The Cursed Deal ✓

Chapter 4

The wealthy district of Isflean, known as the Palace District, was bustling with the late summer evening. Women in bejeweled gowns slung shopping bags over their arms, men in tailored coats walked with their spines straight, their chins high. The cobblestone streets, wide and surrounded by palaces of lime mortar construction, were packed.

Isflean's markets were always popular attractions. They took place in city circles and merchants from different lands entirely set up their wares for grand display—whether jewelry, shoes, hats, weapons, baked goods and everything else under the sun. Their wagons pulled by the finest of appaloosas sprawled out to reveal their selections, cupboards opening, backdoors propped with heavy logs, and the inside of their world was gifted to shoppers and other merchants alike.

The Palace District and the slums were two very different sides of the city. The smells were better; baked goods weren't burnt, urine didn't stick to the rough stone of the street, and the restaurants didn't toss their foods outside into the alleys for the rats to eat. The Palace District never stooped so low, and that finery transferred to their craft.

Standing behind the bar of one of the most esteemed restaurants in the entire district, Faine looked over the folder one last time. If her fellow spy's, Nalea's, calculations were correct, members of Silver Willow were meeting here to discuss stealing the crown. Merely a few blocks away and visible over the tall buildings that usually spanned three stories, the tips of the palace where the high elf family resided was visible. The glistening roof tiles blinded those on the warmest and sunniest of days, like the one Faine was currently viewing.

The restaurant, specializing in well-spiced meals and decadent desserts, was labeled affectionately as The Black Apple. Not for terms of being rotten or burning their food, but for the black apple trees lining the front of the building, planted to cook in their desserts. Black apples, not as fine as the red apples that naturally grew in the fairy forests, had a mellow taste that, when ingested, granted fertility to the immortals that faced difficulty conceiving. Expensive beyond standards, and much too rich for Faine's taste.

It didn't matter how many black apple tarts she ingested. It had been one hundred and twenty years ago that she stopped trying to think about her future with a family or with children when the fine wizards of Isflean told her mother that Faine could never have children. She was infertile, a common fault amongst immortals of her kind, and there was no fixing it. Still, Faine's mother, as resilient as ever, made her eat black apple tarts until she vomited the gloomy mess onto their rugs.

Faine knew her mother was only doing what she believed to be right. It wasn't long after she passed that Faine had to pick up the pieces for herself. She never knew her father, and neither did her mother, but that never bothered her. A life in Isflean, granted by her mother's excellent craft making purses for the luxurious women in the Palace District, was never sorrowed. If Faine's father didn't want to know her, she wouldn't force it.

There were no booths in the Black Apple. Wooden tables carved in the shape of circles and draped with a white cloth that nearly touched the floor were the only seating arrangements. The chairs were velvet while others, the tables in the middle of the room, had metal backs with intricate designs and white, plump cushions for guests.

The flower arrangement in the middle of each table was a simple rose in a cream white vase of varying colors. Some were solid, some were splashed with an array of shades. Rainbow roses, Pinedon referred to them as.

Faine scanned the room, eyes falling on the back of Kaspar's head. Although the owner of the Black Apple was more than pleased to allow her to work for them at the return of free labor, they weren't keen on having Kaspar sit at one of their tables, taking valuable seating away from other customers. They didn't have to mention how bulky and unsettling he might be to the rest of the Palace District, but Faine read through his words. Felirams, when pushed towards the finer sides of life, weren't kind. No one in the Palace District was kind, frankly.