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Chapter Seven
Aika
Ibolt awake after only four short hours of sleep, my neck and back covered in a sheen of sweat, but then, that’s hardly newsworthy. I’ve long since grown used to the nightmares that haunt me, the only things in my life that have never abandoned me.
Besides Mother, of course.
It takes a moment to orient myself in the vast room of the estate, so unlike the cramped one I rent above The Drunken Pumpkin. This one is pristine, all rich colors and plush fabrics. The bed could fit six of me, and the fur-lined blankets are warmer than anything I keep in my room above the tavern.
Fresh flowers bloom in a crystal vase, and portraits hang on the walls of me as a small girl with large dark eyes shaped like half-moons, round cheeks and sleek black hair, looking up at a man with similar features.
He looks nothing like my real father, at least, from what I can remember of the ruined man who left me to fend for myself on the streets.
Maybe this is why lying comes so easily, because I am surrounded by nothing but untruths in every aspect of my life.
The room above the bar still feels more fitting for a girl like me, rickety bed and all. Twelve years later, and the opulence of this entire estate still feels like someone else’s life.
Then again, sometimes the bloodshed feels that way too.
I pull a simple gray dress from my wardrobe, one that won’t stand out too much in the slums. My enforcer’s mask is carefully concealed in the back, where it will stay, for the foreseeable future. Pure white lacquer with a single blue flame under the left eye for the identity Madame made me.
The Flame. Her Flame.
Until now.
Now, she’s molding me into something else entirely.
* * *
It’sa long walk from Mother’s estate to the slums, but I don’t mind.
The exertion helps me drown out the thoughts running on a loop through my head, and it’s easy to lose myself in the mass of people crowding the streets.
Bondé is a port city, a melting pot of every known culture and a few that aren’t, so the faces that pass me range from deep onyx to translucently pale, with every shade in between.
My golden-beige skin and high cheekbones are more common than most, though, since Western Islands were some of the first to trade with Bondé.
First stop today is to see if any of the street urchins have anything for me. They make the perfect spies, since no one looks twice at an orphan, something I know well.
I spot one of them immediately.
Jessa bears little resemblance to me. Her angular eyes are blue, and her hair is a tangled mass of light-brown curls, but something in her dirty face and sly, determined expression has always struck a chord with me.
Maybe it was the hollow cheekbones and jutting collarbone that made me pay her for the things she hears.
Or maybe it’s that, for all I tell myself I’m better off with Mother having found me, I don’t want Jessa to have to make the same choices I did. I was younger than she is now when Mother caught me picking pockets on a street not far from here.
“You’re different from the others.” The strangely beautiful woman puts her hand on my chin, turning my face toward her. “How would you like to come live with me?”
“I’m not a brothel girl.” I hurriedly take several steps back, and the woman’s face softens into a semblance of a smile, though there is still no warmth in it.
“I’m not speaking of anything so crass as that, my girl. Just things like this, like you’re already doing, but instead they would be at my discretion. In return, you’ll have a roof over your head, food in your belly. Best of all, you’ll have a family.”
I’m no one’s fool.
There is darkness in this woman behind her perfectly manicured fingernails and coiffed hair and the smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. But I’m also hungry, and tired, and what she’s proposing sounds better than the life I’m living now.
My hesitation is all the encouragement she needs to extend her hand to me, and the answering growl of my stomach is enough to make me take it.
