“Good to see you’re conscious again mister Price,” came the voice of madame Miura. I opened my eyes slowly, my vision still slightly blurry. This whole thing felt pretty familiar with the exception of how much my jaw hurt. “I thought I made it quite clear I didn’t want you to make a habit of coming to the infirmary mister Price.”

“Sorry,” I mumbled, slowly sitting up.

Silvian’s head popped up now. “Hey,” he said softly.

“Hey,” I replied.

Silvian’s gaze darted to the floor. “Sorry about punching you in the face.”

“Yeah, well it’s probably just karma for punching you in the face when we first met. Let’s call it even. Punch pals.”

“Still, I shouldn’t have let my anger get the best of me,” Silvian mumbled. “They were just being such pricks.”

“I don’t know man,” I said. “Owen just wanted to talk to you. I don’t think you needed to be so mean.”

“Why are you taking his side?” Silvian said coldly. “You’re my friend, you’re supposed to agree with me.”

“Right,” I said. “I’m your friend not your yes man. You heard Morgana call me your lackey back there, didn’t you? Well I’m not one. If I think you’re wrong I’m going to call you out on it. I’m telling you right now that Owen was just trying to talk with you rationally and trying to punch him was a total dick move.”

Silvian didn’t respond, crossing his arms and simply returning my response with a little huff.

------

“Oh yay! You’re back!” Sal exclaimed happily as I made my way down the stairs into the little dungeon esque room where his cage resided.

“We just had dinner,” I said, “so I brought you some soup since I know you can’t eat meat.”

There was a little slit at the bottom of the cage, I assumed for food, so I slid the bowl through it. Sal quickly snatched it up, brought it to his cracked lips and practically inhaled its contents as loudly and messily as possible. I tried to ignore how gross it was, averting my gaze until I heard the bowl clatter to the floor and figured he was done.

“So,” said Sal. “How’ve you been love?”

I shrugged. “I’ve been better. I got punched in the face today so that kinda sucked.”

Sal nodded. “I imagine. Did you punch the bugger back?”

I shook my head. “Nah, he didn’t really mean to hit me. I was kinda acting like a human meat shield for someone else.”

“I’ve gotten punched quite a few times in my day. Fighting is a big aspect of goblin society. It proves how brave you are, and not to brag my dear but I was most definitely respected as one of the bravest. Fights break out among goblins all the time, just for fun. If I had a gold piece for every fight I saw in the goblin market I could probably fill the entire lake with it.” Right, the goblin market! I remembered that! Owen and Morgana had gone there in book two. Sal, obviously not knowing I already knew about it however, continued on, his gaze filling with nostalgia. “Golly, I sure do miss it. It was such a wonderful place, you could get anything there. Griffin pups, dragon claws, mermaid tails-”

“Did you say mermaid tails,” a third voice said. Sal and I both turned to see Silvian standing there, his arms crossed.

“Silvian? What the hell? How long have you been down here?” I stammered.

Silvian took a step forward. “Only a few minutes.”

“What the actual fuck dude,” I said angrily. “Did you follow me here?”

“Yeah.”

I couldn’t believe he had just said it so bluntly. My eyes narrowed. “And why the hell would you do that?”

“You just got punched. When I saw you going down a weird staircase alone I wanted to make sure you didn’t have a concussion or something.”

“You hit me in the jaw, not the head dimwit.”

“Whatever, I was just trying to look out for you.”

“You’re my roommate, not my mom.”

Silvian rolled his eyes. His gaze now fell back to Sal who had been silent through our little bicker. “So,” he said, “you said they sold mermaid tails at the goblin market.”

Sal nodded. “Yep, almost any rare item can be found there for the right price.”

There was a spark in Silvian’s eye, he was scheming about something and I didn’t like it.

“If they sell mermaid tails do they sell mermaid eyes?”

“Yep. Mermaid eyes, mermaid scales, mermaid hair, the whole shebang.”

Silvian turned to me now, a look of genuine excitement flickering in his white eyes. “Ches we need to go to the goblin market.”

My mouth practically dropped open. “What? Absolutely not!”

“I need to get that mermaid eye! Remember the idea for the class project I had! I wanted to see if I could use animation spells to get a mermaid eye fully functioning again, even without being attached to the mermaid. The only issue was that it’s almost impossible to find mermaid eyes. If we could get our hands on one we could make the best school project ever!”

“Are you out of your fucking mind!?” I snapped. “Do you have any idea how dangerous the goblin market is? We are not risking our lives for a stupid class project.” I looked to the goblin who was watching us from his cage. “Sorry Sal,” I mumbled, “I think I’m going to go back to my room. I’ll visit you soon.” I turned to Silvian, my eyes narrow. “If you want to stay here and get more answers about the goblin market be my guest, but I’m telling you right here and now I’m not fucking with that.”

I made my way back up the steps and Silvian didn’t follow. I was actually kind of glad, I needed some time to cool off.

Finally I made it to my dorm, went inside and plopped down on my bed with a huff. I was still pretty pissed off at Silvian between him following me, trying to punch Owen in the face and trying to make me go to that goddamn goblin market. It would be one thing if he apologized for it and acknowledged his mistake but of course, being Silvian Greygate, he would do nothing of the sort. Whatever, I would probably be over it in an hour. Just for now I was super grateful for this time away from him.

I was suddenly taken out of my angry thoughts by the sound of a pebble hitting my window. I immediately shot up and made my way over to it, peering out. I looked down but whoever threw it seemed to be long gone. Why the hell would someone just throw one rock and disappear?

Confused I was about to turn back when suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed something happening to the window. I quickly turned back to it, seeing frost spreading across the glass.

Then suddenly words began to appear in the frost. They read: ‘Meet me at 12 AM tomorrow night. Library. Don’t tell S.’ And then suddenly the frost melted leaving me standing there as if nothing had ever happened. I continued to stare at the window, flabbergasted. I assumed S meant Silvian.

Why the hell did someone want to meet with me? Why did they not want Silvian to know? And most importantly, if I really did go who the hell would be waiting for me when I got there there?