Throne of Sin

Stranger at the Market

Evelyn

I tell myself I'm going back for the seamstress.

The mending won't be ready until morning, my father needs the east corridor swept before council, and there's no practical reason to return to the village market today. I know it and I go anyway, because the alternative is another day inside those dry freaking walls watching my mother not look at me and Claire float around in her happiness like it's a coat she's wearing and I just — can't.

So. The seamstress. That's my reason and I'm keeping it.

I take the long way again.

The woodland is quieter today, the cold deeper, the kind that gets into your fingers even through gloves. I don't have good gloves. I have the ones with the hole in the left thumb that I keep meaning to mend and keep not mending because by the time I'm done mending everything else in that house the last thing I want to look at is a needle. I tuck my thumb inside the palm and keep walking.

The market is busier than yesterday. It's a trading day — farmers in from the outer villages, merchants who travel the road between here and the capital making their regular stops. More noise, more bodies, more of that particular anonymous warmth that I've decided is my favorite thing about this place. I slip into it like stepping into a river. Let the current take me.

I go to the seamstress first. The mending isn't ready.

Tomorrow morning, she says, not looking up from her work. Same as I told you.

Right. Tomorrow morning.

I thank her and leave and now I have no reason to be here at all and I stay anyway. I buy nothing. I have no coin left to buy anything. I just walk the stalls slowly, looking at things — bolts of cloth in colors I'll never own, jars of preserved fruit, a table of small carved figures that a weathered old man sells. I pick one up. A small dragon, no bigger than my fist, wings folded tight, expression on its carved face almost thoughtful.

I put it back.

I find my wall near the fountain and I sit down.

The fountain is dry this time of year, the basin holding only a thin skin of ice and a few dead leaves, but people still seem to naturally gather around it anyway, the same way they would in summer when the water was running. Habit, maybe. Or just the instinct to orient around a center.

The market is busier today. Louder. A merchant is arguing with a customer over the price of winter apples and somewhere a child is crying and the blacksmith's hammer rings out in steady rhythm like a heartbeat. I sit on the low stone wall near the broken fountain and watch it all happen around me.

The fountain behind me hasn't worked in years. The basin is dry, the carved stone worn smooth by weather and time, but the market still centers itself around it anyway. Stalls radiate outward like spokes. People pass through the square and orient themselves by it without thinking. A broken thing that still holds the shape of the space around it.

I understand that more than I want to.

The winter sun is pale and thin but it's there, and I tilt my face up to it for a moment and close my eyes and just—breathe. Nobody here knows me. Nobody here needs anything from me. For a few minutes I am just a girl on a wall and that is enough.

When I open my eyes, someone has sat down at the far end.

I don't look right away. The wall is long, it's public, people sit where they want. But I feel it—the way you feel a shift in temperature when someone opens a door. The air changes. Gets warmer somehow, more present.

I glance over.

He's tall even sitting down. Long legs stretched out in front of him, boots that have seen real travel, a dark cloak pushed back off his shoulders. He's watching the market the same way I was—elbows on his knees, unhurried, like he has nowhere to be and has made complete peace with that.

Dark hair, a perfect cut to frame his face. A jaw that could cut glass. Broad through the shoulders in a way that looks structural, not performed.

He's hand—

I look away before I finish that thought.

A minute passes. The apple merchant is still arguing. A woman is haggling over fabric at the next stall, her voice rising in mock outrage that sounds almost like joy.

"The fountain's broken."

His voice is low, deep, and easy. I look over. He's still watching the market, not me, but I know he is talking to me.

"Has been for years," I say.

"Mm." He nods like I've confirmed something. "They built the whole market around it anyway."

"People orient toward centers. Even broken ones." I say low, but I am sure he heard me.

Now he looks at me. His eyes are dark and warm and they just—look. No performance, no careful social distance. Just genuine interest, like he sees no reason to pretend otherwise.

"That's a sad way to put it," he says.

"I thought it was just true."

"True things can be sad."

I consider that. "Fair enough."

We both look away.. Between us there's about four feet of empty wall and a silence that doesn't feel uncomfortable at all.

"You were here yesterday," he says.

I go still. "Was I?"

"Near the bread stalls." He says it like it's just information, nothing more. "Eating a honey cake like it was the best thing you’ve ever tasted."

I was. I absolutely was, and I didn't think anyone noticed.

"I wasn't aware I was being observed."

"You weren't. I just notice things." A pause. "You looked like someone who doesn't get to stop very often."

The accuracy of that lands somewhere unguarded. I look at him sideways. He's back to watching the market, profile calm, no sign he said anything particularly significant.

"You don't know me," I say.

"No," he agrees easily. "I don't."

Another silence. Longer this time. The blacksmith's hammer keeps its rhythm. The fabric woman laughs, triumphant—she got her price.

"I'm Evelyn," I say.

I don't know why. I've spent my whole life not telling strangers my name because names lead to questions lead to family lead to pack rank lead to the whole exhausting architecture of who I am and am not. But this man isn't from my world. I can tell that much.

He turns his head and looks at me and that warm attention lands on my name like it's something worth having.

"Damien," he says.

Just that. No title, no family name, no pack or court attached. A man with a name and nothing else offered.

"Are you passing through?" I ask.

"Something like that." His mouth does something that isn't quite a smile but is close. "Though I've been in the same village two days running, so perhaps passing through is generous."

"What keeps you?"

He's quiet for a moment. Looks out at the market—the hammer, the merchants, the broken fountain—and something moves across his face that I don't have a name for yet.

"I'm not entirely sure," he says. "I came for one thing. Found I wanted to stay a little longer."

I don't ask what the one thing was. It's not my business and I have enough of my own things I'm not explaining.

We sit there for a while, the two of us on the wall, watching the market go about its life. He doesn't try to fill every silence and I don't either and it's—easy. Easy in a way that almost nothing has been easy lately.

"What brought you here today?" he asks eventually.

"No reason, just needed to breathe away from home a bit today," I say. Which is true and also not true and he seems to understand that because he just nods.

"Same here," he says. "Getting away from stress, where no one knows who I am. At peace. Just here."

"Just here," I echo. It was a strange kind of peace. Being in his vicinity, like I had known him my entire life and yet we only met minutes ago.

The winter sun comes out from behind a cloud and the market square goes briefly, beautifully gold. Everything lit from a different angle for about thirty seconds—the fountain ice catching it, the merchant's cloth glowing, the carved figures on the old man's table throwing small shadows.

Damien tips his face up to it and closes his eyes.

This enormous, broad-shouldered man tilting his face up to pale winter sun like he's just a person who is glad of warmth. He looks like he basks in the sunlight everyday. As if he were made for it. I realize I'm staring at him.

The sun goes back behind the clouds. He opens his eyes and looks at me and for a second neither of us says anything.

"Same time tomorrow?" he says.

Like it's simple. Like it's already decided.

I should say I don't know. I should say maybe, or I'll see, or something that keeps appropriate distance between me and a stranger who notices too much. Screw it. I’m getting sold soon anyway. Mind as well spend my last few days in peace.

"Same time tomorrow," I say.

I stand up. Pick up my basket. He watches me go. I can feel his attention on my back the whole way across the square.

The walk home is long. I take the longest route possible. The whole time I'm thinking about dark eyes and the way he said my name like it mattered and the fact that I agreed to see him again without hesitation.

The whole time I'm thinking about being seen.