The Contest (a fantasy adventure) Sample
ABOUT THIS BOOK:
An orphan with no one but her brother. A prince with everything but his freedom. Only one can win ...
In a world of haves and have nots, where petty crime is punishable by death and magic is forbidden, a deadly contest unfolds in secret. Twelve competitors are mysteriously invited. The winner gets one wish.
For 17-year-old Briar Bishop, this means saving her brother from execution by guillotine, and she’s not going to let anything or anyone get in her way. Especially not Leo Davenbrook, the tantalizing High Prince, a mischievous flirt who’s grown up with everything she never had and whose very presence threatens her chance at survival. She has no idea a darker battle wages in secret, one that could lead to a fate far more disastrous than the death of her brother.
TRY BEFORE YOU BUY:
Prologue
The wish came early like some wishes do.
The desperate ones.
The dying ones.
Those come the earliest.
This one arrived on the cusp of a plan just as it was being set in motion. A glimpse of the future, throbbing like a heartbeat in the old man’s palm. Though the night was calm and quiet, he could feel the panic of another. Fire licking up the stands. Smoke filling the air. Thunder and lightning and screaming all around as spectator trampled spectator in a desperate attempt to escape. The scene swept through him as if he were in the center of the chaos, as if he were the boy.
Standing on the dais, unmoving as the destruction unfolded, his eyes fastened on the girl.
Then the locket.
Destroy it.
The boy wished for that destruction with every fiber of his being.
For only then could she be killed.
Chapter One
Briar
“I hate them.”
The words escaped between clenched teeth in a cloud of hazy white. They belonged to one Briar Bishop, a golden-eyed, raven-haired, seventeen-year-old girl who hated a great many things. Parox, for starters, and the devastation the illness wrought on innocent lives. The commonwealth’s nobility, and the blind eye it turned to so much suffering. Guillotine Square, and the executions that took place there every Red Moon. Magic, and the havoc it brought upon her family. And the Illustrians. The nauseating Illustrians, to whom her hatred was currently directed. She watched with slitted eyes as a group of them made their way through The Skid—finely-dressed as always, sticking out like peacocks in a flock of sparrows.
They came on any day of the week, but Nuach seemed to be the most popular. Extra aggravating as that particular day was already overcrowded, which was probably why the Illustrians preferred visiting on Nuach. The Skid’s inhabitants weren’t scattered throughout the capital city of Antis working laboriously, but condensed and on full display—hanging laundry out to dry, bargaining for food with the peddlers who sold vegetables and dried fish and butchered meat, hauling bags of water from a well north of the railroad tracks—while the Illustrians filtered through in tightly-knit groups, led by a tour guide, flanked by a constable. They gawked and they gaped and they pointed, capturing bits and pieces with their sleek technology like sightseers at a menagerie, wrinkling their noses anytime a breeze swept up the slum’s main artery and stirred up the trademark scent of raw sewage. It was a scent Briar no longer noticed. The Illustrians, however? She never failed to notice them, no matter how commonplace they had become.
“I wouldn’t mind being one of them,” Lyric said.
This was Briar’s brother. At thirteen, Lyric was growing like pulled taffy with never enough food to feed him. Like his sister, he had black hair and golden eyes. Unlike his sister, he didn’t hate the Illustrians; he envied them. Sometimes Briar suspected he admired them. A fact that made her stomach twist into a knot. There was so much Lyric didn’t understand. And a significant amount he didn’t know.
Overhead and to the east, the morning sun stretched across the rooftops of shanties so squished together that from above, they resembled a patchwork quilt of rusty browns. The light extended to meet the very edge of one rooftop in particular—Rosco’s booth.
Briar hated Rosco’s booth.
At the moment, Briar also needed Rosco’s booth.
A moral quandary she had faced too many times in her young life. A moral quandary that had her wrinkling her nose more aggressively than the despicable Illustrians.
The breeze returned, tugging a strand of hair from her braid. It caught in the corner of her mouth. She pulled it away and tucked it behind her ear with the hand she hid inside a black, fingerless glove. Two men on a motorized scooter zoomed past—calling out a curse as they went—swerving so close they practically ran over Lyric’s boots. Briar grabbed her brother by the elbow and yanked him back, nearly tumbling over the vendor behind them.
“Oi!” the proprietor shouted. “Watch where you’re going, would you?”
She steadied herself, straightened her well-worn parka, and with a lift of her chin, wove her way through the crowded thoroughfare toward the booth she hated. An outbreak of Parox was spreading through The Skid like wildfire, polluting the nights with a violent chorus of wheezing and hacking that left without treatment, almost always concluded in death by asphyxiation. Their neighbor—Mrs. Simmons, a woman who had been like a grandmother to them these past couple years had fallen victim. Recently, she’d grown so weak she couldn’t go into work—a death sentence in and of itself. The herbal remedies found at local apothecary stalls would no longer do. Mrs. Simmons needed an antibiotic. Those were not sold in places like The Skid. Nobody could afford them.
Unless …
It was Lyric’s unless, spoken with raised eyebrows as he wiggled the rolled-up parchment in the air. Last month, Rosco had given her brother the parchment, as well as a set of oils, and ever since, a pile of bright paintings had been accumulating on their rickety-table-for-two, as out of place as the Illustrians.
A generous gift, Lyric had said.
More like a strategic temptation, Briar had thought.
“When will that brother of yours quit breaking his back at the Docks and join me here?” It was the same question Rosco had been asking ever since he caught Lyric spray-painting the side of a broken-down taxi van with his friend, Jet. And while it was true—her brother did have a gift—he would not be an apprentice to a drunkard. Nor would he build his livelihood on the very people so happy to exploit them. This was the bigger issue in Briar’s mind. The one she couldn’t stomach. Every day, Rosco laughed with the Illustrians. Rosco posed for their insulting pictures. Then he took their money with his greasy hands, encouraging the exploitation, for the Illustrians could leave The Skid pleased with themselves for supporting local business.
More like lining the pockets of a local sot.
And yet here Briar was, stepping inside Rosco’s booth, ready to hand over one of Lyric’s paintings. She could smell the alcohol on Rosco even now, well before noon. Not only did he accept money from the Illustrians, he proved to each one that their tightly held prejudices were true. People like them—ciphers all throughout the commonwealth of Korah—were depraved degenerates. Any destitution they faced lay on their shoulders and their shoulders alone. That one whiff of alcohol negated centuries’ worth of injustice and oppression.
As soon as Rosco turned around and saw them standing there with the painting in hand, his jaundiced eyes went bright. “Are my sights deceiving me?”
Lyric smiled his lopsided smile. “We finally broke her down, Rosc.”
Briar shot him a dark look. He might be half a foot taller, but she was and would always be four years older, and for all intents and purposes, more of a mother than a sister, given the fact that she’d raised him these past ten years. “It’s one painting, Lyric. Just one. For Mrs. Simmons.”
“I hear she’s sick with the cough.” Rosco took the painting. This one, a dreamlike cottage nestled in the woods with beams of ethereal sunlight dappling through the trees. It was a scene Lyric had never laid his eyes upon. A creation in his mind, inspired from the stories he charmed Briar into telling. Stories she hardly remembered herself. And yet somehow, her little brother brought the vague memories to life with such astounding clarity, she had a hard time looking at them. Rosco held the parchment flat between his outstretched hands. “If it’s medicine you’re wanting, this will more than get it for her.”
“How soon do you think it will sell?” Lyric asked, an unmistakable note of excitement in his voice.
“If I was a betting man, and I am—” He shot them a wink. “Before the end of the day, I’d wager.”
Lyric went taller, prouder beside her.
Briar nodded matter-of-factly. “We’ll be back later, then.”
“He’s welcome to stay if he’d like.”
