“Good. Smart girl. This is a place for secrets. Not truths.” For the first time, Rora looked away from him and her eyes caught on row after row of glass jars and tubes and bottles, each of them glowing like the lanterns she saw when she entered the market. But these weren’t all skyfire. A fat, round jar contained a funnel of black and gray smoke. She squinted, certain that it was moving. That it … twisted.
The man, Locke, picked it up, long fingers plucking the jar from the sea of others. Inside was a tiny twister like the one that had killed her brother. She stared at it, stunned into awe. There was something truly beautiful about the way a storm moved. The other jars swirled with different kinds of magic—blizzards and thunderstorms and skyfire and firestorms—each more wondrous than the last. All her life she’d been desperate for magic to call her own, and now it stretched out before her as far as she could see.
The stranger spoke again. “Steer clear of the vendors around the edges. Those are the frauds. Get whatever magic you’re here for, and get out. Don’t talk to anyone unless you must, and for sky’s sake, the next time you come here try to look less…”
“Less what?”
He moved closer, peering down through the shadows cast by her hood to meet her eyes. “Less like the kind of pretty girl this place would chew up and spit out long before dawn.”
Whether it be thunderstorm, hurricane, or some storm on which we have not yet laid eyes, one truth remains—challenge a tempest, survive it, and you become its master.
—The Tale of Lord Finneus Wolfram
5
Locke knew the moment he spoke that he had said the wrong thing. Her stormy blue eyes narrowed to shards of ice, and she pushed her narrow shoulders back and her chin up. He had almost certainly guaranteed she would be back, regardless of the danger.
But before she said a word, her eyes caught on something over his shoulder. The cold in her eyes melted, her lips parted on a sharp inhale, and her whole body went stiff. He had been teasing earlier with his little girl comment, but now she did look young. And frightened. And it roused every protective instinct he had.
Locke started to turn, but before he moved more than a step, a hand tangled in the leather straps that crisscrossed his upper body. Then another hand—soft but with a strong grip—took hold of his jaw and pulled his head forward again.
“Don’t,” she whispered.
For a moment, he forgot what he was doing entirely. She was close, and whatever fear had been in her before was gone, burned away by a blazing intensity. Her skin smelled fragrant, as if she had rubbed perfume or oils over the wrist that hovered by his mouth.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t look.”
Talking to Etel, she had been adorably curious but gravely out of her depth. He hadn’t been in the mood to chase a girl. His temper soured the day the Locke royal procession had paraded into Pavan like a gift from the heavens. He’d planned to snag a seat at a pub and not move until dawn, but she had caught his attention anyway.
His earlier mild interest had become a fist in his chest, gripping him tighter than the fingers she tangled in his leathers. Her cloak was too big, and the sleeves had fallen back when she reached for him. Seemingly of their own volition, his fingers touched her slim wrist. She glanced behind him again, then huddled closer, and he let his fingers graze down her arm, slipping under the sleeve that had gathered around her elbow.
For one minuscule moment, she leaned into his touch, then she jerked away, snatching her hands back like he’d tried to steal them. She slammed into a table behind her. Dozens of glass vials clanked and toppled, and on the far end a solitary jar of snowstorm magic toppled over the edge.
It smashed onto the dirt path, glass flying, and Locke’s hand moved to the harness strapped over his chest and abdomen that held his supplies. He braced himself for a blizzard to form only steps away, but the snow in the jar scattered harmlessly over the ground, like nothing more than spilled sugar.
Damn. Even Velarran was selling the fake stuff. The portly shop owner’s face went slack, then hardened with anger and embarrassment. Locke knew supplies were low. Storm magic was fetching a higher price than ever at the moment, in part because of the Slumber season. But the roots of this shortage had begun months before the season change. In the last year, two of the major storm-hunting crews had disbanded. Though perhaps disbanded was not the right word, when more than half the crew had died.
Across the aisle, Badren, a thin, oily snake of a man, had begun blustering about, yelling that Velarran was a fraud. Locke didn’t keep up with local politics and gossip. The crew traveled too much for him to care about any particular city, but the animosity between these two was far older than Locke’s nineteen years.
Quickly, before either man could turn on the girl, Locke took her elbow and pulled. She looked at him, wide-eyed and wary, but when she noticed all the people gathering to watch the commotion, she pulled him close, practically using his body as a shield.
She peeked around him, and once again something made terror flit across her face. But this time, she turned on her heel and tried to run. He still held her elbow, so she did not get far. “Where are you—”
She looked up at him, and even in that oversize cloak, she was impossibly pretty. The ferocity in her expression had his free hand going to his weapons belt on instinct.
“You need to let me go.” That sounded like the last thing he wanted to do. But she continued. “There’s a man at a stall behind you who is going to notice me, and if he sees me … he cannot see me. It would mean bad things for me, for you, for this whole market.”
This time when she yanked her arm, he was caught off guard and she got loose, stumbling back a few paces. The urge to find the man who frightened her was nearly overwhelming. Storm magic was not the only illegal trade that happened in the Eye. Gambling, drugs, prostitution, murder for hire—it was all here if you knew where to look. Whoever plagued her was likely dangerous indeed, but Locke spent his days in the belly of the world’s deadliest beasts. Men were nothing in comparison.
But she wasn’t just afraid for herself. She thought this man dangerous to everyone around them. So Locke swallowed down his instincts, and instead of seeking danger, he went for the girl.
Hooking an arm over her shoulders, he pulled her in tight to his side. He dragged her hood down to cover all of her face. She resisted, squirming away from him, and he spoke low against her ear. “Be still. I’m not going to harm you. Keep your head down, and I’ll get you out of here.”