“I’ll meet with him,” I said. “But I’m not promising anything.”
The woman smiled. “That’s all we ask.
We were maybe twenty feet from the market when I heard the shout.
“Marv Farren’s daughter! Stop her!”
Everything went cold as Assembly guards headed towards us through the crowded street. I didn’t stop to see what they wanted. I ran.
Kora swore and sprinted beside me, her hand already moving for her elemental magic. I felt the air pressure shift as she pulled power, preparing a gust that could knock someone back or create a distraction. A guard stepped directly into our path, his baton crackling with blue lightning. Air magic.
“Hold!” he barked.
Kora threw her hand forward, and a concentrated blast of wind slammed into him. He staggered back, arms windmilling, and crashed into a stack of crates. We took off while he was down.
“This way!” Kora grabbed my hand and hauled me left, toward the maze of narrow streets that made up the Tangle—a district so poorly planned that even the Assembly guards got lost in it regularly. Behind us, I could hear shouting, the clatter of boots on stone.
We ran until my lungs burned and my legs ached, taking random turns, doubling back, using every trick we’d learned over the years. Finally, when I couldn’t hear pursuit anymore, we ducked into a recessed doorway and pressed ourselves into the shadows. I bent over, hands on my knees, trying to catch my breath.
“What,” Kora panted, “the fuck was that about?”
I shook my head, still trying to process. “They knew who I was. They called me by name.”
“Your father’s name, specifically.”
The cold feeling in my gut turned to freezing. “We need to get home.”
“Juno—”
“Now.”
We didn’t talk on the way back. We moved fast, sticking to the side streets and back alleys, avoiding the main thoroughfares where Assembly guards might be watching.
Marv Farren’s daughter.
They’d been looking for me specifically. Which meant they knew something. But what? We’d been so careful with our scavenging runs, never taking too much from one place, never drawing attention. And my father was even more careful with his side business, only dealing with trusted clients, never leaving a paper trail. So how had they found out?
Our shop sat at the end of a quiet street in the Craftsman Quarter, a modest two-story building with a workshop for the bottom level. Smoke rose from the forge chimney, which meant my father was working.
The front door was open. I stopped so suddenly that Kora crashed into me.
“Juno?”
The door wasneveropen. Not unless someone was coming or going. And even then, my mom was fanatical about closing it to keep the street dust out of her lungs.
“Something’s wrong.” I approached slowly, every sense screaming that I was walking into danger.
The interior of the house was dim, lit only by the fading daylight through the windows. Nothing looked disturbed. The sitting room was neat, the kitchen beyond it clean and organized. But something felt off.
“Mom?”
No answer.
Kora moved past me, heading toward the workshop door. “Marv? Tessa?”
Still nothing.
We found my mom in her bedroom, sitting in her chair by the window. She looked up as we entered, and I saw the tear tracks on her face.
