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Mother said Eldest should stay home because the city was a big place that she was no longer used to, and they had lost her in it once before.

The afternoon passed in chores while shadows lengthened outside.

Eldest helped her mother in the kitchen, all the while looking to the front door for Rebekka’s return. When the stew was ready, Mother took a bowl up to the attic, where Father worked through the day. Eldest told herself it was something in the slow climbing of those stairs that made her follow, to find out what sadness it was that weighed her mother down. Surely it wasn’t something as small as the iron pennies in her purse? Eldest could eat less, do more chores…

She told herself it was concern for her mother that made her climb so stealthily behind her and listen at the foot of the attic ladder. But she knew there was another side to that coin. Mistrust had been scored into her, deep as the darkness had. It was something she’d brought with her out of the mansion, and hate it though she might, it had its hooks in her.

“…don’t need to send Rebekka…the Academy…” Mother’s voice.

“Nine marks, nine hundred pennies!” Father.

“Cocran!”

“We can’t afford to have the healer round again—”

“But…when he comes—that one…he’ll give us something, won’t he? He’ll want the girl back.” A pleading in her mother’s tone. Eldest’s whole body clenched like a fist. It was the taint of mistrust, the dirt inside her, that was making this happen. If she hadn’t listened, they would still love her.

“Maybe he will, maybe he won’t, there’s no contract.” The sound of shuffling papers. “Are you going to argue with him?”

“No…but…”

“And if he does throw a few pennies at us…it’s not like the healer can stop it, just slow things—”

“He can try. There are medicines…”

“Medicines we can’t afford. Even nine marks would get eaten up by what they charge!”

“But—”

“If she gets any sicker they won’t take her. And if the Academy spends that much on her they’ll pay for medicines too. And when she leaves there, she can have anything she wants, take anything she wants!”

“She won’t leave, though. You know what they do—”

“Enough. It’s already done. I sent the letters yesterday.”

Eldest had until this moment been paralysed with shock. The words “He’ll want the girl back” ran through her mind like a bramble tearing at everything, filling her skull with blood. They couldn’t have done it to her, not her mother whose arms were a haven, not her father with his kind eyes and hard work. They couldn’t have given her away back then. They couldn’t be doing it again. Not for mere money.

At last, she found the strength to release her death grip on the ladder. Rebekka chose that moment to return, racing up the stairs at a run as Eldest turned to go down them.

“There’s a man…” Rebekka’s eyes were wild in the white of her face. “He’s coming.”

“Did you—What does he look like?”

“His smile…that grin. He saw me and smiled. I just ran.”

It was enough of a description to remove all doubt. Day-Father, Night-Father, it didn’t matter. He was here. Her family had given her up. Again! Eldest sank to her knees. An expert in pain had hurt her many times, but this…this came from inside, there was no escaping it, no surrendering to it, a kind of suffering she had formed no calluses against.

The darkness that flooded from her came like a dam breaching. With vicious force of will she tried to erase herself, not from the attention of those around her or from the approaching Day-Father, but from the world itself, completely. She was done with everything, better to be gone entirely, as if she had never been. Gone from true parents who didn’t want her, and from false ones who wanted her for terrible reasons. Gone from hurting herself and hurting others. The pulsing darkness faded, leaving the walls around her grey and brittle. She had hollowed herself. A long-banked potential expended in a few brokenhearted beats.

She rose slowly, feeling too fragile for the scream she wanted to unleash.

“Who are you?” Rebekka blinked. “Mother! Mother! There’s a girl in our house!” She reached to grab Eldest.

Stunned to be seen, and empty as if all of her strength had been tipped out of her, Eldest swayed aside, evading Rebekka’s grasp and running down the stairs.

“Cocran! We’re being robbed!”

Eldest turned at the base of the stair to see her mother on the ladder, staring at her, no recognition in her face.