Page 11 of Fated Unkindness
“Good morning, first customers of the day, I had a feeling I needed to open early today.” A thin, younger woman with bright green eyes and golden brown hair greets us. “Are you just passing through on your travels?” She is tying dried sage into bundles nextto an older woman who says nothing but watches intently. I keep my cloak up to hide my hair and face within the shadows.
“Yes, good morning. We are here for a short stay passing through on our way back home, finally.” Trent tells her, sure not to mention too many details. He ambles up to the work table. Their lips curve into a warm smile as he approaches. The dimple on his right cheek is on show. “We are actually looking for a few different things. If you don’t mind helping us out.”
“Of course, what is it you are looking for?” the young woman asks just as kindly.
“Trent has pulled out all his charisma” Kait leans in close to whisper to me. He’s sugarcoating his words and it’s honestly making me want to gag. I love it a little too. A smile creeps onto my face as I turn from them. Trying to stay out of the way and not interested in being pulled into random niceties. I mosey around the store while Trent continues to talk to the store clerk.
As I make my way through the tight isles of odds and ends, I notice the same tingle running up my spine as I did when Kait burst through the trees in the forest. Now that I think of it, it almost feels like a warning, like an ominous feeling of someone watching me… I keep my head down, doing my best to keep my hair hidden. Hair like mine is pretty recognizable, so if the Demetrey’s have placed a caution out in the town, I would be an easy target with my almost waist-long, bright silver-blonde locks. I have it tied back in a braid, so hopefully I don’t have to worry much and I don’t think I do, especially in this dimly lit shop.
I turn the corner to browse the salves they have on display. I leap so suddenly I nearly drop the eucalyptus balm I had picked up to smell because the older lady who was standing at the work tablejust came out of nowhere, appearing out of thin air next to me. In the startle, my cloak hood shifts back and exposes my face.
“My apologies, Luna. I didn’t mean to startle you.” She says, her voice a rough croak. She smiles with narrowed eyes at me and I get that feeling again at the nape of my neck. Tingles spread from there and down my arms like a warm caress. She looks at me knowingly. “I believe you are in need of something special. Your mother would be proud,” she whispers the last part, but I heard what she said. Does this woman know who I am?
“We all know how your mother is, Luna.” She just smiles then takes my hand and places a jar into it. The contact sends a zap into my fingers just long enough to register the tingle then it’s gone. As she holds me there, we make eye contact for only a moment, her brown eyes look kind and full of knowledge, and skin golden and wrinkled with age.
“How? How do you know who I am?” Her grip loosens on my hand causing my arm to fall and my gaze sweeps down to the jar she has placed there. It’s not just any jar but a jar with three beautiful white flowers inside. They glow with the magic that flows through them.
“Anyone who knows the truth could see who you are as clearly as they can see the moon on a cloudless night.” My eyebrows knit together as I try to understand what she just said. “These flowers, how did you know we needed them?” I ask.
I look down at the ethereal flowers as she says, “Save him.” My eyes whip back up to her, but she is gone. Looking around confused I bite my lip but, without another hesitation, I simply tuck the jar into my cloak and turn to find Trent and Kait. I have the night-blooming moonflower. The woman knew what we neededthe flower for? Save him? Does she know about Dax? Pulling my hood low again I bump Kait with my shoulder as I join them.
“Yes, I do need the dung of a Makeel beetle.” I hear Trent say assuredly, “And before you question me, yes, I know it’s a rare request. However, I would not request it if it was of no use to us. We are looking for other rare items as well. Do you have a section you can point us to in the store?” Trent says with a dead serious face. Honestly, I commend him for his efforts on that one. The dung of a Makeel beetle? Are there people who sit around waiting for a beetle to crap so they can bottle it up to sell? What would that even be used for? I make eye contact with Kait, lifting my eyebrow I incline my head gesturing to my hand where I let the bottle peek out from behind the cloak. Her eyes go wide momentarily, but she doesn’t skip a beat. She knows we need to get out of here, she yawns and grasps Trent’s arm by the crook of his elbow.
“My love, I’m feeling very tired. If she says she has never heard of such rarity perhaps we can find what we are looking for elsewhere. I’d like to get going. We have quite the journey ahead of us still. I think we have all we need for today.” She reaches up to run her fingers up into the hair, just behind his ear. His eyes go a little wide for a second, then they almost roll back into his head. His strong confidence in what he was talking about all but crashes and burns as he melts into her touch. It makes me bite back a laugh.
“Um yeah, okay. We—uh, I think we will just take some of this tea and um. This.” He grabs a chicken foot from a dish and shoves it toward the woman. Her eyebrows twist up as she looks at him like he has lost his damn mind. To her defense, he does sound that way currently. I stifle a laugh, but as I wait for the transaction tofinish, I still have that lingering sense sitting at the base of my skull, that someone is watching me.