“And pose for pictures with the Illustrians? No thank you.” She took Lyric by the arm and pulled him from the booth, out into the crowd.
“Why can’t I stay?” he protested as she drew him along.
“Why do you think Rosco fills his belly with rotgut every night after he closes?”
“It’s a cheap way to fill his belly?”
“To dull his conscience. He knows what he’s doing is wrong.”
“Wrong? According to who—Briar the Judge?”
Briar rounded on him. “I’m no judge, Lyric.” She slid a glance at the constable on the corner, then stepped closer and lowered her voice. “It’s called having standards. And dignity. Rosco has neither.”
“Rosco is harmless.”
Briar closed her eyes. Rosco wasn’t harmless. Rosco was part of the problem. And now, so were they. Just like they’d been before. And yet, Mrs. Simmons needed that antibiotic. With a sigh, she gave her shoulders a weary lift. She was in no mood for a debate. “I’ll go back before sundown. If Rosco is right, then I might be able to get the medicine before curfew.”
They walked the rest of the way in silence, Lyric brooding, Briar lost in thought. So much so that when she pushed through the corrugated metal door of their shanty, she didn’t notice the strange and mysterious envelope on the dirt floor. Lyric tromped over the threshold, the sole of his boot leaving a dusty print on its gold lettering. He plopped down on their tattered sofa, its springs squeaking in protest, and began fiddling with their crank receiver—turning the lever, fiddling with the wires—until the fuzzy squawks gave way to a program with decent reception. On the table, the oils and parchment sat beside a pile of artwork so vivid and beautiful, it pinched at something deep inside Briar’s chest. Her brother was a talented artist. There was no denying it. But what was the point of such a gift here, in this place that demanded practicality?
“This becomes the latest in a string of death defying stunts, leaving the world to wonder—is this a cry for help, or is Prince Leo simply sowing his wild oats?”
Briar’s ears perked.
The program host was talking about the High Prince. She’d seen footage of him yesterday, projected on a holographic simulcast near Guillotine Square on her commute home from the Docks. She could still picture him—tall and broad, dark-haired and blue-eyed, arms spread wide as he soared like an eagle in full dive down the face of a cliff with a wing-like contraption strapped to his back. Briar’s stomach had swooped at the sight.
“That’s right, Ed. Old wounds are hard to heal. Which leads to another question on everyone’s mind. Will the High Prince be in attendance at today’s executions? He hasn’t set foot inside the Square since his mother’s murderer was brought to swift justice ten years ago—”
“Turn it off.” Briar’s voice whipped across the room like a snapped bowstring.
“But it’s the prince,” Lyric said. “You looove the prince. Or you hate him. I can never tell.”
She marched over, grabbed the receiver, and twisted the dial herself, Lyric’s teasing words echoing in the sudden silence.
“What’d you do that for?” he asked.
Briar didn’t answer. Her voice was stuck in her throat, trapped behind a rising tide of memories every bit as confusing now as they ever were.
A darkening sky.
Swirling clouds.
Mama’s fury.
Papa yelling at her to run.
“Briar?”
She opened her eyes, unsure when she’d closed them.
Lyric stood in front of her, his hand on her shoulder, concern tugging down the corners of his mouth. “You okay?”
“I’m fine, I just …” She blinked several times, her gloved hand curling around the locket resting in the dip of her clavicle. At times, she wanted to rip it off. Throw it away. But it was the last thing she had of her parents and taking it off might mean forgetting. And if she forgot, the monster that got her mother might get her, too. Briar couldn’t let that happen. She turned to the sink—a metal basin perched on top of a wooden barrel. “People’s heads are being loped off on national simulcast and thisis what the media cares about—whether or not the High Prince will be in attendance?”
She poured lukewarm water from a large pitcher into the basin and began scrubbing a tin cup with hands that trembled. “Excuse me for not having the stomach for it.”
What she said was true enough.
“What’s this?” Lyric asked, moving to the entryway. He scooped something up from the ground—the strange and mysterious envelope. Sunlight from one of their small windows reflected off the gold, looping cursive beneath the dust of Lyric’s boot print. To Miss Briar Bishop. “I didn’t think couriers came to The Skid.”
“They don’t,” Briar said, taking the odd delivery from her brother.
She turned it over to a wax seal stamped with the letter W. She sliced it open and pulled out the most peculiar parchment she had ever seen. Stiff, like a hardy card stock, but smoother than silk against her fingertips, and iridescent, like it couldn’t decide on one color and so chose to display a dazzling array of them. There were words in the same looping cursive as her name. The same color, too, as if they’d been stitched with golden thread.
The Honor of Your Presence is Requested
In the Capital City of Antis
On the Fifteenth Day of the Third Month.
Please Arrive Ten Minutes Before the Bell Tolls Midnight
Outside the Gates of the Squire Estate.
“The Squire Estate?” Lyric said, reading the words over her shoulder.
Lyric never had a formal education. Ciphers typically didn’t. But Briar’s father taught her to read when she was very young. She had done her best to pass that knowledge along. She and her brother saw the Squire Estate every day when they worked at the Docks. It had been boarded up and closed to the public for longer than she’d been alive. Curious, she turned the invitation over and found three lines, followed by a signature so absurd, she laughed.
There is something you want.
A wish you would die for.
Come and see how it might be granted.
“Sincerely, the Wish Keeper,” Lyric read, his voice brimming with the same excitement he’d used inside Rosco’s booth.
Briar rolled her eyes. “This isn’t real.”
“How do you know?”
“Because the Wish Keeper doesn’t exist.” It was nothing more than legend. There wasn’t actually a person out there somewhere in Korah, collecting and granting wishes. The whole thing was made-up, a story passed from parents to children, one she foolishly believed once upon a time. One that was as harmless as Rosco, only instead of perpetuating stereotypes and feeding oppression, it spread false hope and disillusionment.
“Lots of people believe otherwise.”
“Just because lots of people believe in something doesn’t make it true.” She tossed the invitation on the table next to Lyric’s paintings.
“You have to go,” he said.
“No, I don’t.”
Her brother looked incredulous.
“I’m sure it’s a prank, Lyric.”
“Who would play a prank on us?”
“I don’t know—Jet?”
“Jet would play a prank on me, not you. And he wouldn’t have the patience to wait a month and a half to see if we’d fall for it. Besides, he doesn’t have anything so fancy to play a prank with. Nobody we know does.” Lyric ran his fingertips across the curious, and no doubt fancy parchment with such a sense of wonder, it made her chest pinch in the same way his paintings did. “You really don’t want to find out if it’s real?”
“If it’s real, it’s wrong.”
Lyric scoffed. “You’re telling me there’s nothing you want?”
“Of course there are things I want.” Almost more than the things she hated. “An ethical King, for starters. A better life for everyone stuck here in The Skid. Dignity for our people. Fair wages, equal access to education, affordable medicine—”
“Is that all?” he asked, quirking his eyebrow.
“I want those things, little brother of mine. But they’re never going to happen.” Certainly not from any wish she might make. Briar learned long ago that her wishes fell on deaf ears. She couldn’t change the world, but she could take care of Lyric. That was her duty.
“As long as people keep thinking that way, it never will.”
She turned back to the sink, away from her brother’s disappointment, her brother’s words—and the aching way they made her think of their father—while Mrs. Simmons’ hacking cough pierced the walls from next door.
Chapter Two
Leo
Leo Davenbrook was tempted to jump. Strip naked and dive right off the cliff into the crashing sea below. Let the meddlesome media document that for the public. He knew they were out there, lurking in the distance with their cutting-edge equipment, eager to turn a profit on the images they captured. He could shake his bodyguards, but he could never shake them. They always managed to find him. As far back as Leo could remember. No matter the circumstance. No matter the situation. There they were, exploiting every piece of his life for the public’s eager consumption. As if he were nothing more than a collection of atoms that existed for the sole purpose of fetishizing, idolizing, critiquing. Sometimes, Leo believed it. Sometimes, he only remembered he was real when adrenaline coursed through his veins. This jump would make him feel real.
