Sin stood alone outside the Goblin Market. She was shivering a little.
The fever blossom lay, returned unwanted, in the hollow of her hand.
She was going to be the leader of the Goblin Market, and that meant she went out and smiled, welcomed tourists and complimented Market folk, and ignored the fact that she had been utterly and humiliatingly rejected.
It did not mean that she was pleased to be reminded of this fact by running into Nick, who scowled at her. Sin let the fixed smile slide from her face and glared ferociously back, and would have moved on if she hadn’t seen that Nick looked sweaty and tired as well as more homicidal than usual.
“Did something happen to my dancers?” she demanded.
“Everyone’s alive,” Nick snapped. “No thanks to you. What were you off doing while Mae decided to risk her stupid neck dancing with that idiot Jonas?”
“Jonas is a good dancer.”
“Not good enough.”
“Not as good as you,” Sin conceded. “Did you offer to dance with her?”
“Why else would I come here ready to dance?” Nick demanded. “This is only her fourth time, and she could screw up at any moment.”
“Told her that, did you?” Sin asked. “And here you are with not a stab mark to show for it. Mae has such a nice nature.”
Sin might be having issues with Mae about the Goblin Market, but she was ready to be on Mae’s side when Mae was being patronized. She looked around for Mae, and found her pink hair.
She was standing with Alan. Sin felt sheer embarrassment seize her, an almost irresistible compulsion to look down or turn away before he saw her.
Alan did not see her. He was talking to Mae, head bent attentively down to hers, so much taller than her it looked almost silly and very sweet. They were near the silent sisters’ stall. Alan was pointing to a yellowed scroll, his smile like a fire in a hearth, warm and welcoming.
But not for her.
She looked back at Nick. He crossed his arms over his chest and looked down at her with cold eyes. He made her think again of Merris, running through the woods with wild red hair and black eyes, but Sin crushed down the thought and tried to think of him as just Nick Ryves in a strop. She could deal with him then.
“Mae is an idiot.”
“Are you jealous of Jonas?” Sin asked. After a moment, Nick laughed, the sound sharp and unpleasant.
“No. She’s practically my brother’s girlfriend.”
“Is that so?”
“Alan’s mad about her,” Nick said. “She deserves that. They deserve each other. They’re going to be together.”
Mae had said she wasn’t going out with Alan once before, Sin recalled. She’d added that he was pretty attractive.
At the time, Sin had thought she was crazy.
It should have made her feel better, Sin thought. Alan might not have turned her down because he thought she was an idiot or she made his skin crawl, or anything like that. He just wanted someone else. It was simple enough. Sin had made a mistake.
“So it’s that you don’t like being turned down,” Sin said, and smiled deliberately up at Nick.
“Well,” Nick said, “it’s just that it doesn’t happen to me often. It’s like a whole new world. I’d ask for advice, but I imagine it doesn’t happen to you that often either.”
He didn’t smile back, but the compliment was enough to keep Sin smiling, side by side in the shadow of a tree.
“It never happens to me,” Sin told him, her eyes sliding back to Mae and Alan.
Unlike a demon, she could lie.
She’d only glanced over, in time to see Alan reach up to fetch down a scroll for Mae from a high shelf, but when she looked back Nick was gone, silently, as if direct light had hit a shadow.
She did a swift scan of the crowd, used to picking out one face in an audience, and of course saw Nick beside Alan and Mae. Mae scowled up at him, and Nick leaned against the stall and in toward Mae, whispering something in her ear.
Mae’s face turned thoughtful as he spoke. After a moment she nodded briefly and slipped out from between the stall and Nick’s body, setting off purposefully through the Market. Alan stayed behind, a book open in his hand.
He did not look after Mae and Nick, but everybody else did.
Everybody saw Nick at Mae’s back like a shadow that could not be dispersed, a dark sentinel, like the bodyguard to a queen.
Everybody saw Mae moving through the Market. With every step she took the lights nearest her flared into brilliance, the difference as great as if stars were blooming into suns above her head. The light around her hair spread and shone, as if every moment a new golden crown was being placed on her head, a succession of hundreds and hundreds of crowns.
Sin had taken the night off from dancing to make herself seem like the leader of the Market.
The demon had thrown his support behind her rival, undone all her efforts, let Mae shine, and let everyone know his power was at her command.
