A large hand slammed over mine.
My heart stopped at the sight of three long fingers. Two were nothing but gnarled stubs.
“Hello,” I said and cleared my throat as I attempted to snatch my hand back. “They’re beautiful.”
Slowly, the hand slid from mine. When I looked up, my eyes met with an orange set.
“So are those fingers of yours.” The faerie’s voice was gruff. “If you wish to keep them, don’t fucking touch unless you’re buying.”
Right. I’d forgotten that the rule as old as the Fae themselves extended to many business dealings here in Crustle, too. “Is that how you lost yours?”
The bald faerie raised a white brow. “Did you wake up this morning and decide to look for trouble, or are you always so reckless?”
At that, I couldn’t help but smile. “Merely curious.”
“Curiosity kills far more than cats, pretty thing.” My heartbeat slowed, then grew heavy as he sank onto the tree stump behind the table and reached for a copper mug of coffee. “A forlok got them, if you must know.”
Forlok.
My astonishment was mistaken for cluelessness, for he said proudly, “’Bout as tall as you. Skeletal but deadly.” His eyes glinted. “Their bones sell for a real handsome price to certain witches. Anyway, I got what my young and foolish self deserved instead.”
It seemed I was indeed in the right place.
I tried to keep my tone mild and casual. “You’ve visited the faerie realm.”
He paused with his coffee halfway to his mouth and eyed me as if I were born yesterday. If he only knew that I might as well have been with my lack of worldly experience. “No one visits Folkyn. I was born and raised there, and I left.” His clipped words implied there was far more to the story. That he likely fled before he was forcibly removed or worse.
Looking back at the jewels, I said, “These aren’t from here.”
He thumped his mug onto the table and loomed over it, startling me. “All right, who the fuck are you?” he sneered. “Huh? One of those good for nothing royal spies? I haven’t done a damned thing wrong, you hear? It’s all legal enough.” He flicked his hand. “So be gone.”
I stepped away and raised my hands. “I swear I’m nothing of the sort. I just…” I sighed, then confessed, “I just need a little information.”
Taken aback, the male’s face scrunched as he surveyed me once more. “I’ve nothing worth knowing. Go back to bed.”
“But I think you might.” Gathering two gold coins from the pocket of my dress, I opened my hand and gave him a glimpse of them. “And I’m willing to pay.”
His fire-colored eyes narrowed on the coins, then my threadbare cotton dress. “What’s the likes of you doing with coin like that?”
“It’s not stolen, if that’s what you’re inferring,” I clipped, then reminded myself to keep my emotions at bay. Now was not the time to be offended. For all I knew, he could be one of the few with the ability to help me in some way. “All I need to know is how to get in.”
He snorted. “Get in?” A bark of laughter. “To Folkyn?”
I nodded.
His smile waned. “You’re as insane as you are stupid.”
I gritted my teeth and made to tuck the coins away.
“All right, all right,” he said quickly. “Fine. I’ll tell you one thing and one thing only.”
I placed one coin away, and the male cursed. “You’re meaner than you look.” I waited, and he grumbled, “You need to know someone.”
“Someone?”
“Exactly,” he said, glancing at the quiet stalls on either side of us. “You know what I mean.”
“Someone from there, you mean,” I said, my hope deflating even as I recalled the heat of Florian’s mouth upon mine, his branding touch.
Other than the payment his visits provided, the king would be of no help. Merely alluding to my lifelong desire for answers could prove an irreversible and disastrous mistake. The royals of Folkyn did nothing that did not serve them, and if King Florian knew of my plan…
He could kill me for so much as dreaming of entering a land forbidden to me.
Snatching a cloth tucked within his belt, the jewel trader polished a large sapphire as an elderly woman walked past. “Good morning, Hal.”
Hal huffed indignantly. “When is morning ever good, Issle?”
She chuckled as if accustomed to such a greeting from this Hal, and after eyeing me up and down, she continued to a wagon of old produce parked by the curve of the canal.
Hal waited, then went on a good minute later. “Two options, really. If you wish to survive. You need someone from there or high up in the ranks here.”
I withheld the urge to groan and curse. “Of course.” I couldn’t keep my eyes from rolling. “I’ll just go pay the governor a nice little visit, shall I?”
I made to return my coin to my pocket when he said, “Or you could find yourself one of her corrupt henchmen.”
I blinked. “Her guards?”
He shrugged. “Whatever you wish to call them. With eighty of those…” A nod of his head to the coin in my hand. “You might be able to hire one to get you through the wards.”
“Eighty?” I nearly shouted.
That was far more than the king had left me with. More than another four meetings with him would accrue, providing he even gave me as much coin again.
“I don’t make the rules, pretty thing, and very few have the means to break them.”
My chest tightened at the thought of never leaving this place of in-between. Never knowing. All the many nevers I would fail to erase.
“What’s Folkyn got that you want so badly?”
“Answers,” I said, my tone flat as I placed the single coin on the table.
“Answers to what?” He immediately pocketed the gold. “Don’t know who your shit-stain father is?” His laughter was rough and scornful. “You and hundreds of others, pretty thing. Trust me, some truths aren’t worth finding.”
My smile was weak, as was my desire to correct him. So I didn’t. I turned to leave. “Thank you, Hal.”
“Wait a second.” Folding the cloth, he released a heavy breath and beckoned me closer.
Too curious and with little else to do, I turned back.
“Listen.” He peered at the stalls astride his before lowering his voice. “Whatever it is you’re seeking…” His eerie eyes met mine. “Goddess knows it won’t be worth getting.”
I almost rolled my eyes again, as he’d already said as much.
But then he added, “You’ll have more luck sneaking into those warded woods”—he jabbed his thumb behind him to the south—“and making a home for yourself in the mortal lands than you will any kingdom of Folkyn. Ain’t no such thing as sneaking about in any court, no matter who gets you in nor how. If they don’t want you there, then mark my words…” His voice dropped to a rasped whisper. “Eventually, they will find you, and if they don’t kill you, you’ll spend what remains of your days wishing they fucking had.”
The sparrow arrived with the waking moon.