BLOOD IN MY MOUTH, SALT in my eyes, and the sound of encouragement shouted by a ring of featureless men clutching paper bets in their fists. I grin, savoring it all.
My opponent throws a punch but it goes wild, above my shoulder. I duck out of the way and slam her hard in the ribs, knocking her back a step. Lunge, parry, block, and thrust echoes in my head, and while I have no sword, I have my hands, and they can be just as lethal.
I manage a sharp strike to her temple before I dart back to catch my breath. The girl lurches forward, teeth bared and eyes wild: All rules forgotten as she attacks for the win.
I welcome the battle.
We’re nothing but shoulders and knees and strangled curses as we roll across the floor, scratching, grabbing, hurting. The girl disappears and it’s the oil-slick smile of the man who wants to buy Cadence; it’s Alistair Pembrough, King Perrote, the walls around Brindaigel that fall beneath my blows. Hate feeds my adrenaline. Hate and self-loathing and a need for blood, for punishment.
Panting, I pin the girl with a knee to her hip. Blood smears her features and the eyes that stare up at me are swollen, bright with pain and a needling look of fury. She grabs my hair—kept loose, the way the men like it—and I raise my fist for one last strike, inwardly apologizing to her pretty face and her desperate hunger, as familiar as my own. But only one of us can win, and I want it more than she does.
The girl releases my hair and shakes her head, palms flashed toward me. Claiming defeat.
“You’re done,” a voice barks. Palif, a bartender, hauls me back as another man shoulders the girl to her feet. Men jeer at her loss, throwing wadded up betting slips in disgust. Palif presses coins into the girl’s hands—a meager fifth of what I’ll earn as the winner, barely worth the bruises in the morning—before she’s spun into the waiting arms of a frowning young man who hurries her outside.
Someone offers me an arm up and I accept, touching my nose to find it dripping blood. A handkerchief is shoved in my direction and I rock my head back, staggering toward a table.
Men rattle their own tables with satisfaction as Reed, the organizer, pays out their wins. Pinching my nose, I slump in my seat, heart aching with adrenaline, with fear, with the feeling of absolute power.
And lurking underneath, the feeling of absolute helplessness. With every high comes the inevitable, unavoidable low. Pain layered upon pain; there’s no escaping the broken heart inside me.
Someone buys me a beer that I accept with a grunt of acknowledgment, lowering my head just long enough to take a drink. By the time Reed approaches me with my bag and my percentage, a headache’s arrived, thick and blistering.
“Am I good?” I ask.
Reed clicks coins together in his palm, expression grim. Wordlessly, he drops the money on the table and I pocket it without looking, as if ashamed. Maybe I am, profiting from my anger, legitimizing my hate.
But not enough to stop.
Leaning my elbows into the table, I curl bloody fingers around the beer glass and roll it along its bottom rim, watching leftover suds slink down the sides. “How is he?” I ask, and despite myself, my eyes scan the crowded bar, searching for my father’s back among those that fill the shadows.
“Alive,” says Reed.
“And he’s good?” I already know the answer: My father’s tab comes straight out of my winnings before they ever reach me, and I had coins to spare tonight.
“He’s good,” Reed says anyway.
I nod, sniffing back a runner of snot and blood. “So is she,” I say, standing, dragging the strap of my bag over my shoulder. “In case he asks.” My eyes briefly meet Reed’s before they dart away. I can’t bear the looks he gives me, the pity.
“He never asks,” says Reed.
“Tell him anyway.”
“Tell him yourself.”
I scowl in reply, pulling my hair over my shoulder. He knows my father hasn’t spoken to me since I told him that it was my fault Cadence was caught in the tunnels, that it’s my fault she’s locked away with bleeding fingers and empty eyes and no memory of her own name. I pay his tab to keep him here, drunk, so he doesn’t feel the need to ever come home to me, angry.
Wadding up the bloody handkerchief, I shove it in the pocket of my skirt. “What do you have open tomorrow night?”
“Nothing,” he says.
I look at him, pressing my bleeding knuckles to my mouth, calmed by the metallic taste. “I saw your lists when I came in. What do you have?”
“Nothing for you,” says Reed. “That”—he tips his chin toward the fighting ring—“is not what I pay for.”
“That’s what your patrons pay for,” I say hotly. “Nobody wants a clean fight.”
“But they expect a fair one.” He shifts his weight, arms folding over his chest. “You’re going to kill somebody one of these days. Or you’re going to get yourself killed. And it’s not going to happen here.”
My teeth clench, biting back my rising anger. “I had it under control—”
“Find somewhere else to fight.”
“Everywhere else wants sixty percent.”
“Nobody else knows why you’re doing this,” he returns. “Nobody else knows your father.”
“You can’t stop me,” I say. “I barely make a tretka working the fields. I need this money!” I need this power, this feeling of being in control of something, even if it’s only how much pain I can withstand.
“He’s already lost one of his daughters—”
“She’s not dead!”
Heads turn toward us and I scowl away the curious stares and whispers. Reed sighs, rocking his head back. He was a fighter too, once, and his body still bears the memory of that strength. The inner anger. “You can’t save anyone making ten tretkas a night,” he says at last.
The beer sizzles in my head, watery but strong, and I suddenly crave more of it, enough to float down the streets of the Brim and over the wall of the city, out into the gorge.
But beer costs money.
I stare at Reed’s chin, the thin lips half hidden beneath his mustache. “Maybe I could make money upstairs,” I say, and my stomach turns just considering it. “You only take fifty percent of that.”
“Nobody wants a girl who’s going to bite.”
“I wouldn’t—” I stop, cheeks turning hot. Defy expectation, I think. Thaelan would never forgive me if I chose that path. But he’s dead and Cadence isn’t. “I need this, Reed,” I say, an inch away from begging.
“Go home.” Reed turns away, dismissing me.
“Where is that?”
Reed stares down at me, unrepentant. “Not here.”
Not here, not there, not anywhere. Like Cadence, I’m an orphan with a family.
I take the long way through the Brim, head bowed and arms clutching my bag to my chest, diffusing my anger in the cool autumn air.
I need that money.