He leaned forward, staring down the cliff’s craggy face as the wind tousled his dark hair. He doubted anyone would live to boast about the thrill. Assuming the jumper could survive the sheer height, they would still have to contend with the rocks at the bottom. And there were plenty of those.
A chirp sounded behind him—an aggravation that tempted Leo all the more.
The royal stewards were summoning him via his cousin’s vox.
Leo had long since slipped his own off and tucked it away.
“You are so dead.” A thrill of excitement shaped Hawk’s words. Leo’s rebellion never ceased to amuse him. “So am I if I don’t answer.”
Death was inevitable, then. For him and his cousin. He’d rather meet it in a thrilling jump than at the hands of his father.
“Leo.”
His name came like a croon poured softly into his ear. He turned and pulled back his chin, surprised by Sabrina’s presence beside him. Her face swam in his vision, doubling as her hair danced in the wind. His lips turned up at the corners—a lazy, inebriated grin. “Sweet, sanguine Sabrina.”
The s’s felt funny on his tongue. He found himself elongating them.
“Sanguine is a fancy word to use when you’re drunk. Now come on. Let’s get you away from here.”
“I could make it, you know. This jump.” He leaned forward, calculating the exact place he’d have to land.
“I’m sure you think you can.” Sabrina took his hand.
If the tabloids captured this, they’d love her more than they already did.
“I should marry you right now. Give the people what they want. I think even my dad would approve.” Which spoke highly of Sabrina’s likability. Leo’s dad never approved. At least not when it came to Leo.
“Your wife should be someone you can kiss.”
“We’ve kissed.”
“Once, and I believe your exact words were ‘this feels incestuous’.”
Leo sighed. Unfortunately, it had. Perhaps because the two of them had been running around together in diapers, when her grandfather acted as senior chamberlain to his. His attention slid down her backside as she led him away from the drop. “Sightly, sublime Sabrina. Keeping me alive since we were kids.”
“It’s been a full time job. One nobody else is bothering to help me with.” She pointed her words at Hawk.
“He doesn’t care if I die,” Leo said.
“Of course he does.”
Leo snorted. If he died, Hawk would be that much closer to taking the throne. He’d just have to eliminate his own father and his older brother and he’d officially be next in line. While such a fate had become a millstone around Leo’s neck, it was a tasty morsel to Hawk, one that made him salivate. Sabrina sat Leo in the grass beside his cousin, a safe distance away from the drop. Hawk cradled a bottle in his lap.
His vox blinked in the dark and began chirping again.
“Turn it off before I throw it into the sea!” Leo clamped his mouth shut and looked sideways at nobody in particular. He was fairly certain he slurred the words, which meant he’d gone too far—bypassing the pleasant buzz of tipsiness and plummeting into inebriated misery. According to Sabrina, he brooded when he was drunk.
“If the sightly, sublime Sabrina really wanted to keep you alive,” Hawk said, “she should have made sure you went to Guillotine Square.”
The alcohol in Leo’s gut soured.
“I don’t understand why you didn’t just go.”
The very idea of Guillotine Square slicked his palms with sweat, stirring up memories he didn’t want stirred. Dark, viscous sea monsters lurking in the deep. He grabbed Hawk’s bottle and took a long drink.
“There are far less tedious duties,” Hawk pressed. “At least the executions are somewhat entertaining. You should start picking your battles. Stop poking an angry bear over ciphers.”
His cousin’s callous words made Leo want to stand back up and sprint headlong off the cliff. Sometimes he didn’t understand how they were related. But then, Leo was related to his father. “My mother was a cipher.”
“Your mother was murdered by a cipher.”
Leo frowned. She was. But she’d been one, too. A long time ago. He stared at the horizon, beyond Jethro Bay where the Afrean Sea stretched from east to west. “She was born out there, you know.”
He could feel Sabrina looking at him.
Of course she knew.
So did Hawk.
His mother had been born on the Forbidden Isle formerly known as Cambria. The disaster had killed her parents and forced her to evacuate when she was seventeen. Somehow, the destruction of her homeland made her that much more unreachable. As if the chasm of death could be widened by his inability to visit the place that knew her first.
Sabrina sat beside him and wrapped her arms around her knees. “I heard there were—Are there really—” She pulled a face, like she wasn’t exactly sure how to ask the question. “Creatures there?”
“Radioactive mutants.” Hawk wiggled his fingers and widened his eyes. They sparkled deviously. “My brother used to tell me they were attracted to the scent of urine, and if I didn’t stop wetting the bed, they would swim across the sea and gobble me up in my sleep.”
Sabrina shuddered. “That’s horrible.”
“It worked, though. I never wet the bed again.”
“And never slept again, either.” Leo finished the remains inside Hawk’s bottle, then drew back his arm and whipped it into the great abyss.
“They can’t really just … swim across the sea, can they?”
Silly, solicitous Sabrina.
The Forbidden Isle was home to the Domed City, once a fortress city. A military city. With a wall surrounding it. The epicenter of the disaster. As soon as it was evacuated, first responders erected a dome to keep the contamination within. “If there are mutants, they’ll be stuck inside until they die.”
“If they die.”
Leo jabbed his cousin with his elbow as the sound of footsteps approached behind, falling in perfect unison. Leo swore under his breath. His father had used Hawk’s vox to track them down, and judging by the number of footsteps, he’d sent an entire detachment to apprehend him.
An hour later, Leo was home—his mood black, his head splitting.
The grand atrium was still and quiet, but not unoccupied. Uniformed guards stood at attention inside like they did everywhere throughout the palace—as still as statues with their eyes trained straight ahead. It was as if they weren’t real. It was as if they were him. A fresh throb of pain stopped him in his tracks. He winced. The problem with drinking was, the distraction never lasted. And he always paid for it later.
Tenfold.
The soft sound of footfalls captured his ear.
He glanced over his shoulder at a young maidservant. She jerked to an awkward stop and fell into a curtsy, the gold shackle on her wrist shiny and new. A slave, just like every other servant inside the castle. Judging by the slightness of her build and the tremble in her shoulders, she was a young and terrified one.
Leo waited, curious if she’d speak.
Apparently, she needed some prompting.
“May I help you?”
The girl’s cheeks went from pink to pale. She started and stammered. Curtsied a second time. Then finally found her voice. “I apologize, Your Highness. I came to see how I might serve you.”
Her accent was born far away from the capital city of Antis, from the whole province of Mirum. By the way she rounded her vowels and shortened each R, she came from somewhere north. “You’re new.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
“What is your name?”
She blinked at him, looking as though he’d just asked her to explain a complicated math equation.
“It’s not a trap. I’m simply inquiring after your name.” It was, of course, a misleading statement. There was nothing simple about inquiring after a slave’s name. As soon as they sold themselves, they were stripped of their names, stripped of their identities, stripped of their fealties. As if doing so would also strip them of their ability to think for themselves, and thus eliminate any threat that might otherwise gather in secret. Like it had once before. A fact Leo would be wise to remember.
The girl’s attention slid to the nearest guard. “Nothing of significance, my Lord.”
“That’s a long sort of name, isn’t it?”
A blush rose in her cheeks.
“If I’m any connoisseur of accents, then I’d say you’re from …” He waffled between two options, then settled on the province further north. “Bahar?”
Her head came up quickly, her eyes bright with surprise.
He’d guessed correctly. Before he could say so, the far doors to the atrium swung open. His father entered sans his usual entourage. His staccato footsteps echoed in the large chamber, his face a mask of cold, contained fury.
The poor girl shoved her hand into the air. “Izar!” she choked.
