Sarah Brennan - The Demon’s Surrender

Sin had thought she’d known.

“What good would it be, giving you the Market?” Merris murmured, and Sin drew closer, came to stand at the window by her, and Merris reached up and touched her hair as she’d used to. “If I gave it to you and the Market was destroyed, or you were destroyed by it, what use would this demon’s bargain be? I have to choose right, and I have to choose fast. I wish I could choose you. But I don’t know if you’re the right one: I don’t know if you can bear more responsibility than you already have, if you can turn life and death into a business. If you bring me this pearl, we would have time. I would have time to teach you. I want to believe you can be the leader this Market needs.”

Sin bowed her head under Merris’s lightly stroking hand. She wanted to cry, but she knew Merris wouldn’t appreciate that.

“I am the leader this Market needs,” she insisted past the knot in her throat that wanted to become tears. “This is my place.”

When she looked up, deadly pallor was rushing over her leader’s face, terrible beauty claiming it the same way shadows were claiming the city below as the sun retreated.

From lips twisting into a shape not their own, Merris whispered, “Prove it.”

3

Throwing the Fever Blossom

THERE HAD BEEN A GREAT FOREST BY HORSENDEN HILL ONCE.

The houses of Wembley lay spread at the foot of the hill like a glittering carpet now, but the trees enclosing their Marketplace were tall and strong, the survivors of the ancient forest. Every arching branch bore a lantern swaying in the wind, throwing bright beams of magic against the long grass.

Merris might be lost to a demon, Mae might be impressing the silent sisters, but the night of the Goblin Market had always belonged to Sin.

Tonight was her chance to remind everyone that this was her rightful place.

“Welcome to the Market,” Sin murmured to the first rush of tourists, who were milling about the stalls, watching her.

There was a full moon, a bright circle like a pale, open flower against the dark sky, and Sin had dressed for it. She was wearing black with silver lines shot all through it like spider-webs, silver that caught the moonlight and turned her from shadow to gleaming ghost and then back again, mocking, elusive, the only point of color about her a crown of crimson flowers.

Mae might be smart and she might be cute enough, but she did not know about performing. She didn’t know that if you made a performance good enough you made it true: that by playing a queen Sin could transform herself.

“It takes you awhile to learn the ropes here,” said a tourist walking with his girl, who judging by her wide eyes was here for the first time. “Helps if you’ve got magic blood in you, of course. My mum’s Scottish, so that helps. Very mystical people, the Scots.”

“Good to see you again,” Sin murmured to him as she went past, and he stood and stared after her in pleased bewilderment, thinking she remembered him.

That was part of the performance, making other people feel special, until dozens of people were thinking of you as special. Sin was good-looking, but it took belief to make you the most desirable woman in a crowd. It took an audience to be beautiful.

“Welcome to the—oh, it’s you,” said Sin, almost colliding with a broad chest and tipping her head back to see Nick.

“We thought we should make an appearance,” Nick drawled. “Since we’re meant to be allies.”

It was a jolt to look into his black eyes, after Merris’s. But there was no human struggling in there, Sin reminded herself. There was just this boy she’d known for years; there was just this demon, eternal and cold, and nothing else.

She didn’t know what that meant.

She did know that he was dressed all in black, for dancing, and whether he was boy or demon, he was the best partner she’d ever had.

Sin smiled at him. “Welcome to the Market.”

He looked down at her, dark lock of hair falling into his eyes, mouth curving. He looked like the perfect partner for tonight.

“Did you save me the first dance?”

Beyond Nick’s shoulder Sin saw Alan lingering at Carl’s stall, bright head bent over an array of bows and arrows. She waited for a second, but he didn’t seem aware of the weight of her attention, didn’t look up to catch her eye.

Alan presented a problem, but for the first time Sin had an idea how to solve it. Before the attack at school, it would not have occurred to her that Alan might appreciate a performance.

“Better than that,” she told Nick. “I saved you the last one.”

Sin took a time-out from dances and accepted a plastic cup of water from Chiara. Then she noticed the slice of fever fruit floating in it.

“You’re just basically a bad person,” Sin told her, and sipped.

Chiara gave her a serene smile, which changed into a slightly more wicked smile at a hovering tourist. Sin took a gulp of water, laced with a taste that raced down her throat burning sweet and strong.

She swallowed and said, “What does everyone think about Alan Ryves?”

“I never think about Alan Ryves,” said Chiara.

Matthias the piper, thin as his own instrument, came by and stole the cup right out of Sin’s hand. “Personally, I like him.”

The dancers en masse gave Matthias a very startled look.

Matthias gestured to his throat and said appreciatively, “Beautiful voice.”

“Do you care about anything but people’s voices?” Chiara asked.

“Yes,” said Matthias, considering. “But I can’t think of any-thing I care about half as much.”

Tonight’s theme for the dances, the ones intended to attract tourists who might then stay to pay for answers from demons, was fire: September had come in cold, and the tourists could huddle around the lines of flame and see dancers catapult through them, dance along them, juggle lit torches enchanted to draw scenes on the air. More Market people had come to watch than usual because of the beckoning warmth of the flames.

Nick was taking his own break from the dancing and sitting with Alan on a log by one of the banked-up fires. Alan was talking to Nick and laughing, his hands making shapes of shadows against the firelight.

“Tell you what I’d do,” Chiara concluded after a thoughtful pause. “I’d take them both. That might be fun.”

“They’re brothers,” said another dancer, Jonas. “That’s sick.”

“No, it’s okay because they’re not actually related,” Chiara argued.

“That’s a demon,” Matthias observed mildly. “Nothing about it is okay.”

Everyone fell silent at that reminder. Nobody wanted to think about demons these days, to admit that if demons were unspeakably corrupt, then they should not let Merris lead them. To think about what lay behind Nick’s eyes was admitting that they were all treading on black ice.

Everything had been so much simpler when Sin could just hate both brothers.

Except she had not been able to hate Nick for long, only from the time when she’d learned what he was until she’d met him again.

She’d always found it easy to hate Alan. But she couldn’t do that, either. Not anymore.

“We made a bargain with them,” Sin said. “The Market always keeps its bargains.”

She remembered Merris’s face, and how demons kept their bargains. That did not stop her from swinging to her feet, taking another drink of fever-touched water, and going over to the spot by the fire where Nick and Alan were sitting. Nick was stretched out like a portrait in charcoal, all black and white in lovely lines, and Alan animated and firelit in red and gold.