Chapter ten
The sensation of beingwatched is different from what I felt in the forest. This feeling does not give me any unease, just a sense that I’m being watched and maybe warmth in my limbs. Like when you see someone you haven’t seen for some time and need to hug them. It doesn’t make any sense, and I shake my head trying to dispel the unease gathering.
I didn’t see the older woman who gave me the night-blooming moonflowers again before we left the shop. I wonder about what she said to me about my mother, calling me Luna? The weird riddle about the moon? It was confusing; she knew what I needed, but could she have mistaken me for someone else? I don’t think my mother had ever been to Demetrey before. She said ‘save him’ though… Was she a seer? I don't tell them about theconversation with the woman at the apothecary, mostly because I’m not sure what to think of it. Trent and Kait seem not to notice me at war with my senses.
When we make it back to the tree line and we are confident that we were not followed, Trent lets out a frustrated sigh. He’s not aware that I have the flowers. Kait looks at me, knowing full well I have them tucked in my cloak and she is grinning ear to ear. “Why are you cheesing so hard right now? At this rate, we’re never going to get the cure to Dax. First the dagger, and now the flowers. We are going to have to go back at some point, and we’re still empty-handed. I’m worried we are going to have to accept that we have failed.” He grips the back of his neck with one hand while rolling his head back in frustration, eyes pinched closed.
“Are we empty-handed though, Trent?” I say, as I pull the jar from my cloak and give it a little wiggle at him. When he looks at me, his eyes widen so much I feel like they may just pop from his skull.
“What?! How?” His shocked expression makes me giggle a little, which is a nice reprieve from the constant turmoil I’ve been going through in my head since I woke up a few days ago with no memory of the last year of my life. He rushes me then, lifting me up in a tight hug. “Seriously Rae! You are amazing! I can’t believe this! What are we doing?! Let’s get back to getting all we need so we can get to Ravendene and get those little bastards to my brother.” When he finally sits me down, we are both grinning ear to ear, but Trent has so much emotion in his eyes it nearly overwhelms me. Love. The love he has for his brother is so raw there, myheart squeezes.
“Ok, so we knew we had to get the flowers which was oddly easy considering the first task we set out for… Does it worry anyone else that they were that easy to retrieve? How did you find them so easy anyway?” Kait asks.
“I wasn’t going to say anything, but did either of you get a prickly sensation going through you while in the apothecary? I’ve felt them before, like when Kait crashed into us in the forest and when I found you lying unconscious under the bridge.” I gesture to Trent. “It’s like someone was watching, but there was no one there? Well, I had that sensation back in the shoppe, and then the old woman that was helping with the sage binding just handed me the flowers.” I leave out what she said to me.
Both Kait and Trent turn to each other. “Rae, these feelings you have… Do they feel the same every time? And what old woman are you talking about? There was only one person working in the apothecary and we were the only customers there.” Trent says his lips tugging down at the corners.
I think back to the small handful of times it has happened. Does it feel the same in a way? My brows furrow as I think back on the tingle I get up my spine, at the base of my neck. When I found Trent the emotion was different. I felt like he was important, and I needed him. When we were in the forest, it was urgent. In the apothecary, it had been warm? “I guess it's the same in a sense, but it’s as though each time it has happened there is a different emotion tied to it. Then there is always this sense that I’m being watched, and I don’t know how to explain that either.” I shake my head and continue. “But stop playing around; you had to have seen the old woman. She was standing right next to the woman who greeted uswalking in. She found me when I was wandering around and gave me the jar. I didn’t even have to ask for it.”
Saying all of that out loud makes me pull my bottom lip into my mouth, biting down on it with worry. I look around nervously because it could be a trap. I could have been recognized, and my taking the flowers was a confirmation of who I was. My pulse starts racing thinking about the danger I could have just put us in. The tingle creeps back up my spine, and just out of reflex, I reach up and brush my fingers at the nape of my neck and my eyebrows pinch.
“Let’s get out of here. Trent, do you think you can hunt down some food for us?”
“Say no more.” He responds with a lopsided grin.
Over the next couple of hours, Trent snares a rabbit and two small squirrels. We share the meal of roasted meat, as we sit around the fire finally able to take a break.
“We need to hurry and get back to Ravendene. Before we can create the cure elixir, there is one more place we need to check out, and it’s actually not far from here. The dagger could be at the outpost that Dax and I had claimed for our own. We need to get there to secure the moonstone dagger for the ritual.” Trent looks up to the sky and as he closes his eyes. “It’s on the way back to Ravendene, just along the border. There is also land close by there that has been blessed by the gods themselves. We can collect the soil that’s needed” Trent says as he turns to face just me. “You’ve mentioned your mother’s power to me before, she was a seer, among other things, but the sight was her strongest gift, correct?”
I nod.
