The face of a donkey.

I stumble back, and this time he releases me. The guard holds up his still-human hands in front of his long, gray nose. His dark, glossy eyes widen in horror, and he lets out a distressed bray. He’s clearly terrified, but at least the pain seems to only have lasted in the moment of his transformation.

“Don’t worry.”

Suddenly, there’s another face behind the donkey’s, a feathery female face with crimson eyes that flash in the darkness as they meet mine. “He’ll be back to normal in the morning. No cost from you, changeling. You’ve already paid enough.”

The faerie winks at me just as she did when I caught her eye across the crowd earlier, an extremely self-satisfied smirk occupying what I can see of her face.

Faeries don’t offer gifts. The rules that dictate their behavior won’t let them give anything freely, without an equal bargain. If I accept this, will it come with a hidden price tag of a thousand years of service, or the ability to see the color orange? Should I respond?

It doesn’t matter, because I am unable to speak. I have to concentrate to even make my heavy heart keep beating. My jaw drops, and every word I’ve ever learned stalls on the tip of my tongue.

“That...was a close one,” Isolde says, gasping. Finally, I see her, a heap of black in the middle of the street like a discarded rag doll. Someone must have knocked her down, and she’s run herself too ragged to get back up. Still, even that can’t kill her irreverent grin. I offer her my hand and pull her unsteadily to her feet.

When I look back, the faerie is gone. The donkey-man is still braying in distress, probably wondering if he still has to finish his shift.

chapter five

Isolde and I huddle close together as we shuffle into the crowd, but the rest of the guards seem to be gone. For a while, we walk silently in a combination of exhaustion, residual fear, and spiraling thoughts. Buildings and people and fires and faeries blur past. Heading home should feel comforting, but there’s a chill settling into my spine. If Market Square was dull compared to Gilt Row, then this neighborhood is a dump. It’s still technically in Market Square, but on the outskirts, backed into a corner, bordered on one side by the peacefully sluggish Harrow River, and by the Twilight District on the other.

The streets are full here, too, but not with pulsing waves of revelers like the ones back in the middle of the square. They’re furtive, holding whispered conversations, tugging each other by the hand back to the safety of the bonfire, kissing in darkened corners where no one can see them, glancing over shoulders and clenching hands into tight, nervous fists. Finally, when there’s no one within earshot, Isolde speaks.

“Seelie, you didn’t...you didn’t ask that faerie...for a favor, somehow?”

My heart stutters. “Fate, no. I have no idea why she helped us.” I don’t know what kind of fool Isolde takes me for. Everyone knows better than to make deals with the fair folk. It always turns sour, no matter what they offer you, no matter how airtight you try to make the contract. It’s the first lesson parents teach their children, the cardinal rule, more a fact than a law. No matter how desperate the situation, faerie bargains will only make it worse.