Page 18 of A Court Bright and Broken

Or I’d have to trade myself into servitude to feed them. I’d been trying my best to avoid it because if I had to resort to living in a pleasure house, who would take care of the girls and my father?

“When was the last time you remember having it? Was it in your pocket during our walk here?” Sam asked.

“I don’t know,” I said, searching my memory. “I assumed it was, but I didn’t check for it until now. Maybe I lost it back at the market.”

The hollow sensation spread, tunneling through my bones and making me feel like I might collapse.

If I’d dropped the locket in the Rough Market, someone else had surely found it by now and was enjoying the proceeds for themselves.

“Perhaps the band of thieves pickpocketed you after all,” Sam suggested. “They did walk past you rather closely as I was following you. I didn’t see them take anything, but I was at a distance, and that is their trade, isn’t it? Sleight of hand?”

I closed my eyes and tilted my face to the sky. He was probably right. I’d felt someone bump into me as I was speaking with a merchant and had turned to see the thieves walking past.

At the time I’d breathed a sigh of relief that they’d forgotten about me and gone peacefully on their way. Now I could hardly breathe at all. Keeping my tears at bay took all my effort.

Apparently noticing my distress, Sam moved close to me, wrapping an arm around me—not for support this time but to offer comfort.

“If the locket was so precious, why were you traveling with it?” he asked.

Of course someone like him could never conceive of the idea of selling a family heirloom to stave off starvation.

Or sexual slavery. I wasn’t sure why I was even still standing here talking to him.

“You wouldn’t understand.”

I needed to get away from him. I was on the verge of a breakdown, and Ireallydidn’t want to have it in front of an Elven lord and a group of soldiers who’d probably laugh at me.

“Try me,” Sam said. “You might be surprised.”

“I don’t want to talk about it. It’s gone. That’s all that matters. And you’re home now. You’re safe. So goodbye,” I barked, turning to leave.

“Wait. Don’t go yet,” Sam said.

Calling the guards to him, he commanded, “Empty your pockets and give her whatever you have.”

They immediately complied, each of them pulling out more coins than I’d ever seen in one place. Still, they were working men with families to feed—unlike this elite lord who was so comfortable usurping other people’s money that it was the first thing to enter his mind.

“I can’t take their money,” I said.

“They’ll be reimbursed. I’d give it to you, but I have none on me.”

“I can’t take yours either.”

The last thing I wanted was to be in the debt of a High Fae.

It was rumored that anyone who accepted a Fae gift would be in their thrall. That was why I couldn’t enter the palace gates and accept his offer of a feast, as much as my empty stomach was cursing me for turning it down.

Sam gave me a reassuring smile. “Believe me, it’s nothing to me.”

That I did believe—and it made me even more determined to refuse his charity.

“No amount of money could ever replace the locket,” I said. “It was all I had left of my mother.”

Seeing my tears, which were falling freely now despite my best efforts to control them, Sam reached out and touched my face the way he had when he’d first opened his eyes in the market and asked if I was an angel.

The contact sent a surprising crackle of sensation over my skin and deeper. I brushed away his unnerving touch, moving backward to reestablish the distance between us.

“Don’t fret, Raewyn. Please,” he said.

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