Page 36

“Silas…” I hesitate, unbelieving of what I’m about to say.

I’m honestly going to abandon the idea of leaving him and truly reclaiming my freedom.

But when he looks my way, curious, all doubt is forgotten.

“If you want to stay here, you can, and I’ll come back.

Or, give me the other Chariot card and I’ll return to your room when I’m done. ”

“I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

I shift to face him. “You’re right, the idea of running crossed my mind. But now that I know they have your family, I won’t. I can’t. After what they did to me and mine, I’m not going to put someone else through that pain.”

He shifts uncomfortably, an internal war tugging on the tiny muscles of his face. “I can’t trust you.”

“I understand.” I nod. “We’ve only just met, and I hardly trust you.”

“But I saved your life.” He seems genuinely surprised.

“So did Kaelis.” That silences him. “Whenever you’re ready, then.”

In his own time, Silas crosses the threshold. He stops and tilts his head to the sky, inhaling deeply. It reminds me of what I did the first moment I stepped into the greenhouse. That first taste of freedom on the wind. Even if the “freedom” is little more than an illusion.

Slowly, we take another step, together. And another. I match his pace. Every pause. Every step.

Before I know it, we’re running.

We sprint down the alleyway and onto the street. I take the lead, guiding us toward the Starcrossed Club. Weaving around people in their capes and dresses like two street urchins running from the law. Shouts chase us, but no other feet follow. We’re too much of a blur.

Running from the darkness. From the grime. From the tiny boxes we were squeezed into.

When my side feels as though it’s about to rip open, I pull us off into an alcove.

We’re on the fringe of the Gilded District.

The gold-dipped iron lampposts that give it its name are becoming less frequent.

I can almost smell Rat Town from here. Which means it’s only a short jaunt through the Stone Steps and then up Coin Hill to the Starcrossed Club.

It’s so close I can almost taste the bubbly wine that we serve in the main salon, as sweet as each gulp of warm summer air.

“Mind if I take a second?” Silas asks. He isn’t nearly as breathless as me. Another reminder of just how much my physical prowess has slipped.

I shake my head and wipe sweat from my brow.

He sits and draws his knees up, propping his bag on them and pulling out some inking supplies.

It’s the same paper as I’d use, and ink as plain as any other.

Yet I can feel an immense surge of power as he draws.

I try to conceal how attentively I’m watching.

“Where are we headed?” he asks.

“The Starcrossed Club.”

He makes a noise of comprehension; Arina must’ve mentioned it to him.

I sink down next to him. We’re on the stoop, so the few people out for a late-night stroll on the sidewalks don’t pay us any mind.

Still, Silas conceals his inking by resting his cards within a journal, so that it merely looks like he’s scribbling notes about something.

Carriages clatter past, their occupants oblivious to us.

“It’s odd to be back here.”

“I can imagine, after Halazar.” He doesn’t look at me as he speaks, focusing on his inking.

“Not just that…My sister and I were born not too far from here, if you can believe it.”

“Really?” His pen pauses. “She said you grew up in Rot Hollow before living on the streets.”

“We weren’t always there. But she was too young to remember anything different…

Our mother fell on hard times, and we ended up in Rot Hollow when the collectors came knocking.

That was how Mother ended up doing another five years at the Descent.

She did her first five before I was born.

The money from the second was helping us make ends meet.

” But even a whole regill over five years wasn’t enough, fast enough.

So Mother did other work helping Arcanists—for money, and for her beliefs. A labor of love I gladly carried on.

I continue, “After she died, the enforcers came around and nearly saw the inking supplies she’d left for us.

They were already talking about starting my assignment at the Descent early, since I was now the head of the house…

I wasn’t going to let harvesting inking resources take me from Arina like it did Mother.

So we left and lived on the streets, dodging the enforcers. ”

Mother’s face is still sharp in my mind thanks to Eza. I can’t decide if I hate him for it or am oddly grateful. Time had begun to blur the little crow’s-feet and smile lines she’d hard-earned. I don’t want to forget those.

“Would they have really forced a child to go to the Descent?” Silas seems skeptical. The assignment usually isn’t mandatory until twenty, mirroring the academy.

“Maybe? Maybe not. I wasn’t sticking around to find out if it was an empty threat.” I shrug. “Plus, if they were behind Mother’s death, I didn’t want to be where they could find us.”

Silas’s expression tells me he can understand that much. “Where’s your father in all this?”

“Never knew him.” Vague, hazy memories of the man fill my mind from back when we lived in that stately home where everything gleamed.

But I’ve no solid recollections. “Mother didn’t talk about him.

All I know is, it was after he left that we fell on hard times.

He didn’t care enough to ever come around again, and that meant I had no reason to seek him out.

If we were dead to him, then he is dead tome. ”

“Was there no one in the extended Chevalyer family you could’ve gone to?”

A shiver tries to rip through me despite the balmy air of the summer night.

Arina told him our name? Our real name? The name that Mother impressed upon us was to be shared only with those we would trust with our lives?

Our name is like our special card, Mother would tell me.

It is our greatest treasure and deepest secret.

“Arina mentioned,” he says softly, as if reading my mind.

“No other way you could’ve known the name.” I force a smile and try to dismiss my unease. “You should’ve addressed me by it from the start. I would’ve been much less skeptical of you.”

“Oh?”

“We’re private people.” That’s one way to put it. “If she told you our real name, then she trusted you.” Silas must feel my stare, because he lifts his chin and meets my gaze. I hold his stare for several long seconds. “If she trusted you that deeply, then so will I.”

He opens and shuts his mouth, clearly searching for the right words. His expression slips into a slight and sincere smile. “Well, I’ll call you by whatever name pleases you.” He chose the right words.

“Redwin, for now. Put the rest from your mind.”

“Redwin it is.” He finishes his work with a flourish. I’m in awe as the black ink dries to a shimmering silver. Silas slips the card along with his inking supplies back into his satchel and slides the strap across his body.

I take his unspoken cue and stand.

The remaining journey to the club is slower. We set a brisk pace, but that initial drunken rush of freedom going straight to our heads has left us. Every few blocks, we stop in some quiet spot—a park bench, an alleyway, a small table outside a closed cafe.

It’s after the last one that my feet find momentum again.

We’re so close… Close enough that there won’t be any more stops or detours.

My friends—my family, the living and breathing heartbeat of my world.

I will hold Arina so tightly her eyes pop.

I will eat all of Jura’s cookies and debate whatever stupid thing Twino wants to debate until we’re blue in the face while Ren rolls his eyes at us both.

As the streets grow more familiar, I move faster again.

So fast that I don’t notice the little oddities.

The signs that Coin Hill might not be quite the same as I left it.

Signs like a boarded door, a shattered window left in its pane rather than being replaced, the quiet emptiness of streets that were once bustling. It’s all lost on me.

Until…I round the last corner.

My steps falter. My toes drag across the ground and snag on a crack. Silas keeps me from falling to my knees. Though I wish he hadn’t. I wish he’d let me crumple.

The Starcrossed Club…The place that took Arina and me in after years on the streets. The first place to feel like home after Mother died, and the last place I saw my sister’s face…

In its spot is nothing but a gaping chasm of cold, singed rubble.