for my arrival.

But the wards had been up—no one could have gotten through.

I clutched the dagger tighter in my fist, circling the counter, keeping my eye on it like it might strike the moment I lowered my guard.

But it was merely me being over-cautious.

Nothing harmful could have been left within the wards, regardless of how it got there.

My grandmère’s magic would have ejected it immediately.

Even still, I used the tip of the blade to flick open the latch and lift the lid. Around me the market came alive, voices hummed, lamps lit, but I could only stare at the phials nestled into the black silk.

A tonic for Adrienne and a healing salve for Noah.

I looked up, searching the crowd, and though I saw a few familiar faces, no one was watching me.

There was no inclination that whoever had left this was here still.

But the burning in my eyes slithered across the bridge of my nose.

Plenty of people knew about Adrienne’s cough, and Noah was a middle-ranking Vyenur—it wasn’t a secret there’d been an attack the night before last and he’d been left worse for wear.

I had no idea who would have done this though.

No one in our lives, save for our patrons, had this much to spare.

So it had to have been one of our clients.

Between the phials lay another tightly rolled scroll. Keeping my gloves on, I plucked it and broke the wax seal.

I have watched you sacrifice yourself again and again for the betterment of others, Lilith Searah. But who takes care of you?

I dropped the parchment as if burned.

“Lilith?” Adrienne’s voice was raspy with her cough, shawl pulled tight across her chest.

Her hands curled around my arms, but I could only stare at the parchment. She rested her chin on my shoulder before freezing. “Merciful fucking goddess, is that…”

I nodded, throat clicking with a swallow. “It was here when I arrived.”

And though Adrienne was the sick one, she rubbed up and down my arms as if I was the one in need of warming. “This patron of yours is generous. Can he get you a new cloak too? ”

“He’s not my patron,” I all but snapped, pulling out the tonic and inspecting the wax.

It was one of Cora’s. Her magical imprint was still on the seal and proof that it hadn’t been tampered with. Adrienne gave a chuckle and I felt her shrug. “Whoever he is?—”

“He might not even be a he ,” I cut across her before proffering the phial over my shoulder. “Here, take this so that mouth of yours can do something other than run.”

“I’m the mouthy one?” Adrienne countered before breaking the seal and downing the tonic. The scent of pine and arisha blossoms filled the air with her exhale of relief.

I tried to ignore her as I pulled the ledger out of my bag and set it on the counter. I turned to the sconces on either side of the doorway and blew on them gently until the flames leaped to life, relieved when they did.

Our magic was dying. Adrienne held little of it herself, though she always said her beauty was perhaps part of her power.

According to my mother, I’d been blessed by the goddess.

My power was marginally stronger than the others in my generation, but I was nowhere near as gifted as my grandmère had been, or hers before.

But these little moments where my magic did as I willed it still made my heart squeeze.

The hair on the back of my neck prickled.

The blond vampire—Callum—stood a few paces back from the counter, staring at the newly lit candle.

He was dressed as impeccably as the first time I’d seen him, though it seemed tonight he favored all black.

It was a contrast to his icy hair, the black ribbon dancing through the strands like the inverse of starlight.

In the next moment, he was gone, vanished again as if he had never been there.

“That was strange,” Adrienne murmured .

I hummed my agreement, cheeks heating as I tucked the package into my bag in a show of nonchalance.

“That was the same male who was here a few days ago, wasn’t it?” she pressed.

I made a similar noise as I flipped open the ledger and settled back onto the stool with the inkpot I’d been trying to make last. She pulled my hair from my shoulders—I’d worn it down today, though twisted half of it up to stay off my face—and peered around me with her brows raised.

“Maybe he’s your patron.”

I couldn’t help it, I laughed. “There’s more chance of Deimos setting foot upon the earth than that vampire being my patron.”

Adrienne rolled her eyes. Already she was looking better, a bit of the color returning to her cheeks and her voice less of a rasp. Whoever the giver was, I was grateful to them.

“Well, at least now you won’t have to sell the ink,” she teased, drew off her shawl and dipped beneath the velvet curtain before I could find a suitable retort.

There was no way that male was the one leaving me the gifts. For one thing, he could barely manage to get within a few feet of me. For another, each time I saw him I got the distinct impression he was…displeased. But it didn’t stop me from imagining what it might be like if it was true.

Perhaps he watched me from afar. Vampires had a habit of doing so when a human or Lycan enraptured them. Perhaps he’d been captivated by my work ethic or wit?—

It was my turn to roll my eyes. My work ethic.

That right there was the reason I hadn’t taken a lover in over a year.

No doubt whoever this mysterious patron was, these gifts were for another reason than my work ethic and wit .

I knew I was beautiful. The goddess had blessed me as she had my mother and the women before me.

But that beauty only ever kept others at a distance, as if I was as unreachable as Deimos himself.

And yet it was a nice dream, wasn’t it? A few moments as the night deepened and our few clients passed through the velvet curtain to meet with our other blood giver, Liam, to imagine it was a male like the blond vampire.

For there was no way it was truly him. But perhaps an immortal like him, one who would one day reveal themselves and give me everything I would never admit I wanted.

And yet they’d already put it into words.