Page 73 of Fierce Highland Magic

I looked at the open passage. At the amber lamp. At the chains drawn back like welcoming arms.

The cold the Keeper had brought lingered on my skin. Then I looked at Rowan.

He stood very still, his face arranged into the careful neutrality of someone who had expected this and had decided not to care. The mask was back. The charm would follow soon—the warm deflection, the joke placed carefully over the wound.

I didn't wait for it. "One more help," I said.

"I heard him."

"One more help and you become inventory."

"That is a creative interpretation."

"Is it wrong?"

His jaw tightened. The mask flickered. "Not entirely."

I turned toward the passage.

The amber light spilled across the bone counter, warm and steady and completely wrong. This was what his protection had bought me—a clear path forward, a way through, everything I had wanted since the gate closed behind my car.

And the cost was him.

The numbers. Backtrack. Lost time. The graying had begun—the slow drain of color from the market's light. Dawn coming.

Other vendors. Wouldn't deal. Accord-blood was provenance. Not currency. Without the guest-claim, I was a mark with nothing to spend.

Rowan would follow. He had made that clear. Every stubborn moment since the fox-vendor's stall. Walk away from this passage, and he'd find another way to help. Spend himself trying. Whether I permitted it or not.

The math didn't balance.

Every option. Same place. Him bindable. Or me trapped.

No third choice.

My mother's face was gone. My grandmother's tea was gone. The sound of rain on the shed roof was gone.

And now the man who had claimed me as his guest without consent, who had spent himself against my explicit instruction, who had answered every direct question as though honesty were a rash he could avoid—now he was one help away from becoming the same kind of gone.

The amber light flickered. The passage waited.

Rowan's hand moved toward the bone counter, reaching for something I couldn't see—a seal, perhaps, or a final confirmation that the deal was done. His fingers were steady. His face was calm. The mask, perfect. The hand, already moving.

The vendor waited. The passage waited.

I opened my mouth. The word stuck.

His hand kept moving.

Chapter Eleven

Lyra

Rowan's hand moved toward the bone counter.

Two inches. Maybe three.

"I release you from your guest-claim."