His father frowned, then asked her to leave in a voice so low and ominous, she couldn’t scuttle away fast enough. When she was gone, the High King turned his ire upon his son. “Flirting with the slaves again, I see.”
“If flirting is being kind, then yes, Father. I guess I am.”
The king closed the gap between them in two long strides. He reached into the front pocket of Leo’s coat and yanked out the small circular band hidden inside. Leo’s vox. “So you do still own one.”
“I forgot to turn it on.”
“The public expected you at the executions today. Instead, they will no doubt see footage of you carousing on the cliffs with your foolish cousin.”
“We were still celebrating my birthday. I’m sure the public will understand.”
“The public will speculate.”
“Then let them speculate.”
Quicker than a viper, his father struck. He grabbed Leo by the collar of his coat and shoved him against the wall, his face thrust so close, Leo could see the vein throbbing in his temple. Only he did not yell. He never yelled. His voice came out eerily calm while rage swirled in his frosty blue eyes. “If the public thinks I cannot control my own son, then what is to stop them from thinking I cannot control them?”
Leo clenched his teeth, nose-to-nose with the man who was no longer taller.
“I have been more than indulgent. But here it ends. You’re eighteen now, which means playtime is over. You will be at the next execution, even if I have to drag you there myself. Is that understood?”
Leo held his tongue.
His father pulled him forward and slammed him against the wall. So hard, spots of light danced in the periphery of his vision. “I said is … that … understood?”
“Yes, my lord,” Leo replied, gritting the words between his teeth.
“Good. Now clean yourself up and meet me in the Chamber of Lords in one hour.” His father let go, returned the vox to Leo’s front pocket, and swept out of the room, leaving his son alone with the unmoving guards. Would they have stepped in if the king’s rage got the best of him? Or would they have stood there like statues watching while it happened?
Leo turned in the opposite direction and strode toward the east wing. When he reached his chambers, he flung open the doors and slammed them shut. He marched to his dressing table and in a surge of frustration, swept his arm across the surface, sending an array of items crashing to the floor. He spread his hands wide against the cool marble and looked at his reflection in the gilded mirror.
His hair was a windswept mess. Stubble shadowed his jaw. The thirty-six hour birthday binge had purpled the skin beneath his eyes, making the blue of his irises all the bluer. He’d reached his father’s height of six foot two. His shoulders and chest—once skinny in youth—had grown broad with muscle. He had—the public liked to say—the face and physique of a god.
He glared at the glass, searching for a trace of her.
But after ten years, her face was growing increasingly difficult to recall.
All Leo saw was him.
A cold and heartless king.
He yanked at the collar of his shirt, pulling it down to reveal the mark above his heart. The Davenbrook family crest—the national symbol of Korah—every bit as neat and distinct as it ever was. Even after eighteen years of growth, the scar remained unaltered. The law forbid Magic, and yet here it was. Etched on Leo’s chest. There was no stretching it. No distorting it. No changing it. A perfect picture of his destiny. The reason he was here and his mother was dead. This scar that trapped her. Trapped him. Bound his life to the throne. Anger swelled like waves. He dragged his hand down his face, then noticed something in the mirror’s reflection. Something that didn’t belong.
An envelope lay in front of his door.
He turned around. Mail wasn’t surreptitiously slipped under the doors of private chambers. Not official mail anyway. This certainly looked official. Moving closer, he found his name written in golden script sans his royal title. It said simply To Mr. Leopold Davenbrook. A traitorous act, if he cared. He slid his finger beneath the seal and broke it, then pulled out the card inside which shimmered as it caught the light.
There is something you want.
A wish you would die for.
Come and see how it might be granted.
The Pact
Lena
Magic was forbidden. Lena knew that as surely as she knew her mama baked the best beef pie on this side of the island. Flower petals weren’t supposed to dance in the sky, not without the wind to carry them. Even then, they didn’t choreograph themselves in a dazzling display of hearts and loop-de-loops.
Perhaps, if Lena’s friend had asked, Lena would have said no. They shouldn’t.
But Phoebe was not the sort of girl to ask.
So Lena watched—at once delighted and terrified. For if her parents had taught her anything in her eight years of life, it was the danger of this. Not just kid-dangerous either, but adult-dangerous. The kind that could topple governments. The kind that could sow anarchy. The kind that got people killed. Like the woman who used to live at the end of the lane. She had a niece like Phoebe. According to Lena’s parents, Magic had turned the girl strange. The woman died when Mama was swollen with pregnancy, two weeks before Lena would come writhing and screaming into the world. Her parents spared her the details of this gruesome death. All Lena knew was that it had been unnatural and though there was no proof that the woman’s niece had done it, everybody knew that she had and not a single soul objected when she was taken to the mainland and put in a home for troubled girls.
Still, Lena turned in a circle, her eyes wide as a multitude of white blossoms swirled in a waltz around her, dancing with the strands of dark hair that had come loose from her school day plait. She stood in a whirlwind of sweet perfume as sunlight dappled through the leaves overhead. If Mama saw—if Papa saw—they would forbid Lena from ever seeing Phoebe again. Lena knew this, too. Even without having ever seen, Lena’s parents already encouraged her to make friends with other girls. But compared to Phoebe, those girls were dull, rainy days after weeks of blue sky. And how could anyone catch them, all the way out here, so deep under the cover of the forest outside their obscure little village?
“People are afraid of what they don’t understand,” Phoebe liked to say. “According to my papa, that’s the danger. Not Magic. But the fear of it.”
Like most people, Lena didn’t understand Magic. She only knew that out of all the girls in their village, Phoebe had chosen her. She’d trusted Lena with the biggest secret in the whole world and Lena would not forsake her. She would take that secret to her grave.
Lifting her arms, she twirled with the petals as they spun faster and faster. An enchanting, feather-light cyclone. She laughed. Phoebe laughed too as the petals fell to the ground and she raced ahead. It took Lena a moment to catch her breath. Then she made chase, running deeper into the woods where the cover was so thick, the dappling sunlight disappeared altogether.
“W-wait!” Lena called, her cheeks flushed.
Phoebe stopped, peering up at a peculiar tree covered in something like silver veins.
“Wh-what is it?” Lena asked, approaching hesitantly as Phoebe walked around the thick trunk, eyes trained upward, fingertips grazing the bark.
“It’s a Vine Tree,” Phoebe finally said, her tone soaked in reverence. “They’re dead rare. Mama says almost all of ‘em got chopped during The Purge.”
The Purge.
Another reminder that Magic was dangerous.
Back then, a simple accusation was a death sentence.
And sympathizers were guilty, too.
“Why were they ch-chopped down?” Lena asked, wanting to touch the tree herself. She reached out tentatively, head cocked as she examined the thin veins that weren’t really veins at all, but vines. They reminded her of the ivy that grew up the north side of their schoolhouse, only these were silver without any foliage.
“People think they’re Magic.”
Lena pulled her hand back, capturing her bottom lip between her teeth.
“I wonder how old it is,” Phoebe said, walking around the tree a second time. Then she stopped, cleared her throat, and in a theatrical voice that had a bird taking flight, asked, “What is your age, Good Sir?”
Lena cupped her hand over her mouth to trap a giggle.
Phoebe pressed her ear against the bark. After a beat, her eyes rounded.
“What d-did it say?” Lena asked, forgetting herself.
Trees didn’t talk.
“He said that he’s as old as the Well of Good Hope.”
The Well of Good Hope.
That was as old as time itself.
Lena looked up to its highest branch. It was a beautiful tree, but not the tallest. Nor the widest. There were bigger trees around them. It was hard to believe that this one could be so old. Before she could say so, Phoebe did something very silly. She gave the tree a hug, her arms only long enough to reach halfway around.
Lena’s trapped giggle escaped.
