Page 112 of Elven Throne

“Come, come,” the old woman repeated, rocking back and forth. “I’ve been looking forward tothisfor quite some time.”

Great.

Rebecca was in for it now.

Wasthisthe fortune the Peddler actually wanted in exchange for the prophecy’s hidden location? Or would it be just as illuminating, just as valuable, as Rebecca holding the original prophecy in her own hands and reading it for herself?

Though she walked softly toward the chair, the entire hall echoed with her every footstep.

Were the others standing there behind her, holding their breaths? Or did she only imagine this suffocating silence?

Either way, Rebecca reached the chair, lowered herself into it, and studied the old woman’s smiling face. She couldn’t help but ask the next question flittering through her mind. “If I wanted to know somethingveryspecific…”

The Peddler clicked her tongue and shook her head, extending an ancient hand over the table. “It doesn’t work that way, child. You know this.”

Child…

Another shudder rippled down Rebecca’s spine at the sound of such a familiar catch-all name coming from this woman.

Most people who’d called her “child” had no idea how old Rebecca truly was. But the Peddler?

Rebecca had a feeling this woman was much, much older than her. Definitely older than most others if notallmagicals on Earth. Significantly older than the vast majority of old-world magicals on Xahar’áhsh, even.

She offered a half-hearted shrug. “I still had to ask.”

The Peddler nodded. “I know.”

Dropping her gaze to the woman’s open, waiting palm, Rebecca gently lowered the back of her hand into it.

The woman’s hand clamped down around hers like a vice, gripping Rebecca’s like claws before she jerked Rebecca forward with unimaginable strength and nearly yanked her out of the chair.

Flames erupted everywhere, all over the hall, not just along the walls where they’d been flickering but above and below them as well, across the floor, down from the invisible ceiling high above.

They surged higher and brighter than ever as these two hands made contact, almost as if the Peddler now had everything she wanted and was ready to burn her visitors alive inside her own life-sized oven.

Rebecca couldn’t stop staring at the woman’s face—the wide, cruel, madwoman’s grin spreading farther than should have been possible across the Peddler’s lips.

Then, before her eyes, the woman began to change.

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Itwasnothinglikean illusion or any other kind of morphing Rebecca recognized.

Slow and subtle yet instantaneous.

The age vanished from the woman’s features, white hair coming loose from its bun, softness and youth seeping back into her as her grin only widened.

Most startling of all, those milky white, sightless eyes cleared, taking on the color of true sight.

They were of the brightest blue, not quite a glow, and for a brief moment, Rebecca swore she sawstarsin those eyes.

But it had to be a trick of the light. Some illusion produced from her own imagination in a place as strange as this, with a Peddler as unlikely as the woman fiercely gripping her hand.

The next second, the woman’s eyes were normal again—as normal as possible for being clear and blue and bright, perfectly functioning, no trace of her blindness remaining.

A non-existent breeze rustled the Peddler’s hair around her face as she squeezed Rebecca’s hand in both of her own now, bearing down with a painful, ever-tightening grip.

Then the flames filling the hall darkened all at once without having lost their height or intensity.

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