“She’s in here with me, always,” Merris said. “Coloring everything. Wrapped up in everything. Whispering to me, as if she was my own heart. Soon I will only want what she wants. Do you know, when I was a girl, I never wanted anything but to dance? I wouldn’t have wanted to be a leader, at your age. I didn’t even want to be part of a Market. But when I couldn’t dance anymore I made this Market my whole life, and she wants to leave. Every morning I wake up in a place farther from it, farther from you all, and every morning I think to myself that I could stay gone.”
Sin swallowed. She had been able to accept Merris’s bargain because she had thought it was the only way to keep her, because the Market needed her so badly.
That was a demon’s bargain, though. They took more than you could afford, and they gave you back nothing.
Merris had not been saved for the Market, not really.
“But if I had that pearl,” Merris whispered, “I think I could silence her. I think I could stay here, and be myself again.”
Hope was harder to swallow than horror. Sin felt like she was choking, at how the stakes had been raised, how the impossible had now become something that absolutely must be done.
Merris continued talking.
“You know, in all the tests I devised for you Mae has achieved much better results, has shown herself able to be a stronger leader than you could be. You’re too close to the Market, I think sometimes. You have to be able to step back and see it as a business. And something to die for: that too. Maybe you have to be a stranger. I was a stranger here once myself.”
“No,” Sin said.
“I wish it wasn’t true,” Merris told her. “You walked into Mezentius House and back out again unbowed. You know how I feel about you.”
Sin had thought she’d known.
“What good would it be, giving you the Market?” Merris murmured, and Sin drew closer, came to stand at the window by her, and Merris reached up and touched her hair as she’d used to. “If I gave it to you and the Market was destroyed, or you were destroyed by it, what use would this demon’s bargain be? I have to choose right, and I have to choose fast. I wish I could choose you. But I don’t know if you’re the right one: I don’t know if you can bear more responsibility than you already have, if you can turn life and death into a business. If you bring me this pearl, we would have time. I would have time to teach you. I want to believe you can be the leader this Market needs.”
Sin bowed her head under Merris’s lightly stroking hand. She wanted to cry, but she knew Merris wouldn’t appreciate that.
“I am the leader this Market needs,” she insisted past the knot in her throat that wanted to become tears. “This is my place.”
When she looked up, deadly pallor was rushing over her leader’s face, terrible beauty claiming it the same way shadows were claiming the city below as the sun retreated.
From lips twisting into a shape not their own, Merris whispered, “Prove it.”
3
Throwing the Fever Blossom
THERE HAD BEEN A GREAT FOREST BY HORSENDEN HILL ONCE.
The houses of Wembley lay spread at the foot of the hill like a glittering carpet now, but the trees enclosing their Marketplace were tall and strong, the survivors of the ancient forest. Every arching branch bore a lantern swaying in the wind, throwing bright beams of magic against the long grass.
Merris might be lost to a demon, Mae might be impressing the silent sisters, but the night of the Goblin Market had always belonged to Sin.
Tonight was her chance to remind everyone that this was her rightful place.
“Welcome to the Market,” Sin murmured to the first rush of tourists, who were milling about the stalls, watching her.
There was a full moon, a bright circle like a pale, open flower against the dark sky, and Sin had dressed for it. She was wearing black with silver lines shot all through it like spider-webs, silver that caught the moonlight and turned her from shadow to gleaming ghost and then back again, mocking, elusive, the only point of color about her a crown of crimson flowers.
Mae might be smart and she might be cute enough, but she did not know about performing. She didn’t know that if you made a performance good enough you made it true: that by playing a queen Sin could transform herself.
“It takes you awhile to learn the ropes here,” said a tourist walking with his girl, who judging by her wide eyes was here for the first time. “Helps if you’ve got magic blood in you, of course. My mum’s Scottish, so that helps. Very mystical people, the Scots.”
“Good to see you again,” Sin murmured to him as she went past, and he stood and stared after her in pleased bewilderment, thinking she remembered him.
That was part of the performance, making other people feel special, until dozens of people were thinking of you as special. Sin was good-looking, but it took belief to make you the most desirable woman in a crowd. It took an audience to be beautiful.
“Welcome to the—oh, it’s you,” said Sin, almost colliding with a broad chest and tipping her head back to see Nick.
“We thought we should make an appearance,” Nick drawled. “Since we’re meant to be allies.”