“C’mon,” Phoebe said.
Lena hesitated before joining her friend.
When she did, the two girls could spread their arms just far enough for their fingers to touch.
“What are we doing?” Lena asked, her cheek pressed up against the vines.
“Shh!” Phoebe shushed.
There was a still quiet, as if the forest held its breath.
Or maybe that was Lena.
“Can you hear it?” Phoebe whispered.
Lena strained, wanting to hear whatever it was Phoebe heard. But unless her friend was talking about the chirping of birds, Lena could hear nothing. “Hear what?” she finally whispered back.
“He wants us to make a pact.”
“The t-tree?”
“To love and protect each other always. Like true sisters. Until the day we’re dead.”
True sisters.
The idea delighted Lena, for she had always wanted a sister, and despite any reservations her parents might have, she was positive there’d be none better than Phoebe.
“We’ve got to close our eyes and make a wish. That nothing will ever separate us.”
Lena scrunched up her face and wished to the Wish Keeper himself. “I wish it,” she said.
“Do you promise?”
“I promise.”
“Me too,” Phoebe said back, giving Lena’s fingers a squeeze.
Then Phoebe let go. She crouched down and pulled out the small switchblade she kept tucked inside her left boot. When she stood, she addressed the tree with all the gravity of the High King taking a royal oath. “Do I have your permission, Good Sir?” she asked, holding the blade next to one of its vines. When the tree neither objected nor concurred, Phoebe cut off a length.
Lena gasped as the severed vine on the tree grew back into wholeness, reconnecting itself right before their eyes. “H-how did it d-do that?”
Phoebe didn’t answer. She took the vine in her hand, cut it in two, and held the pieces apart. They grew toward one another as if they weren’t meant to be separated. Phoebe placed one half of the vine against her forearm. Gently, almost tenderly, it wrapped itself around her wrist like a delicate bracelet made of silver. Phoebe held up the other half and touched the vine to Lena’s skin. It felt warm and smooth and a little tingly as it circled her wrist.
The two girls examined their new accessory.
“Friendship bracelets,” Lena said.
“Sister bracelets,” Phoebe corrected.
Lena smiled as a sound came from behind them. The girls turned, and there, north of the tree, was a rabbit caught in a snare.
“Trappers!” Phoebe exclaimed. “Blast those varmints!”
As she approached, the poor rabbit cowered in her shadow. At the sight of its broken, bleeding paw, a great sadness overtook Lena, the kind that filled up her entire chest and made her want to cry.
“It’s okay, little friend,” Phoebe said, her voice gentle and soft. The kind of voice she’d used with Lena the first time she caught her crying after Tucker Thompson and his buddies made fun of her stutter. It was not the voice she’d used with Tucker. “We’re going to get you out of there. But first, I need you to promise not to run away. Otherwise, your paw will get infected and you could get awful sick.”
Slowly, with her hands held in such a way so the animal could see every movement, Phoebe pried open the trap. The rabbit didn’t hop away. It stayed in place. Phoebe picked it up and cradled it in her arms. She kissed it softly on the head, closed her eyes, and began to sing. It was the softest, most beautiful song Lena had ever heard. The kind that turned all the sadness in her chest into something hopeful.
Overhead, the leaves began to rustle.
Branches began to sway.
A rush of warmth enveloped Lena, so noticeable she gasped. And when she looked down at her friend, she saw that the rabbit’s paw was no longer broken or bleeding. But completely healed.
Phoebe set it on the ground.
Its nose twitched.
Once.
Twice.
A third time.
Then it hopped away, disappearing into a bush.
Phoebe stood and dusted off her hands. Her face was pale. Her eyes, cloudy. This was the first time Lena had seen Magic take any toll on her friend. But then, this was the first time she’d seen her friend do anything so powerful.
“A-a-are you okay?” Lena asked.
Phoebe smiled a tired smile, and together, the two girls left the forest, the pact of their sisterhood wrapped around their wrists, a resoluteness solidifying in Lena’s eight-year old heart. She wasn’t sure about Magic. But she was sure about Phoebe. Her friend wasn’t dangerous. No matter what her parents said, no matter what anyone would ever say, she knew this to be true. Phoebe was too good—too filled with light and happiness—to be anything other than perfectly safe.
Chapter Three
Briar
Rosco wagered wrong. When Briar returned later that evening, the painting had not sold.
Nor did it sell the next day.
On the third day, Lyric and his friend, Jet, left for a short-term gig at an oil rig out in the countryside. It was labor-intensive work. Hard to reach, too. Ciphers weren’t allowed to travel underground. That was a perk reserved only for Illustrians. And getting anywhere outside of the capital city of Antis via public transport required time and money and more than a bit of luck. So Lyric decided to stay out in the countryside. It was the longest stretch of time he and Briar had ever been apart. But it paid better than their work at the Docks, and getting that medicine for Mrs. Simmons grew increasingly paramount, for the coughing stole her life by the hour. Which was why, after a long and grueling shift at the Docks, Briar returned for the fifth day in a row to Rosco’s booth.
Despite the sinking sun and the commonly held fear amongst Illustrians about The Skid at night, the booth wasn’t empty. Rosco had a customer. A spindly, well-dressed gentleman with a carefully manicured goatee stood inside examining her brother’s painting.
“He’s had no formal training?” she heard the man ask.
To which Rosco responded with a bark of laughter that quickly turned into a fit of coughing. He pounded his chest like a violent thwack might clear his lungs.
The man leaned away with pinched lips.
Parox, Briar thought with a sinking heart. As much as she disagreed with Rosco, she didn’t wish him ill; she didn’t want him to die.
“Sorry ‘bout that,” Rosco said, wiping his lips dry with a dirtied handkerchief. He spotted Briar in the booth’s entrance and gave his hands a clap. “Well, if this isn’t happy timing! Sir Wellington Ferris, this is Briar, the artist’s guardian. Briar, this is Sir Wellington. He’s a curator visiting from Petram.”
“An extremely wealthy, influential curator.” Sir Wellington clasped his hands behind his back, his posture stiff, his mouth pursed as his attention flicked from the crown of Briar’s shabby woolen cap to the soles of her muddy boots.
The feeling is mutual, she thought. Briar swallowed the acrimonious words and said instead in a voice as bland as porridge, “You’ve come a long way.”
It was an understatement. Petram was the northernmost province of Korah—thousands of miles from the city of Antis, which sat on the southern coast. For someone who’d only been as far as Silva—and those memories were so long ago Lyric had to paint them to make them real—Petram might as well have been a made-up land from a story book.
Rosco tucked his dirty handkerchief into his back pocket. “Sir Wellington is interested in your brother’s painting.”
“I’m interested in more, actually.”
“What do you mean?” Briar asked.
“I haven’t seen artwork of this caliber in a very long time.” The man’s attention returned to Lyric’s art and the purse in his lips smoothed away. “I’m interested in sponsoring him.”
“For?”
“L’Eclat Ecole D’Art.”
She exchanged a confused glance with Rosco.
“It’s an art school in the city of Hillandale,” Sir Wellington said. “The most prestigious in all of Korah. All the greats—both contemporary and of old—have trained there.”
“Hillandale is in Petram.”
The man raised his eyebrows as if to ask her point.
“My brother and I can’t move to Petram.”
“I’m not inviting you. L’Eclat Ecole D’Art is a boarding school.”
“Filled with Illustrians, no doubt.”
“Of course.” He gave her an odd look, like he didn’t understand what to make of her comment, or the tone in which she delivered it. “There will be skepticism at first. That’s to be expected. L’Eclat Ecole D’Art is not accustomed to opening its doors to riffraff. But once they see your brother’s gift, I am certain the board will more than come around. In fact, I am certain that between his raw talent, the school’s prestigious training, and my influence, his artwork will hang in every Illustrian home across the commonwealth. Even Castle Davenbrook.”
