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Reacting on instinct, I pushed him back with a propulsion of air, just as I had with Uncle Palmer. And beside me, Melaina produced a dagger from her cloak before she threw it at him. When she caught him right in the eye, he screamed and fell to his knees, clutching the protruding handle.
My eyes widened as blood gushed down his cheek. “Is he going to die?”
“I doubt it.” Aunt Melaina’s punishing grip jerked me backward toward the portal. “But let’s not wait around to find out, either.”
With that, she swirled her hand, and the crackling edges began to darken and shrink, closing rapidly. Before the portal had completely compressed into nothing, she jumped into the dwindling gap and took me with her, leaving her enraged son behind.
In front of us, a black hole loomed. We were sucked into it with a rush of wind. A pulling sensation gripped my skin, and it felt as if I were falling.
Screaming, Aunt Melaina and I held on to each other for dear life as we left the Outer Realms behind and entered the unknown.
Chapter 1
Quilla
EIGHTEEN YEARS LATER
“Do you remember the plan this time?”
The goading question caused me to cinch my drawstring bag closed with an irritated snap, momentarily imagining the pull cord was tightening around my aunt’s throat instead of the sack. Inside the burlap, the freshly baked loaves I’d just stuffed into it tumbled about uneasily.
But do I remember? Really?
Casting Melaina a hard glance, I ground out, “I told you, last time wasn’t my—”
“Fault?” she finished for me, flashing that ever mocking and sardonic smirk of hers. “Yes, so you said, darling. Multiple times. And all I’m saying in return is that I don’t give a shit. Don’t fuck things up this time.”
Flipping her mass of red hair behind her shoulder, she tipped her chin up like arrogant royalty. From the way she sat with a rigidly straight spine while smoothing the extravagant pools of her emerald green skirt over her lap, one might think she should be seated on a throne in a castle right now, ordering about a kingdom. But no, lucky me, I was the only subject she liked to boss around. And we were far and gone away from any kind of opulence that could even resemble a castle.
The back alley we occupied smelled pungently of decaying cabbage—wait, make that horse shit, since her mount was currently lifting its tail and defecating between us.
Melaina sent the horse a dry, unimpressed glance from atop the broken wagon that lay turned on its side where she’d perched herself, and she sniffed. “Rude.” Then she dismissed the animal with an arch of her eyebrows and turned her haughty expression back to me. “The goal is to sell all the bread, not give it away.”
“I know that,” I muttered. “And I only gave away one loaf.” One. But she acted as if I’d dispersed our entire stock without any compensation whatsoever.
“To a filthy street urchin,” Melaina argued. “Making all the other little ragamuffins loitering about and watching think it perfectly acceptable to take their own free loaves as well. Seriously, Quilla. How could you not notice when five more were stolen right out from under your nose?”
With a growl, I unceremoniously tossed our bag full of wares I planned to sell in the market into the pushcart beside me and ground my teeth.
The problem wasn’t that I hadn’t noticed the robberies; I just hadn’t put all that much effort—or any effort at all—into retrieving the stolen merchandise. But the kids had been so thin and half-starved to death. Being out the price of six stupid loaves wouldn’t sink us. And it had probably fed them for a week.
“We’re not running a charity,” my aunt lectured. “That profit is our livelihood. How the hell are we supposed to go anywhere after this with no funds?”
“We still turned a profit,” I argued, but not too heatedly because our so-called profit hadn’t been impressive. At all. It might cover the cost of meals for us, but it wouldn’t come close to paying for any kind of room and board along the roads. We’d have to sleep out on the ground in the open air and around a campfire every night.
And neither of us enjoyed camping.
Melaina cried out her frustration and tossed her hands in the air. “I swear, you are the most useless, incompetent—”
“I just don’t see why I have to vend the bread,” I said.
Fisting my hands down at my sides, I lifted my brows at my aunt and waited for an answer to that. I hated working in the market. She knew this. I despised crowds and people and price haggling. Melaina was the one who adored attention and being among the masses, somehow sweet-talking her customers into paying double her asking prices. Working the market-side of things was her skill. Not mine.
“Because you stabbed the last gem dealer we sought in the thigh, dearest, and their kind talk amongst themselves. You and I both know you won’t be welcomed back into any of their shops with open arms again, not after that stupid stunt. So now I must be the one to talk to the jewelers, and you have to sell the bread.”
Stupid stunt? Pfft.
“I gave him fair warning.” He really shouldn’t have been so surprised by the wound. “I thought I explained myself very clearly when I told him he’d meet the sharp end of my knife if he didn’t keep his hands to himself.” Shrugging, I demanded, “How am I in the wrong for keeping my word?”
