A Ring for a Ring || Event SelfPara
**NOTE: Intended to be read after Transitional Phases, @robinfelldown **
“You know, when I told you about this, I thought you’d be more skeptical,” Damira said. Rye walked alongside her through Nightshade Row, his chosen glamour for this visit the same blonde one that he used when dealing with Beatrix and the orphanage. This face wasn’t as unfamiliar a sight around the Row to draw suspicion. Damira’s glamour was a simple one. The longer hair that she wore when she was working at the House of Snow, though she’d forgone the flashy jewelry she usually wore there, and a simple black cloak.
“Desperate times, I suppose,” Rye answered. “You’re sure this is all legitimate?”
Damira laughed. “Legitimate? Not in the slightest,” she answered. “But the magick you can get here is as powerful as the rumors say, if that’s what you mean.”
She led him down an alley away from the taverns and brothels on the main road.
“How is it you came to find out about this place anyway?” Rye asked.
“I work for the Queen of the Row,” Damira said, a slight smirk tilting her lips. “There’s little that goes on here that the House doesn’t learn of. It’s just here,” she stopped him, gesturing towards a darker alleyway to his right.
“Only the darkest, wettest corners will do,” Rye muttered.
“Oh, don’t act all pretentious and noble,” Damira teased. “It’s never really suited you.” Rye could only laugh at her words as he followed her.
This part she had explained beforehand, and Rye pulled out his dagger, raising his hand before Damira’s hand shot out the snatch his wrist away.
“What the hell are you doing?” She hissed.
“You said it requires a sigil to be written in blood, right?”
“Not your blood,” Damira said. She took his dagger and shook her head. “Damned fool. This gateway is sealed with blood magick. Do you truly believe they wouldn’t know there was an Aven here if you used your own blood?”
“I’m not an Aven,” Rye snapped at her.
“Not in name, but your blood will tell any mage worth their magick otherwise,” Damira said. “It’s not worth the risk of anyone finding out you were here. Or worse, going to the King to ask him who of his family has been frequenting the Night Market.” He knew she was right, but he still wanted to protest as she cut a slice about an inch long on her forearm. She barely winced at the cut as she passed his dagger back to him. Rye watched as she swiped the blood onto her fingers and moved closer to the wall to draw the sigil.
Nothing seemed to happen for a long moment, and just as Rye turned to ask Damira if she had drawn the sigil right, he saw over her shoulder, a passageway had appeared. It was shadowed and wet, and if he hadn’t known its secret to open, he would’ve believed it had been there all along.
“Good luck,” Damira said, then an amused, teasing smirk curled her lips. “Careful what you wish for,” she added in a sing-song voice that made Rye roll his eyes. Her laughter faded into the shadows behind him as he walked through the passageway.
Ahead of him were lines of tables along either side, and a few tucked into corners and alleyways. Some had scrolls stacked higher than gravity should allow, while others had what looked like parts of various animals preserved in jars or dried out and laid out on tables.
His eyes were drawn to the signs at each tables. Some boasted power—most, actually—while others boasted oddities and proficiency of skill. None of it was what he sought, though. He walked along between the tables, eyes flicking from one table to another, and quickly away from those that held what looked like the body parts of a fae bud or sapling. Or perhaps human. He wasn’t eager to look closer to see.
It was then, when he was averting his gaze from one table, which his eyes met that of one of the fae behind a table covered in an odd array of items.
“All the animals out to play today,” a voice, almost singing, drifted towards him, drawing Rye’s gaze towards a stall mostly in shadows. Bright eyes glinted at him above sharp, glistening teeth, spread wide in an unnerving smile. But still Rye’s couldn’t look away.
“First a little birdie,” the voice said. What magick it was, he couldn’t be certain, that seemed to envelope them. The sounds of the rest of the market faded, and the figure’s voice seemed to echo like they were in a stone chamber. “Now the wolf prince. Lucky me.”
Rye tensed, instinctively reaching towards the glamour magick he’d surrounded himself with. He hadn’t slipped, he was certain of it. Still, this person knew.
“What did the little birdie say to you?” Rye asked. He could at least play along with an easily denied turn of phrase.
The smile only only widened. “Ah ah ah, no, what does the wolf prince say to me? That’s the more interesting question.”
“I’ve nothing to say to you,” Rye answered curtly. He wanted to take a step back—he meant to, but his feet wouldn’t move.
“Oh, so cold, cold as blood, is the wolf prince,” the voice curled back at him. “You come for an end to a war you can’t win by force alone.” Rye didn’t answer, and the smile grew wider. “Knowledge is your answer, wolf prince. It’s the only way to win this war you’ve started.”
“I didn’t come here for some secondhand secret,” Rye said. His fingers clenched around the payment in his pocket. It was worth far more than that.
“Oh, I don’t deal in secrets,” the figure laughed, and it was an unnerving sound. “I’ll give the means to find your own.”
Rye had no reason to trust them, but something in their eyes held truth. As unnerving as they were, Rye somehow felt a peace, in knowing what he needed lay here, with this person. Maybe not the answer, the means to get it.
