Page 56 of Hearts of Stone

“I didn’t mean right this very second!” she yelped, but when I gained altitude, coasting over the top of the skyscrapers, she raised her head to peer past my shoulder.

“When dealing with witch familiars, you have to be very clear about what you want and don’t want,” I told her, with a rakish smile. “We follow the letter of your commands, not the intent.”My smile faded the longer I stared at her. “Anything you ask of us we will do, the moment you request it.”

“Because you have to?” I didn’t like seeing the small crease that formed between her brows. I didn’t like that searching look. “That’s how it works, right?”

“If you have the power to wield, you could force us to do many things,” I said, each word feeling sharp and spiky, cutting me as I forced them out. “But that’s not why we comply.” I dipped lower, to feel her hold onto me tighter, to hear the rapid beat of her heart pick up. “And you know why.”

Whoever this fucking Trevor was, he’d hurt our mate so deeply that she questioned anyone who’d do anything for her, but I would make it clear. We’d do anything and everything she wanted, over and over, proving ourselves worthy of her trust until the scars on her heart had healed over so that they were little more than faint silvery marks.

Starting now.

The night market had been built in the early days of the colony. Fae had come over on the First Fleet, along with the convicts and soldiers. An increasingly industrialised Britain had become too crowded, its skies fouled by smog from the mills and factories which ate up much of the green space the fae preferred. Many of them had sought something better by attempting the journey to Australia. Those that survived the voyage were forced to create uneasy alliances with the spirits that already populated the land, fantastical heroes and giant animals venerated by the Aboriginal people that lived here first. And so, they’d created spaces like these, that existed in the thin places between the human realm and the paranormal one. I landed at the gates of the markets, something no human would ever find by accident despite the bright lights and rich smells of good food.

“A slave does what is required of him because his master thinks him nothing more than a mindless thing and he has thepower to coerce a slave into submission,” I told her as the sounds of the markets began to filter in. “A servant might do what was asked of him in return for money, a roof over his head or food.” I stepped closer to her then as the others landed behind me. “I am neither of those things. I serve you, Mistress, because the need to do so beats in my chest as hard and as true as my own heart. Now…” I offered her my arm and she took it, though not without a searching look. “If knowledge is what you seek, then that’s what you shall have.”

Chapter 33

Jade

Holy Hogwarts, baby, I was in heaven. Just like millions of other kids, for a long time part of me watched the mailbox each time the mail was delivered, waiting for my letter to say I was accepted into the wizarding school. I knew that it wasn’t real, but still… Knowing and feeling weren’t the same things. As I held tight to Carrick’s muscled forearm, I wasn’t sure how I felt.

Amazed, for one. I stared at stalls filled with goods I neither knew nor understood, smelling the aromas of food I’d never tasted before, yet my mouth watered to. I stepped closer, half-expecting it all to be magicked away, keeping a tight hold of Carrick as I did so. I stared at everything around me, trying to take it all in, but when I looked at him to share my delight, I saw that he was staring at me. And that was the most magical thing of all. Those all black eyes seemed to take every part of me in, really seeing me, and that had me sliding my hand down to his in order to pull him forward with me.

“Something for the pretty lady?” a small, wizened man said, stumping forward, his hands resting on a stout stick. He used it to gesture to a wall of cages, but they weren’t birds that flutteredwithin, or at least not ones I’d seen before. Graceful creatures, with feathers of mint green, lilac or powder blue, shifted inside, staring at me with limpid eyes that betrayed no fear. “They fetch, carry, will have whatever you want brought halfway across the city before you can blink.”

“Magical Fed-Ex?” I asked Carrick and he just smiled, drawing me along.

The next stall was filled with toys, but while I could see the cogs and gears of the various automata, they moved of their own volition. Birds preened their wings, then flapped them open to display them. A clockwork dog chased a clockwork cat, but then they turned on a dime and swapped roles, the cat chasing the dog back under the table.

“Best automata in the southern hemisphere,” the arch-looking woman standing behind the stall informed us, before Seneca bounced into view.

“This way, m— Jade,” he said hastily. He grabbed my hand and tugged me after him, over to a stall covered with glittering creations.

They looked like the blown glass animals my nan used to collect, that were created with a blow torch and stringers of glass. Here, though, a bubbling pot of molten sugar was the medium through which the sugar blower created her confections. She smiled when she saw she had our attention, and other patrons of the market clustered forward, as much to watch the show as to buy. She was slender, waving her long fingers through the air with the hollow-boned look of a bird as she worked her magic.

Sugar surged out of the pot in thin strands and the straw-coloured sugar became something between a liquid and a solid. Then it was stretched and twisted, spun and twirled until it was obvious what she was creating. Big, fan-like wings flapped slowly, as the antennae of the butterfly unfurled slowly, as didits body. A collective gasp went up around the crowd as it took flight, faltering at first. Hands reached out, though whether they hoped to snatch it from the air or to keep it up, I couldn’t tell. But as the flaps of its wings grew more coordinated, the little butterfly flew higher and higher.

“For the Whiteley heir,” the sugar blower said with a slow nod, directing the butterfly towards us with a flick of her head. Carrick held his hand out so that it came to rest on his palm and as I looked at it closely, I realised just how skilled the woman was. You saw its jewel-like eyes, the segments of its body, the remnants of when such a creature was a caterpillar, not a butterfly, as well as the mottled patterns on the wings, indicating its markings.

“Open your mouth,” Carrick said, his eyes resting for far too long on my lips.

“Oh, I couldn’t.” I held up a hand, unable to imagine destroying something so beautiful, but the woman shook her head, laughing.

“It’ll become a lump of sugar in a minute,” she said. “Tastes better when the magic is still pulsing through it.”

Eating a sugar butterfly hadn’t exactly been on my bucket list, but it seemed that it was a new addition. I opened my mouth and the butterfly flew over. If I was feeling a little worried about eating a sugar bug, I needn’t have worried. It turned into liquid sugar the minute it touched my tongue, warm and sweet, but with a strange kind of sparkly sensation that was almost like eating sherbet.

“Oh my god…” I said, holding a hand over my mouth, because with the sugar rush came something else. A curious kind of lightness that seemed to fill me up, up, up, making me blink in wonder. The feeling was incredible, but then it faded away, as fast as it had come. “That was amazing!” I turned back to the woman. “Can we get one for each of my companions as well?”

“I don’t need—” Graven said.

“I’ll have a hare,” Seneca said, stepping up to the stall, people automatically separating to let him through.

“Pretty sure you’ve got the stamina of one,” Carrick said, winking at me when I looked up at him.

“A sloth then.” Seneca blushed as he watched a tiny slow-moving sloth claw its way along a wire strung across the stall front.

“Just as lazy as one.”

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