Page 77 of Fierce Highland Magic

"I intend to."

"Without me."

"No."

His brow lifted. I did not explain that either. At the edge of the thoroughfare, something shifted.

A figure stood beneath a tattered awning where no figure had stood before. The market's noise thinned around her. She was wrapped in green—not the gray-green of Ailith's gown, but deeper, older, the green of moss on ancient stone and leaves that had never known autumn.

The Green Woman. Her hood shadowed her face. Her hands hung loose at her sides. Her posture still, her whole presence as silent as the market was loud.

She raised one arm. Her finger pointed inward. Toward the market's center. Toward the distant glow that hung between the tents like a pulse behind closed skin.

The Heart-Lantern.

I looked at her. She did not look back. Her arm stayed extended for one breath. Two. Three.

Then she lowered it, touching her collar. “That thorn’s not on any ledger, dear.” Then she was gone.

I touched my brow, trying to understand her meaning. The second sign. One remaining.

The market's guidance was thinning. The Green Woman had pointed me inward twice now—toward the center, toward whatever waited at the heart of this place—and she had one sign left. After that, I would be navigating alone.

Rowan's attention had followed mine.

His face was still hard, still carrying what remained of it, redirected but not dissolved. "The Loch," he said.

"What?"

"There is a place. The Loch of Lanterns." He did not look at me. "The market's listening thins there. Words spoken by the water do not bind. Do not travel."

"Why are you telling me this?"

His jaw tightened. "Because we need to speak. Without the market recording every word. Without—" He stopped. Started again. "There are things I have not told you."

"I know."

"You don't know what they are."

"No. But I know they exist."

His gaze came back to me.

The amber light from the open passage caught his face at an angle. The paper-thin line at his throat was barely visible now—not healed, not restored, just stable. A scar instead of a wound.

I had just made his giving impossible.

His method had been refused, and he had no other method, and somewhere beneath the fury he was trying to find a footing that didn't exist.

"Come with me," he said.

The words were simple.

They were also the first time since we had met that he had asked me for something instead of giving me something.

"Please." The word cost him.

It was there in the sound of his voice, the way the single syllable came out rough-edged and uncertain. He had never said please to me before. He had offered, protected, warned, deflected, spent himself in a dozen small ways that all added up to giving.