“What payment do you have for me, wolf prince?” The figure asked without Rye having to verbally accept their offer.
His fingers tightened, and he closed his eyes for a moment before drawing his hand out of his pocket. Rye kept his fingers clenched tight for a moment longer, a fleeting, Reva, forgive me, a passing thought before he uncurled his fingers.
Rye tried not to flinch when thin fingers reached out, plucking the ring from his palm. This will be worth it. It has to be worth it.
“Ah, this is the Lalune family crest, isn’t it?” The figure asked. Rye didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. “Lovely family they were. Shame they’re all gone.”
“Not all of them,” Rye said. Somehow he didn’t feel any danger in even the small statement here, with this figure. Who knew so much without the means to.
Rye felt his blood turn to ice as the figure’s eyes met his again. “Haven’t you heard, wolf prince? All the Lalunes are dead.”
The world fell out from under his feet.
Shadows spun around him. The words echoed, distant, but never quite making sense.
All the Lalunes are dead.
The air was thinner. His hands felt numb. His legs burned with the desire to run, run, wolf, run.
“You’re lying,” Rye said, so quiet he wasn’t even sure he said it out loud.
The figure only smiled. “Oh, but I’m not,” they said, practically giddy. “Little birdie isn’t singing to the moon any more.”
Rye was halfway across the table before he made the conscious decision to move, to lunge out at the figure, scrambling for the ring—For Reva’s ring.
The figure barely touched him, but a second later, Rye was pushed back, standing where he’d been a moment before, breathing short and ragged.
“Ah ah, a deal’s a deal, wolf prince,” they said.
“Then give me what you promised,” Rye hissed. He didn’t care anymore what was given to him. If it was even magick or some damned gimmick. He only knew he couldn’t move, couldn’t leave from here until it was done, and he needed to leave.
He needed to find Robin. To prove to this charlatan that they were wrong. Because Robin was alive, and safe. He had to be.
Rye’s eyes dropped to the table, where a ring sat surrounded by a layer of dust, looking like it had been there all along.
“Put the ring on,” the figure said, smile wide. “You’ll know I tell only the truth.”
As soon as Rye’s fingers touched the ring, he saw in his mind’s eye what felt like an entire history of the ring, visions of it throughout realms, all foggy and shadowed, but their intentions clear. It was true magick, and he knew how to wield it.
But none of it mattered if anything had happened to Robin.
Rye swiped thee ring off the table , shoving it into his pocket. He didn’t dare put it on, to hear the figure repeat their words. He couldn’t bear to hear them, not knowing the magick the ring held.
Immediately, the sounds and sights of the Night Market came back into focus around him, and Rye spun away from the table. His glamour was replaced by invisibility, and he didn’t care who saw him just disappear into the air.
He cared little for anything that didn’t get him to Robin.
Rye ran, as quickly as he could back the way he’d come, pulse pounding in his ears, his thoughts only a steady stream of, Please Robin, please be safe. Please be alive.
When he reached the passageway he’d come through, he saw Damira sitting on the other side of it, one side of a long bandage between her teeth as she tightened it around her arm.
Rye dropped the invisibility glamour when he reached her, and her smile fell immediately.
“Have you heard from him?” Rye asked.
“Who?” Damira asked, and Rye groaned. “Our bird, our bird. Where is he?”
“Despite what I’ve managed to convince the entire flock of, I don’t actually have eyes everywhere in Midsummer. What happened?”
“I don’t know, but something’s wrong, and I have to find him,” Rye said quickly, barely breathing as he spoke. “I swear, if Bone did something to him, I’ll—“
“You won’t do anything alone and without a plan, because that’s suicide,” Damira cut him off. “You go find your bird. I don’t think we can wage an all out war on Bone for this, but—“ she added quickly, seeing Rye’s cutting glare at her implication that Robin’s life wasn’t worth an all out war. It absolutely fucking was. “But you’re not the only one who cares for him, and far from the only one who dreams of delivering a deathblow to our beloathed Archmage. I’ll rally those I can find, and come up with a plan. Send me word when you find him. One way or the other.”
“Don’t move on her without my word,” Rye said. He was still shaking, but even in his fury at Bone, and his desperation to find Robin, he knew Damira was right. “If I’m wrong, and he’s safe now, he won’t be for long if we make any move on her.”
He blinked and Damira was gone. Rye was alone, and racking his brain for where Robin would be. Rye’s rooms at the castle—no, he knew Rye didn’t intend to go back for a few days at least. Rye’s home on the edge of Belladonna and the Wolf Clan—Perhaps, but it was early in the day for him to just be hanging out there without Rye. Black’s Manor—So much as Rye hated it, it was possible. But no, he was certain Robin hadn’t intended to go back to Wisteria just yet.
Hadasa. Nightshade Row. Of course.
Rye took off at a run, ever unable to outrun the cold smile, the laughter and words of the shopkeep that followed him.
“Haven’t you heard, wolf prince? All the Lalunes are dead.”