“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Red,” I gently admonished.
“Icankeep it. And I will.” She pushed her pert nose into the air, and I had to smile at the look of haughty defiance on her face.
“Take care of yourself, Red,” I said, my eyes tracing over her every feature, committing each to memory.
The look of defiance dropped from her face, and she finally looked her age—a ripe nineteen, just starting her time in the pleasure house. Red was mine—all mine—for a time. But the current Madame had taken a keen interest in her and was training her to take over the house.
Once that happened, she could no longer be mine.
“Love you, Lex,” Red whispered, her voice thick with tears. She was the only one who’d ever said those words to me, and I hoarded them close to my heart. They were my most precious treasure.
“To the moon and through all the stars, Red,” I said before gently kissing the side of her mouth. My tongue came away with the salty taste of tears.
I heard the faintthumpsof feet down the hall and saw Red’s mask instantly slide back in place. Either it was a John coming to find her, or the Madame. Either way, I didn’t want to be here for that conversation.
I gave Red one last weak smile before I pushed open the door, sunlight quickly bathing the dark interior and casting Red in an angelic glow. I took one last look, wanting to remember her just like this, before I stepped outside and closed the door on the first eighteen years of my life.
Chapter 2
Lex
Freezing rain pelted the top of the lean-to in the alley just outside a tavern. The fabric that comprised the roof and walls of my shelter was worn and threadbare, with holes of various sizes scattered throughout. Whether due to old age or the consumption of bugs and other animals, I wasn’t sure. But I also wasn’t in any place to complain.
I’d scavenged the ratty and torn cloth from the waste bin left outside of the washing house in the lower district. Clothes, no matter how disintegrated or filthy, were a hot commodity for street rats like myself, and I felt no remorse when I elbowed another dirt-encrusted, feral child in the nose to reach the basket first.
What a ways I’ve fallen.
Before my mother turned me out, I would never have hurt another person, much less a child. I knew, from ample personal experience, what physical pain felt like, and tried my godsdamned hardest to make sure I never inflicted that same pain on another.
But months homeless on the streets, scrounging together scraps of food or a bit of coin from odd jobs, changed my perspective on certain things.
Like minor violence in the face of an impending winter.
While barely held together, the long cloths created a thin barrier between me and the harsh elements that plagued Vespera from late fall through early spring. We’d just entered the rainy season, and the temperature was dropping rapidly.
A steadyplinksounded as the small holes in the oversaturated fabric let the rain inside my small structure.
At first, I’d simply let the drops fall until they coated the ground beneath me, soaking my only pair of pants completely until I felt the cold all the way through my skin and into my bones. It settled there, deep and unrelenting, each night that I returned to my tent. Though the effort was rather futile, I now kept a cracked wooden bowl I’d pilfered from the tavern my shanty leaned against under the worst of the holes in the ceiling. The water was pure and relatively clean, so I saved it for drinking and, on rare occasions, washing.
I was sure I stank like the trash that framed the other side of my tent—I hadn’t bathed properly since even before I’d left the pleasure house and my home. My poor hygiene habits, coupled with the location of my shelter, left little room for clean and enticing scents—other than the smell currently wafting through the open door of the tavern’s kitchens.
My stomach growled in low protest, cinching tight until I was sure I felt my organs pressed against my back.
When was the last time I ate?
My brow furrowed in thought.
An apple I nicked from the fruit cart two days ago. I’d neededsomethingto sustain me, and found that my morals and scruples relaxed the hungrier I became.
It was just one apple, I surmised. The fruit seller had an entirecartfull of them. He wouldn’t miss one.
The joke was on me, apparently, because he sent the local Mage guard chasing me through alleys after he discovered my dirt-covered hand touching his precious wares.
By the way he screamed, you’d think I killed his cat.
Or bedded his daughter.
Neither was the case, obviously.
