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“Of course, ma’am. I only thought…” His voice trailed off. And whatever Thomas thought was never voiced.

I wished I could see the woman’s face. I wanted to see if it was sympathetic or wretched or uncaring. I wanted to see what flashed in her eyes when she said, “The only thing we may do for those children is pray for them.”

There was the sound of crates shifting, the harsh heeled tap of the woman’s shoes receding. The man named Thomas sighed from somewhere near the hatch. And then his feet came down the ladder again.

I peeked out from behind the musty linens to see him stare forlornly at the crate in his hands, and I realized that he was much older than I’d imagined. He gripped the sides of the box as though he might crush it, but instead he set it down with the others and turned away. He climbed up the ladder and closed the hatch. The yellow light evaporated.

Patrick and I were alone again. Stiff-kneed and limp-tongued.

It took several moments for Patrick to lift the linens and step out. Longerbefore he remembered to come back for me. He untangled me from sheets in the dark, and I did not have the presence of mind to help him.

The lighter flickered, and a flare appeared in the space between his chin and mine, turning us both blood orange.

“What did she mean?” I asked him, much in the way a child asks an elder.

His lips looked white, even in the glow. “I don’t know.”

“Crafter-marked.” I looked to the crates brandedPROPERTY OF BELAVERE TRENCH. “She said ‘Crafter-marked.’?”

Patrick held aloft the vial he’d plucked earlier. Atop its cork was a red wax seal that barely coated the vial’s neck.

I thought of those children I’d seen in the hall, uncorking their waxless vials of idium and being declared Crafters.

We’ve got just about all the Artisan children needed this year.

“What does it mean?” I asked again, desperation leaking through. My stomach bowled. The lighter sputtered out.

“Patrick… what does it mean?”

Somewhere inside me, a screw wound tighter and tighter.

CHAPTER 6PATRICK

Nina’s bottom lip shook.

We should leave, Patrick thought.Before they come back.

But his feet wouldn’t—or couldn’t—move. His head clawed at those crates on their shelves, scratched at the wood in need of answers.

“What does it mean?” Nina whispered over and over, like a fading prayer. The words belting around inside him.

I don’t know what it means.

He couldn’t leave. Not until he could make some meaning.

Patrick placed three crates on the ground and cursed them for rattling. He lifted their lids and cringed at the groan and squeak of the timber. He ran his thumb down the flint wheel of the lighter he’d stolen from his father and held the flame next to his knees.

Two crates of twenty-four vials, all corked, all missing wax seals. One smaller crate—twelve vials only, all of them lightly coated in thin red wax, as though the administer did not much care if the glass was sealed or not. Patrick reached for one vial and pulled the wax away easily. Without its marker, he could not identify the difference between this vial and that of its counterpart. They both glistened with inky dilution.

“They’re marked,” Nina said, her breaths shallow. “They’re marked for Artisans. For the ones… the ones they’ve already picked out.”

Patrick found he could not answer while his blood was so laced withheat. Pounding in his head was a growing litany. A cumulative din of every vitriolic word he’d heard since he was small. Every drunk and sober spray in the direction of the Artisan government. A flood of it bloomed within him now. It set him on fire. He was in danger of crushing the vial in his trembling hand.

But while Patrick burned, Nina seemed to extinguish. “I never had a chance, did I?” she asked him. Her voice was so very small. “I never had a chance.”

Nina’s eyes glistened. Her sideways bow slipped another inch.

Without deciding to do it, without really thinking on it at all, he wrapped his arms around her shoulders and pulled her to him.