Rosco made a funny sound—something between a hiccup and a yelp.
“As his sponsor, I will cover the full cost of tuition, provide room and board on holidays, teach him proper etiquette, introduce him to all of the right people. For a mere … ” He twiddled his long fingers in the air like a spider wrapping up its prey. “Sixty percent royalty on all artwork sold herewith. I realize it’s a generous offer. A risky investment, if you will. But it’s one I’m willing to take.”
The air had gone stagnant in Rosco’s booth. This man. This man wanted to spirit her brother thousands of miles away. He wanted to take Lyric from her, send him to a school filled with rich, entitled brats whose families lived in shameful excess. He wanted to bring Lyric into his home—this prideful, arrogant man—and teach her brother etiquette, which might as well be code for snobbery and disdain. Even if there weren’t other issues to consider—issues that made Sir Wellington’s offer impossible to accept—Briar could never allow this man—this haughty, peacock-feathered man—to turn her brother into such a tool.
One who had risen above the conditions he was born into, and if he could do it, then so could anyone else. But it was a lie. One that perpetuated their oppression and comforted their oppressors. There was no rising above, not unless one possessed a talent that could make an Illustrian money. Sir Wellington Ferris didn’t care about Lyric. He cared about the profit he could make off of Lyric, and yet he looked at her now as if fully expecting her to fall over herself with gratitude.
“You don’t look pleased,” he said.
“We just want to sell his painting.”
“And I am offering you more. What fool goes looking for an apple only to complain when he happens upon an entire tree of them?”
Briar’s blood boiled. His tree was rotten.
“Why don’t you speak with your brother. See what he wants. If I were you, I’d be in touch sooner rather than later. You never know when an opportunity will be lost.” Sir Wellington removed a small card from his pocket, jotted an address on the back with a silver pen, and handed the card to her. “I’m staying in Antis through the week. This is where you can find me.”
He turned to leave.
“Wait!” Briar took a lurching step forward.
Sir Wellington stopped.
“Aren’t you going to buy his painting?”
“I don’t want the painting, girl. Not without the artist.”
She watched him go, his card in her hand while Rosco danced a jig, then fell into another round of coughing.
Briar ground her teeth. “You told me you would sell his painting.”
“I’d say we did more than that.”
“We need money, Rosco. Not business cards.”
He drew back like a man gobsmacked.
“From now on, keep our names out of it. Just sell the painting.” Before the shock could let go of the old man, before he could spread anymore of his germs with that cough, Briar turned on her heel and left his booth.
It had started to rain. A drizzle at first that thickened into cold, fat drops that soaked through her parka. She ran the rest of the way and as she slipped inside her front door, the clouds unleashed completely. Warfare on the tin roof.
She shuddered, then got to work setting out buckets in the usual places where the water leaked through. When she finished, she went to the wood stove and started a fire. She took off her woolen mittens. She rubbed her hands together in front of the flames, hoping to thaw her fingers. Instead, she found herself staring at the back of her left hand—at the scar tissue that pulled and puckered and pinched her skin into a swirl of deformity. With a knot in her throat, she shoved her hand into her black glove and pulled out the card from her pocket.
Sir Wellington J. Ferris
Hillandale Art Museum
Senior Curator
Briar shook her head. She had worked so hard—so incredibly hard—to get herself and Lyric to a place of stability. They had a roof over their heads and food—albeit never enough—in their bellies, which was more than most in The Skid. She had done everything possible to ensure that she and her brother would no longer have to steal to survive or depend on exploitative men like Sir Wellington Ferris. They were doing fine, too. Until Parox struck Mrs. Simmons. Proving that poverty was merciless. Stability, a soap bubble.
The door swung open behind her, sending Briar’s heart into a series of jarring backflips. She spun around, ready to lunge at the bold intruder, but found Lyric instead. He stepped all the way inside, shaking rain from his hair like a wet dog.
“You’re home,” she said, her palm flat against her chest. She wasn’t expecting him until tomorrow evening.
“They made us work through some of the nights so we could finish before the weather rolled in.” And he didn’t look at all sad about it. In fact, he looked buoyant and carefree as he strolled to their makeshift sink and swept back the curtain Briar had hung beneath, behind which hid their savings.
“What’s that?” he asked, nodding at her hand.
With a jolt, she tucked the business card into her pocket. “Nothing.”
Lyric eyed her suspiciously.
She laughed nervously. “It’s good to see you.”
Smiling, he stepped forward and wrapped her in a hug, nearly lifting her off the ground. With a swell of emotion, she hugged him back, resting her head against his chest, relishing the steady beat of his heart, the smell of rain and something else that was undeniably Lyric, wishing they could stay this way forever—she and him against the world. She hadn’t slept well while he was away. She liked him right here with her. But he was thirteen and not inclined to tolerate prolonged affection.
When he stepped away, his smile had turned devious. He wiggled something in his hand.
Briar’s heart skipped a beat. “Give that back.”
But Lyric was taller, and he held it straight up in the air, laughing as she swiped at it. “Why—is it a love note?” He opened the folded parchment above his head, then promptly brought it back down, revealing not Sir Wellington’s business card, but the strange and mysterious invitation.
She exhaled—a swoosh of relief.
Lyric had gone for the wrong pocket.
Earlier this morning, for reasons Briar couldn’t quite understand, she’d folded it up and taken it with her.
“Did you change your mind?” Lyric asked with a note of anticipation. “Are you gonna go?”
“Are you that eager for me to die?”
He rolled his eyes and sat down at one of the kitchen chairs, propping his wet boots on their table. “It doesn’t say you’re going to die. It just says that you have a wish you’re willing to die for.”
She plucked the invite from him. “And we’ve already established that I don’t.”
Lyric folded his hands behind his head. “I’d die to get out of here.”
His declaration twisted like a knife in her gut. Lyric didn’t have to die for that to happen. The wish was his to take, right there in her other pocket. See what he wants, Sir Wellington had said. Briar already knew. Lyric wanted out, and here was his ticket—one far worse than selling paintings in Rosco’s booth. Worse than pandering to the Illustrians. Her brother would become one. And what if in such a transformation, someone found out who he was. There was a bounty on their heads—one he didn’t even know about—and while it might have become a long-forgotten thing, it was still out there—a reality that set the level of her vigilance on a constant state of high alert. She pushed at Lyric’s heavy boots. “Feet off the table. And for the love of all that is good and right, please stop taking things from people’s pockets.”
“You taught me how.”
“Back when we needed it to survive. We don’t anymore.”
A dark cloud rolled across her brother’s face. “Right. We’re living in the lap of luxury.”
As if to punctuate his sudden bout of bitter scorn, a sharp round of hacking wheezes filtered through the thin walls of their shanty.
He grimaced at the sound. “Did Rosco sell my painting?”
“Nnnot yet.”
It wasn’t a lie.
Not technically.
Lyric picked up the stack of parchment on the table—exquisite, arresting artwork—and huffed. “I guess I’m not as good as the old man thought.”
Oh, but he was.
He was even better.
So good, in fact, his paintings could hang in Castle Davenbrook.
She wanted to take him by the arms and tell him so.
But he stood from his chair, grabbed a dry cap hanging by the wood stove, and shoved it over his head. “I’m going out.”
“In the rain?”
“It stopped.”
Oh. Right.
The warfare on the tin roof had gone silent. Water no longer dripped into the buckets. Briar worried her bottom lip. What if Lyric ran into Rosco? He would never keep Sir Wellington Ferris to himself. He would tell Lyric upon sight. But Rosco was always eager to close up his booth when the last of the Illustrians left. From what Briar could tell, Sir Wellington had been the last, which meant Rosco would be long gone by now, emptying his pockets for a fresh bottle of moonshine. “Where are you going?”
