Cadence wasn’t strung from the walls; she was marched on display with all the other liars and thieves and criminals too young for Alistair to murder. He stood by, arrogant and impervious while King Perrote called for family to step forward and claim their fallen children, to spare their innocence by shouldering their guilt and accepting their punishment.
Most of them were orphans already, children of the street who knew nobody would speak for them. They didn’t even bother hoping otherwise, their faces set, a fierce and tremulous defiant as they suffered through the aching silence that followed the king’s call. But when Cadence was dragged forward, her eyes skated across the crowd, hopeful, expectant, waiting for me to speak. To save her.
And I didn’t do it.
I couldn’t. I’m sixteen now, old enough to die. And if I died, so would she, eventually, either out on the streets or in somebody’s bed. The time Cadence spends in the workhouse is time for me to figure out a way to save us both.
So I didn’t say a word, even as the silence stretched into finality, even as her face crumpled with resignation, even as my heart broke, loud enough the whole world could hear.
Even now, I struggle to tame the guilt—the hate—that rises like bile in my throat. It’s wasted here, in my stolen moment with Cadence, better suited for tonight, when I need the ammunition.
Dropping the pear into the pocket of her apron, I kiss my sister’s knuckles before smearing a liniment salve across her chapped skin. We have matching bruises now, but while hers come from working, mine come from fighting, from hitting until I bleed. “I’ve got a match tonight,” I say, like nothing is wrong and everything’s perfect. “If I win, maybe tomorrow I’ll have enough money to bring you home.”
Home. The word hitches, foreign on my tongue.
Cadence stares past me, impassive to my promises. To my lies. The fading sunlight throws shadows across her face, and I push the hair away from her eyes. Wake up, I think helplessly, but she needs magic for that, and the king keeps it all locked in his castle.
“I love you,” I whisper, and it hurts. I tell myself that it’s better this way, that Cadence doesn’t remember me, or home, or what she used to be, but it’s a coward’s truth. It’s only better for me that her eyes are dull, devoid of recognition.
Devoid of accusation.
“Go back to work, number eight-six-three-nine-one,” I say, and she obeys without question, resuming her scrubbing.
I linger longer than I should, unwilling to leave when I don’t know when I’ll be back. The last of the harvest means long days stripping the orchards of fruit, and a long queue of hungry people looking for work means short nights to ensure I’m at the head of the pack when the guards hand out positions at dawn.
The back door opens and voices approach—Mistress Ebbidens and her paunchy visitor—and I quickly tuck myself out of sight behind a basket of damp linens. It’s not strictly wrong for me to be here—some women come to visit their children, for what good it does—but it is dangerous to risk anyone connecting me to the little girl caught trying to escape through the tunnels. It’s the same reason why I still work as a field hand, an anonymous face picked by a guard from the crowd, no interview required. There’s no money in the fields, but there are no names, either.
“—choice of candidates,” Mistress Ebbidens says, full of phlegm and gravel.
“Someone obedient,” the man says, with a watery laugh that turns into a soft cough. “A girl, of course.” The top of his head appears over the rise of the linens, thick dark hair slicked back, almost flat. By contrast, Mistress Ebbidens’s hair rises like a frothy column of whipped cream.
They stroll the yard and the man simpers over the children, patting their heads or examining their faces by tucking his pudgy hand beneath their chins. They accept his attention like they accept their orders, wordlessly and without a spark of complaint.
When they approach Cadence, the man’s eyes sharpen; his smile spreads like oil. “Well, hello,” he says, and I pull tighter into the corner, out of sight, fists pressed against my stomach. “What a pretty face.”
“Orphaned,” Mistress Ebbidens says.
“Excellent,” says the man. “Families cause unnecessary interference.”
She’s not orphaned, I want to scream. She still has me and she has her father, for all he’s worth. He wouldn’t even come with me that day in the square. “There’s no point,” he had said, haunted eyes and trembling fingers reaching for his drink. “She’s already dead.”
Just like him, I had thought as he signaled for another. “You could speak for her,” I had said, with a stupid hope that her life meant more than his. “You could save her.”
My father had looked at me, gray as the stone walls behind him, a man who had never fought a day in his life. “When have I ever saved anyone?” he’d asked.
“What’s this?”
I risk a glance around the linens and see the man examining the pear from Cadence’s apron. He cradles it between his fingers and holds it to the light like an exquisite glass of wine. “I’m not her only admirer,” he says with a laugh that sends chills down my spine.
Mistress Ebbidens doesn’t laugh with him. Her eyes narrow, lips pursed in a frown as she glances around the yard, suspicious: All visitors are supposed to sign in. “She turns twelve on the king’s birthday,” she says, turning back toward the house with an unspoken command.
The man rolls the pear between his hands. “Worth the wait,” he says, before he takes a bite, juice dripping down his chin. “Fruit needs to be ripened.”
Rage boils inside me and I dig my fists deeper into my stomach, pinning myself down before I can lunge out and rip his disgusting eyes out of his head to keep him from looking at my sister like she’s already his.
Laughing, still eating the pear, the man follows Mistress Ebbidens back to the house. Bending over my knees, I hold my breath until I hear their footsteps recede and the door shuts again, returning the yard to its eerie quiet. Only then do I allow myself to breathe and move out of hiding, to confirm that Cadence is as oblivious to the man’s threat as she was to my promises.
I could take Cadence right now and run. At my command, she would wrap her arms around my neck and I would carry her over the crumbling wall that edges the back of the property. We would disappear like shadows into the Brim and share an hour, maybe a night of stolen freedom. But the magic that hides her freckles ties back to the king, same as the loyalty spells on all his soldiers. If she goes missing, all he has to do is twitch a single thread of magic, like a spider sitting fat in his web, and his provost will follow the trail straight to her. To me. No mercy for her age this time; we’d both be carved up like Thaelan, our blood painting a warning to all those below.
Nobody leaves Brindaigel.
I kiss Cadence one last time, hugging a bag of bones that jars against my hip without any warmth, any feeling.
“Avinea is still out there, Cade,” I whisper to her. “And I swear to you we’ll find it.”
Three