Chapter 7 Two Coins Don't Lie

Riley's POV

The second silver coin sat in my palm like it had every right to be there, which was frankly offensive. I had spent half the evening telling myself I was going to put it somewhere safe and forget about it until morning, but instead I stood behind the counter with both coins laid out on a folded cloth, staring as though one might suddenly explain itself.

They looked almost identical at first glance, with the same pale silver, the same narrow cuts along the edge, and the same weight that seemed slightly wrong for such small pieces, as if each coin had been made to be carried for a very long time rather than spent. I turned the first one over with my fingertip, then the second, trying to decide whether that counted as investigating or simply worrying with better posture.

The original coin had been in my possession since the strange woman left it behind and vanished. The second had appeared beneath an order slip I had never brought home, which meant someone had either entered while I was distracted or found another way to leave it.

Neither possibility improved my evening, so I should have put both coins in the locked drawer beneath the counter and gone upstairs. Instead, I reached for the first coin and let Heartcraft settle into my hands.

Usually, the sensation arrived almost before I finished the first breath. With people, there was often warmth or pressure beneath the words they chose to show me, like touching water and feeling the current underneath.

I reached gently, because Heartcraft was not a door I could kick open simply because I disliked what was behind it. Nothing answered, and the silence was so complete that for a moment I wondered whether I had somehow forgotten how to use my own magic.

The feeling was not emptiness.

It felt closed.

I pulled back and stared at the coin as though it had personally offended me. The shop seemed suddenly louder, although nothing had changed, with the kettle clicking as it cooled, bottles whispering against their shelves, and the academy paths shining silver beneath the lamps outside.

“Well,” I murmured, “that was unhelpful.” The coin remained deeply committed to being a coin, which was apparently the most cooperation I could expect from it.

I picked up the second one and turned it between my fingers. The first attempt had been strange enough that I expected the second to behave differently, because it had arrived by a different route and there was no reason two objects should share the same magical silence simply because they looked alike.

I reached again, softer this time.

The same stillness met me.

I stopped breathing for a moment. It was not the blankness of an ordinary object.

I could Heartcraft a room and find faint residue in places where someone had been upset, relieved, or hopeful. I could touch a well-used teacup and sometimes catch a little echo of comfort, or handle a customer's scarf and sense the nervous anticipation that had lingered in it.

These coins gave me nothing.

Not even an echo.

I placed them side by side and looked at them suspiciously. “That is rude,” I told them, because apparently I had reached the point where I was arguing with money.

The first coin gleamed.

The second gleamed.

I narrowed my eyes. “You are both being difficult on purpose.” A soft click came from the shelf behind me, and I turned just in time to see a bottle of moonmint tincture wobble itself back into place.

“Do not encourage them,” I told the bottle. The bottle settled, which I chose to interpret as agreement.

I took a breath and tried the first coin again, this time not looking for an emotion but for whatever had blocked me. Heartcraft brushed the edge-mark, followed the shallow cuts, and reached the same invisible boundary.

Stillness met me again.

The sensation was so familiar that my stomach tightened. Ryan had felt like this from the first moment I had tried to read him, not empty, not emotionless, but simply beyond the reach of the magic I had spent years learning to trust.

I set the coin down and rubbed my thumb across the edge.

That was ridiculous.

Ryan Reed was a person, not a piece of metal, and his unreadability had a sensible explanation. Fae hearts did not behave like witch hearts, and Heartcraft had never promised me that everyone would arrive with a convenient emotional label.

Coins, however, did not have fae hearts, which seemed worth remembering before I let my thoughts become completely unreasonable. I picked up the second coin again and tried to ignore the uncomfortable resemblance.

The same closed-door sensation met me.

I looked toward the chair beside the window.

Ryan had sat there often enough that I could almost picture him in it, one ankle resting over the other, tea beside his book, expression suggesting that the entire world had become mildly inconvenient and he had decided to endure it with dignity. I immediately disliked the comparison.

The coin was not Ryan.

Obviously.

It was silver.

Ryan was not silver.

At least, not usually.

I put both hands flat on the counter and stared at the two coins until my thoughts began circling the same questions so thoroughly that they stopped being useful. What were they, who had left them, and why could I not read them?

I reached for the first coin again, then stopped before touching it.

No.

That was the problem, perhaps.

I was so accustomed to Heartcraft giving me information that I had begun treating the absence of information like a puzzle I had failed to solve. Ryan had taught me that some things could remain beyond my reach, and now these coins were apparently offering the same lesson with considerably less conversation.

I picked up both pieces and carried them to the little table beneath the shop window. The glass reflected my face back at me, slightly distorted by the old enchantment in the pane, while students hurried through the evening mist outside and someone down the academy path laughed loud enough to send enchanted paper birds scattering from a notice board.

The ordinary sounds helped.

I turned one coin over in my fingers, watching the edge-mark catch the lamplight in three narrow cuts. I remembered Ryan looking at the first coin days ago, his expression changing so quickly that I might have missed it if I had not been watching him.

He had known something, or at least recognized something, and when I asked, he had given me the sort of careful answer that meant there was more beneath it. I had decided not to press him, but that decision suddenly felt less comfortable.

I placed the first coin beside the second and watched the light move across them.

Maybe they were connected, maybe they were not, and perhaps the only thing they shared was a talent for ruining my evenings. I picked up the first coin and slipped it into the small pouch I kept beneath the counter, then hesitated before putting the second one beside it, leaving a little space between them as though physical distance might help my thoughts settle.

It did not.

I thought about Ryan's unreadable expression and the coin's unreadable stillness, then about how often I had trusted Heartcraft to tell me what people could not say. It was strange to stand in my own shop with two silent pieces of silver and no magical answer at all.

The realization came quietly enough that I almost missed it. Maybe that was what bothered me most, not that I could not read the coins, and not even that they might be connected to Ryan, but that for once I had found something I could not understand by reaching for it.

I closed the pouch and turned down the lamps one by one, leaving the warm glow from the window enchantment across the counter. As I headed toward the door, I glanced back at the two coins resting together in their little compartment, and the thought that followed me into the street was the same one I had been trying not to have all evening.

The only two things in Mistwood I can't read are a fae and his money.