More wheezing and coughing sounded from next door.
“Somewhere quiet.” Lyric stomped to the door.
“Wait!”
He stopped on the threshold.
Tell him, Briar.
Just tell him.
It was right there, on the tip of her tongue—the power to change her brother’s mood back round again. But fear was there, too. It pulsed through her body like an electric shock. As soon as she told him, he would want to go. But he couldn’t go. And he wouldn’t understand why. So Briar bit back the words and said instead, “Make sure you’re back by curfew.”
He tossed her an acerbic salute, then slammed the door behind him.
Chapter Four
Briar
Briar paced from one bucket to the other while the time ticked closer to curfew. Over the past thirty minutes, she’d been operating under the assumption that at any second, Lyric would come home. He knew better than to break curfew. He knew they couldn’t afford the fine, and if they couldn’t pay the fine, much worse could happen. Surely, her brother wouldn’t be so foolish.
But then, Lyric was thirteen.
The height of foolishness.
Briar shot another glance at the clock. If she left now, there remained a chance of finding him and bringing him home before official nightfall. She put on her woolen mittens, her coat that had dried by the wood stove, and stepped out into the encroaching darkness. If they had to work the next ten Nuachs because of her silly brother, she would never let him hear the end of it.
She stopped at Jet’s first. Although if Lyric really did want to go somewhere quiet, it would be far from here, where the pandemonium was so loud, she could hear it ten shanties away.
Jet’s mother answered with a red-faced, wailing infant in one arm and a thrashing toddler in the other. Behind her—in a home no bigger than Briar’s—three young boys wrestled, a mad scramble of sharp elbows and knobby knees. Jet was the oldest of six, all of them boys and all of them gaunt with malnourishment. His mother could barely feed one child, let alone half a dozen. And yet, she kept having them. None of whom came by the same father. Like too many women in The Skid, Jet’s mother sold herself in order to feed her children, and in so doing, had more children in need of feeding. And around and round the cycle went.
“Yeah?” she hollered above the din.
“I’m looking for Lyric.”
One of the three boys came tearing past. His mother—having lost her grip on the squirming toddler—snagged him by the ear and yanked him to such a sudden stop, he let out a howl five times louder than the baby’s. “Oi, you. Where’d your brother and that friend of his run off to?”
He clawed at his mother’s hand. “They ain’t never tell me nothing!”
She let go.
The boy clutched his poor ear and darted away.
“No help, I’m afraid. But if you find Jet,” she said, her bushy eyebrows set in a severe line. “Tell him to get his hide home before I tan it from here to Duggleby.”
Briar nodded and hurried off, trying to guess where Lyric might have gone. The train yard? Rosco’s booth? She made her way toward The Skid’s main thoroughfare. Shops were closing or already closed. The streets were practically empty. All was quiet. Almost eerily so. Until an echoing, guttural sound punctuated the air.
Briar stopped.
The sound came again, more distinct.
It was—she realized—a human sound. A loud, agonizing grunt. Like someone getting every last ounce of breath knocked right out of them.
She started moving again, faster this time, and found a crowd gathering around the bend in the road. There was a sickening thud. Another pain-soaked oomph. Briar ran toward the commotion only to be stopped by Jet on the edge of the gathering—his thin face twisted in horror.
“It’s Lyric,” he said. “He’s being arrested!”
Briar’s heart slammed into her throat. She shoved through the mass of people, all of them watching in horrified, helpless silence as a constable beat her bloodied brother with his baton. She rushed out into the open space and grabbed the man’s thick arm, but he brought it down with a backhand so violent, it lifted her off her feet and sent her sprawling into a puddle of muck and rainwater.
“Briar!” Lyric yelled, attempting to get to her, so zeroed in on his sister that he didn’t notice the baton flying at his face.
It cracked against his cheekbone. His head whipped violently.
Briar screamed as his eyes rolled and he collapsed into an unconscious heap and the constable grabbed his arms and dragged him away.
She scrambled to her feet. But another constable blocked her, shoving her back down into the muck.
“Please,” she cried, clambering to her knees. “Where are you taking him?”
“Same place we take all dirty, rotten thieves.”
She shook her head, unwilling to hear it.
But the man said it anyway. “Shard.”
He might as well have sucker punched her with his baton. Shard Prison was a death trap, a place plagued by diseases much deadlier than Parox. Lyric couldn’t go there. He wouldn’t survive. “He’s only thirteen.”
“A thief’s a thief, no matter the age.”
Briar tried to push past him, but he shoved her to the ground once again, his fingers wrapped around the handle of his baton, the badge on his chest glinting like sharpened incisors. Every constable wore one. Two stark M’s, one large and upright, overlayed by another that was small and inverted. The symbol of Korah.
Eleos Partim Pentho Omnis.
Mercy for some. Misery for all.
Her stomach heaved.
Before she could get up and throw herself at this hateful man, Jet grabbed her left arm. Someone else grabbed her right. They dragged her away like the constable had dragged Lyric. Only she wasn’t unconscious like her brother. She bucked and she kicked and she scratched, ten times wilder than all of Jet’s brothers.
“Stop it now, lass.” The voice belonged to Rosco. “Stop it before they arrest you, too.”
“Let them arrest me!”
“What good will that do yer brother?”
It was the only question that could have calmed her.
Briar’s body went still.
“If they arrest you, then yer both locked up for good.”
The constable glared at the three of them, then pointed his ire at the crowd. “Get home if you know what’s smart. Or we’ll fine the lot of you!”
Onlookers scattered until all that remained was Rosco and Lyric’s best friend.
Briar grabbed him by his emaciated shoulders. “What happened, Jet? What did he do?”
“He wouldn’t stop going on about money. About there never being enough. About Mrs. Simmons needing medicine. But none of us have money. Ain’t nobody here but the constables.”
Briar closed her eyes.
No.
No, no, no.
Lyric couldn’t have been so senseless.
So reckless.
Jet twisted his cap in his hands. “I tried talking him out of it. I swear, I tried. But he wouldn’t listen.”
Briar sank to her knees.
Her brother hadn’t been caught stealing from just anybody. He’d been caught stealing from a government official. People went to Guillotine Square for much less than that.
Chapter Five
Briar
Briar pounded on the door, setting off a chorus of barking dogs up and down the lamp-lit street. She didn’t care. She wouldn’t stop. Not until somebody on the other side answered.
Lights flooded the first floor windows. A bolt turned. The door opened and a reedy, hawk-nosed woman appeared on the other side. Her gaze shifted from Briar to the dark night and back again. It was well beyond curfew. Briar had slunk and slithered past the constables until she reached the outskirts of The Skid, where the curfew ceased to apply. Then she ran. She ran so fast, she was huffing and puffing now, holding the stitch in her side as her breath escaped in clouds of white. She could only imagine how she looked, with one side of her body covered in mud from head to toe, her dark hair a mess and half-loose from its braid, her cheek swollen and bruised from the constable and his knuckles.
“What is the meaning of this?” the woman asked indignantly.
“Please, I need to speak with Sir Wellington Ferris. He gave me this address. He said he was staying here.” Briar reached inside her pocket.
The lady pulled back, her face filled with alarm, like maybe Briar was reaching for a knife. When she pulled out a business card, the woman scrunched her beakish nose as if Briar held out a dead rat.
“Who is it?” a male voice called from inside.
“Some street urchin with your contact card.”
Sir Wellington appeared over the woman’s shoulder, taking in Briar’s half-crazed appearance.
“What are you doing, giving out my address to people like this?” the woman demanded.
“Relax, dear cousin. This is the girl I was telling you about. The sister of the artist I discovered at that drunken man’s booth today.”
“The one in The Skid?”
“Please,” Briar interrupted. “I need to speak with you.”
