Page 2 of The Lure of Wolves and Whispers

There isn’t a single person in it—including my sister.

Shit.

The lock rattles under my shaking hands. Finn was meant to be here at dawn. Our father’s drilled it into us enough times: The customers looking for his bargain weapons don’t want to be seen when the market is full and gardai trawl the edges of the crowds. We serve criminals and smugglers, poisoners with a price on their heads, and would-be rebels.

If Finn isn’t here, though, and she wasn’t at home this morning either…

My ribs tighten around my lungs.

Where is she?

The stall shutters clatter as I shove them back, fighting my rising fear. Rows of gleaming steel knives and short swords and axes with deadly, enticing curves are all that greet me in the cool darkness of the stall.

There’s not even a note from Finn.

One hand skims the edge of the stall’s counter, just in case she tucked any clues along its carved lip. The other trails the thin silver chain hanging around my neck, disappearing beneath thecloak’s cracking leather buckle and the laces of my worn green tunic. The charm hiding against my breast band is a tiny thing, a triple knot wrought in delicate silver, slightly bigger than my thumbnail. But if I close my eyes and focus, I can just barely feel the fading tingle of magic.

Never take this off,my mother made me promise.Not until you choose.

In Quayside, the last thing anyone needs is another mouth to feed. I’m nineteen, and the charm’s come in handy precisely twice, when sour tavern wine got the better of me.

Fear tears my gaze beyond the market back to the pikes of the Black Quay looming in the shadow of Castle Mount far above. I try to never look at their faces, never let myself think too much about who they were or how desperate they must’ve been to try buying what scraps of magic are smuggled into Eireann.

Now I force myself to search each face, to pray to whatever is left of the Old Ones—the ancient goddesses and their first mages—that none of them are my sister.

Losing anyone else—losing Finn—isn’t an option.

But if she’s there… if the gardai got her—

My eyes lock on the frame of a figure in all black, wearing boots just like the heavy, laced ones my sister likes best.

No.

I barely feel the wood beneath my fingernails as I claw the counter.

The body’s hair, though… It’s blond instead of auburn, and longer than the cut Finn keeps blunt at her jaw. This one’s frame is smaller too. My sister is all broad shoulders and muscle, yet somehow still quick enough to outrun the gardai.

She has to be, smuggling our father’s weapons and money all over town.

I’ve lost track of how many fake names she’s given to the bankers in the merchant quarter. She can tally sums all in her head, while I’m still counting on my fingers so the numbers don’t blend and dance in my mind.

All to keep the money away from our father, who would waste the coin on drinking. Money for our future, she always says. Finn’s always been better than me at imagining a bigger picture, a life where we aren’t trapped here inside the city walls.

Cold air fills my lungs. I check, again and again—Finn isn’t on the Black Quay. None of the bodies rotting up there are her. Wherever she is, whatever she’s doing, she’s okay. I refuse to let myself imagine anything else.

Any world without Finn is unthinkable.

I tear my gaze away and focus on the most important thing right now: drawing in customers. The low groan of the so-called traitor refusing to die lingers in my mind as I work, a haunting reminder that I’ve survived this long because I’m careful. I keep my head down.

And above all, I stay away from the rebel Whisperers.

The dying man on the Black Quay knew what he was risking, buying magic from them.

The whispers—perhaps too fittingly—crawled out from the shadows not long after the stubborn mist settled over the isle from the north. They tell tales of the lingering coals of the uprising, of a man with eyes like green fire—a man the whispers claim once vanished like a breath from Castle Mount’s dungeons.

The warnings about him twine through the mist along withthe name of every traitor caught and tortured by the gardai and their spymaster, the Lady of Shadows.

But no one here dares tempt fate by talking abouther. Even the wind seems to carry our secrets to the High Queen’s spy-master, and all it would take is one whisper making its way to Castle Mount for the Crown to send the gardai out to hunt down would-be rebels.