Page 8 of The Darkening (The Darkening)

Dalca kneels before me, and I jump back. He scoops up a mound of dirt and dumps it back in a planter.

“Leave it,” I say. “It can’t be fixed.”

He looks at me and speaks with the full force of his certainty. “Anything can be fixed.”

“Dalca...” Casvian seethes.

Dalca takes his time filling a planter with dirt and stomped-on shalaj. I don’t bother telling him that there’s no use. Anything can be fixed? What kind of life does he live? “Are there any other rooms in this place?”

It’s not until his eyes meet mine that I realize he’s speaking to me. “Just what you see. A small room on this floor, the bathroom, and... well, the attic.” My room.

He gets up and dusts his hands. “Please.” He gestures ahead.

I have to reach over Dalca’s shoulder to pull the string that releases the ladder. He catches the ladder with one hand and climbs up. Casvian brushes past me and follows the prince up to my room. My sanctuary.

I stay put. I know what they’ll see. A tiny room, with a ceiling that slopes so steeply that I haven’t been able to stand up straight in there since I was twelve. A cot on the floor, covered with a threadbare blanket. Two pots collecting the rainwater that seeps through leaks in the roof, ones I’ve been meaning to patch. A book of fairy stories, the pages water-warped and the cover soft and faded. I only still have it because no one has the spare coin to buy it. They won’t need more than a second to take it all in.

Dalca comes down first. He glances at me, then at the planters, but he heads downstairs without a word. Casvian follows. I glare at his perfect, shining hair until he descends out of my view.

Alone on the landing, surrounded by piles of dirt, I let go. My hands shake. I inhale, long and slow, until my lungs are filled, and then I breathe in some more, till my chest feels fit to bursting. Only when it hurts, when the edges of my vision start to gray, do I let it all out.

Back straight, I head down the stairs, pausing on the last step as Dalca flips a golden coin toward Amma. It slips through her knobbly fingers, clattering to the floor. “For your trouble,” he says.

My gasp isn’t the only one that hangs in the air. That one coin could keep all of us fed for weeks.

It must be a trap.

Dalca addresses the room. “A hundred goldens for anyone who can tell us the whereabouts of Alcanar Vale. Come to any guard post with your information, and we will make sure you’re rewarded. If your information leads to his capture, you’ll be relocated to the third ring.”

And the trap is set.

The air is electric with anticipation. I half expect someone to blurt something out on the spot. To live in the third—some would sell out their own mothers for that. I understand now. They don’t need to find Pa. They’ll repeat this a half dozen times, at every house on this street, maybe in the market, maybe in an alley full of the homeless. The word will spread. Pa will be caught, one way or another.

The prince’s voice lowers. “When the fugitive is captured, if it’s discovered that you harbored him, or aided him in any way, you will share his fate.”

Dalca’s eyes flick to mine, and he holds my gaze. My heartbeatpounds in my ears. How well does he know what Pa looks like? Does he recognize my eyes?

He looks away first, then flings the door open and strides out. The other two follow him into the street.

The doorway frames a slice of the Storm. The black wall has calmed; dark clouds roll against each other in a lazy, smoke-like dance. Even the lightning streaks slower, though it still illuminates eyes, tails, claws. The Storm’s beastly children prowl within her womb, watching. Waiting.

Their hungry eyes seem to watch me as I shut the door and press my forehead to the damp-warped wood, squeezing my eyes shut.

A whisper echoes in my skull, in time with my heartbeat.

It says to me,This is your fault.