“Come back in the morning,” the woman said. “The audacity, coming here at such an hour. Doesn’t The Skid have a curfew?” She began to shut the door.
Briar stopped it with her hand.
The woman gasped.
“He’ll go to Petram!” she shouted. Sir Wellington could have his investment. He could have more than sixty percent, if he wished. The risk had grown into something small and insignificant compared to Shard. “He will attend your school.”
The woman attempted to strongarm the door closed.
But Briar was stronger.
“It’s okay, Verity,” Sir Wellington said. “I will speak with the girl tonight.”
“Not inside my house, you won’t.”
“I have no intention of inviting her in.”
The woman sneered at Briar, then turned and left, muttering under her breath as she went.
Sir Wellington stepped outside. The door shut behind him. He stood in the front garden, studying Briar curiously beneath the glow of the streetlight. “Your brother will come with me to Petram?”
“Yes.”
“And might I ask what led to the change of heart? Forgive me, but I got the distinct impression that you weren’t very interested.”
“I’m not. But Lyric will be. And right now he’s—” She stopped, unsure whether to say it. Whether doing so would dig their grave. But she had to, didn’t she? The whole reason she came was to get Lyric out of trouble, which meant she had to tell Sir Wellington that her brother was currently in it. “He requires your help.”
She could see the shadow sliding down his face. The wariness, like shutters slowly closing.
“Our neighbor is sick. Deathly ill with Parox. My brother cares about her, Sir. He was simply trying to get money so he could purchase medicine.”
Sir Wellington arched a carefully manicured eyebrow. “And how, exactly, did he go about getting this money?”
Briar hesitated.
His eyebrow lifted higher.
“He took it. Out of desperation. To keep someone alive.”
She waited, watching for some trace of understanding. Some glimpse of compassion. She’d even take pity, as much as she hated it. But none of it came. His expression had gone cold and uncaring, not that he ever really cared to begin with. But even the spark of greed was gone.
“They took him to Shard. I’m sure if you went there, if a man like you could vouch for him—”
“I do not vouch for criminals.”
“But—”
“And I can assure you, L’Eclat Ecole D’Art will not accept them either. I had hoped your brother was different. What a pity to see such talent go to waste.” Without giving her time to argue, he stepped inside and slammed the door in Briar’s face.
Eleos Partim Pentho Omnis.
Not even the promise of profit could override it.
* * *
The world was on fire.
She choked on the thick, black smoke curling from the flames.
She choked on the heat as she gripped her brother’s hand, flesh melting off her own.
He flailed above the inferno, her ability to hold on his one and only hope.
She squeezed her eyes tight and screamed.
Somebody help me!
But there was nobody there.
It was just her and him and if she let go, he would die.
She couldn’t hold on any longer.
The pain won.
She jerked back and watched as her brother clawed the air and fell toward the flames, his dilated eyes never leaving hers. Just like their father’s when he yelled at her to run.
Briar jolted awake, sucking in a loud, long gasp.
She sat upright on the dilapidated couch, soaked in her own sweat, her lungs heaving as morning sunlight filtered inside the small window of their shanty. Somehow, she’d fallen asleep. She didn’t think she would. She thought she would lay awake throughout the entirety of the night, plagued with thoughts of Lyric inside that prison as Mrs. Simmons coughed and wheezed next door. A dark, dank cell. A cold, stone floor. Huddled in the corner, alone and afraid with nothing to drink but dirty water ridden with bacteria.
She couldn’t bear it.
She had to save him.
She couldn’t fail him.
She clambered off the couch and stopped in front of the table piled with Lyric’s paintings.
I guess I’m not as good as Rosco thought.
The memory of those words pierced her straight through. How could she have let him leave thinking they were true? His artwork wasn’t just good. It was worthy of a palace. And she hadn’t told him. He never would have left if she’d told him. He never would have done something so reckless and desperate. Her gloved hand tightened into a fist. She gritted her teeth and snatched up the pile of artwork.
With her cheek smarting and her hair still a mess, she squeezed inside one of the city’s public taxi-vans. Graffitied vehicles so jam-packed with bodies, some commuters stood on the fenders, others hung out the doors. She took the taxi-van in the opposite direction of the way she usually went. She would lose her wages for missing work, but at the moment, none of that mattered. Nothing mattered but getting to Lyric.
She switched transportation in three different spots. Paid three different fares. And an hour later, stood outside the stone fence that hemmed in the menacing facility that was Shard Prison, with its high, windowless walls made of concrete. The wrought iron gate was manned by two members of the First Guard. Each of them brandished weapons alarming in size and eyed her distrustfully under tasseled hats.
She hated the way her insides quivered. She wanted to grind her fear into pulp and spit it on their polished boots. Instead, she pulled back her shoulders and told herself to stand straight. “I’m here to see Lyric. Lyric—” She stopped short. There were plenty of Bishops in Korah. It was a common enough surname but she made a habit of not giving hers out and had taught her brother to do the same.
The guards looked at each other, smirks tucked into the corners of their mouths like she’d been sent to entertain them.
“He was brought here last night. About this tall.” She held her hand up above her head. “A boy. Only thirteen.”
Unconscious.
Beaten to a pulp.
“Half a dozen reprobates were brought here last night,” one of the guards said. “I don’t know any of their names, heights, or ages. And none of them are allowed visitors.”
She knew they would say this. She knew this was Shard’s policy. She knew this was a fool’s errand. And yet, she’d come anyway. With trembling hands, she unrolled the outer parchment from the bundle she’d haphazardly gathered. “Please. This is his artwork. An Illustrian curator from Petram said it’s good enough to hang in every home across the commonwealth. Even Castle Davenbrook.”
The two guards looked at her for a silent moment, then erupted in laughter.
Heat surged up her neck, but she kept going, pressing past the humiliation. “Eighty percent! You can have eighty percent of every piece sold. More, if you’d like.”
Their cackling only grew louder. And Sir Wellington Ferris’s words turned into a ghost that would haunt her forever.
You never know when an opportunity will be lost.
Yesterday, she couldn’t bear the thought of Lyric going to Petram.
It was too dangerous.
She couldn’t bear to lose him.
And now today …
She would give anything to pack him up and see him off herself.
“Please. He’s my brother.” The only one she had left. “Please, just let me see him.”
“Yeah, sure. You can see him.”
Her body flooded with hope. It rushed up her legs. Tingled in her scalp. “Really?”
“At the next Red Moon,” said one.
“In Guillotine Square,” said the other.
Incinerating all hope.
Bile rose up her throat.
“Now get out of here, girl, before we throw you into a cell, too.”
What if they did? Could she get to Lyric? Could she somehow find him inside, and together, could they escape? It was a ridiculous thought. Nobody escaped Shard. Not even the most skilled escape artists.
Briar wanted to scream. She wanted to pull out her hair and gnash her teeth. She wanted to grab the two guards by their fur-lined coats and make them listen. She would not lose her brother. Not when she’d already lost another. Her heart squeezed. She couldn’t fail Lyric like she failed Echo. But the words were futile; the display of grief, a shout in the void. They didn’t care. They didn’t have to. To them, she was nothing more than a fly to swat. With her hands limp by her sides, Briar shuffled away, Echo’s words taunting her from the grave.
I saw it happen, Briar. You’re going to be the hero. You’re going to save us all.
It had been nothing more than a pain-induced hallucination.
Bitter icing on a cruel cake.
She couldn’t save Echo.
And now it seemed that she couldn’t save Lyric either.
Halfway home, something slipped free from between two of the paintings. It drifted one way, then the other, and landed on the cement as she waited for the next taxi-van to arrive. She stared—bleary-eyed—at the gold lettering reflecting in the sunlight.
There is something you want.
A wish you would die for.
Come and see how it might be granted.
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