Page 79 of Fierce Highland Magic

"Belong how?"

"Bound. Caged. Made into the heart of the thing, the engine that kept it running."

His hands closed at his sides.

"The only way to stop it was to trade. To give the market something it wanted more than her."

"What did you give?"

"The protections." His voice went flat. "The old fair's safeguards. The rules that let people leave. I traded them for her freedom, and the market accepted, and she walked out the gate unremembering, and I—"

He stopped.

The lanterns floated, still as held breath.

"And you stayed."

"Yes."

"And the market became this."

"Yes."

"And everyone consumed since—"

"My invoice," he said roughly. Raw. Not a joke. It wasn't priced in humor the way he priced everything else.

"Every person the market has taken since that night. Every memory eaten. Every keeping sold. I did that. I broke the fair to save one person, and I have been trying to pay the bill ever since."

I should have said something. Should have offered comfort, or judgment, or the actuarial assessment of a risk that had already materialized.

I did not say anything.

I just stood there, holding his truth, and it was heavy, and I did not put it down.

"The arithmetic," he said. "You asked me once what I meant by the arithmetic."

"Yes."

"That is what I meant. The running tally. The debt that grows every night the market stays corrupt."

His voice had gone long again. Sprawling. Trying to explain something that could not be explained.

"You think you can balance it."

"No." The word was small. Honest. "I know I cannot. But the trying is all I have."

I looked at the water.

The lanterns floated there. Dozens of surrendered wants. People who had chosen to give up rather than spend, to let their hopes drift rather than risk the market billing them.

I had been one of them, once. I had made my whole life out of not wanting things, out of pricing the loss before the gain, out of standing exactly where Rowan was standing now—trying to control something that could not be controlled.

"You could not have known," I said.

"Could I not?"

"You were trying to save someone."