“Finn and I… we’d been living on the streets for years. You know how it is out there. It’s brutal. Cold. Unforgiving. When you don’t have money or power, you have to fight for everything you get.”
“I get it,” I said quietly. “Go on.”
She gave me a sidelong glance, searching for judgment. When she found none, she continued.
“In the Southside slums, there’s a woman who calls herself Mother Ashford.”
I stiffened. That name I knew.
She caught my reaction. “So, you’ve heard of her.”
“Slumlord,” I muttered. “Nasty piece of work.”
Elira nodded. “Yeah. It was one of those winters where there was just… nothing. No work. No food. People hiding in their homes, afraid to breathe too loud. We were starving, and Finn was already weak. So, I went to her.”
I didn’t interrupt. Just waited.
“At first, the jobs were small—petty theft, courier runs. She’s got her claws in half the underground trade in that part of the city. With my speed and size, I made a perfect runner. In and out, fast. I never questioned it.”
Her voice dropped, going rough at the edges.
“But then six months ago, she sent me to pick up a shipment from another dealer—Silas. Turned out it was a setup. His men jumped me. Beat me. I managed to get away, but the drugs were gone.”
She went quiet for a second. I didn’t push. I could feel the storm coming.
“I thought she was kind,” Elira said after a moment, her voice shaking. “You’d laugh if you saw her—silver hair, warm smile, dresses with little embroidered flowers. She looked like someone’s grandmother. That’s how she gets you.”
Her hands clenched in the sheets.
“When I came back empty-handed, she didn’t yell. Didn’t threaten. Just looked at me and said,‘It’s okay, sweetheart. You’ll just have to pay for the loss, that’s all.’Like I could pull coin from thin air.”
I felt my chest tighten.
“She smiled while they dragged me in front of her crew,” she said, the words sharp now. “Stripped my shirt. Tied me to a post. And whipped me. No warning. No pause.”
My fists clenched. “Why didn’t you phase out?”
She looked at me then—tired, bitter. “In front of a room full of slimeballs and lowlifes? If they’d seen what I could do, they would’ve dragged me to the nearest bounty office and sold me to the king themselves. I’d have been strung up before sunset.”
A beat of silence stretched between us. Then, without really thinking about it, I made a decision.
I pulled up the back of my shirt.
“What are you—?” She sat up sharply. The moment she saw, she froze, her breath catching.
Her hand hovered near my back, like she wanted to reach out but didn’t dare.
The scars that crossed my skin were brutal — deep, pale lines overlapping again and again, a map of violence I hadn’t asked for. Each one a sentence passed by a man who had called himself my father.
“What happened?” she whispered.
“My old man was a cruel bastard. And I often disappointed him.” My voice was flat, empty. “You see scars. I see memories that never stop bleeding.”
Her throat worked like she was swallowing glass. “Slade—”
I let my shirt fall and met her gaze.
“Don’t be ashamed of surviving, spitfire,” I said. “It’s okay to feel the pain. It just makes you stronger, in the end.”
