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Chapter One
Aika
She’s dead.
Damian’s words repeat over and over in my mind, louder than Mother’s screams. Louder than Damian’s pleading with her for forgiveness, like a desperate, beaten hound coming back to its master.
She’s dead.
Zaina isdead.
I try to reconcile this information, to make sense of it somehow, but I can’t.
None of this makes any sense.
The sound of glass breaking pulls my attention back to the commotion in the room.
Mother’s chest is rising and falling at a rapid pace, her violet eyes wide with fury and maybe pain.
I didn’t know she could feel pain.
I didn’t know she could feel anything.
She hurls another vase across the room directly at Damian and the sleazy alchemist before the latter takes off running. Damian, though, just stands there and takes the abuse — begging for her forgiveness as the wounds on his face re-open and bleed.
Half of his body was burned in the same fire he claims took Zai’s life, but he’s still alive… and she’s... she’s dead.
Dead.
“I—” I begin, trying to find my voice. “I need to go after Mel. She should know. I’m sure I can still catch—”
“No!” Mother roars.
I freeze in place, gritting my teeth.
“No,” she repeats, stalking closer to Damian and grabbing a fistful of his hair. “No one leaves the city.”
She drags Damian toward the back of the room, undoubtedly leading him to the dungeons, without another glance back at me.
Mother and I both know I will obey, even if I despise myself right now for it.
Still, I can’t stay in her underground throne room any longer. Before I know what I’m doing, I’m in the middle of the slums, staring up at a shabby building I last saw just hours ago.
I barely register sneaking into the building and taking each despicable man out one by one, like the nightmare of their sins come back to haunt them.
Then I’m outside again.
The bottle in my hand is nearly empty now, all but a single drop of turpentine sloshed onto the wooden panels of the cramped house in front of me. A match rests in my trembling grasp, and my heartbeat is thundering so loudly in my ears, it almost drowns out my racing thoughts in the eerily quiet night.
Almost, but not quite.
My chest tightens and stomach twists as I think about my proud, fierce sister dying engulfed in flames.
I think about the despicable slavers inside, and the way they have brought nothing but misery to everyone around them.
Mostly, I think about the fact that Zaina might still be here if I had gone after her instead of staying here, playing the good soldier to Mother and enabling men like the ones inside.
It’s that last thought that finally propels me into motion. My fingers move automatically through the familiar action of dipping the match into a vial. A blue flame ignites at the end, flaring up to fill the glass before dying down to something smaller.
