Scavenge the Stars (Scavenge the Stars #1)(59)

She turned and threw up.

She heaved until her stomach was sore and tears poured down her cheeks. She wiped her mouth against her wrist, shivering despite the warmth of the night around her. Inside she was cold, frozen.

Trust me, you don’t know what it means to kill a man—to have someone’s blood on your hands.

Now she knew.



She didn’t know how she got back to the estate. She just remembered staggering through the door and hearing someone gasp, and then the Water Bugs were there, asking if she was all right.

“Did someone hurt you? Why were you in the city? What happened to your shoes?”

Amaya saw Beetle—Fera—in the back, her eyes wide and fearful. She wanted to go over and hold the girl in her arms the way her mother had held her after she had sold Amaya to the debt collectors. She wanted to tell her that the man partly responsible for their suffering was gone.

Then Liesl came and ushered her away, up to her room, where the knife was pried out of her tight fingers and her bloodied dress was shucked off of her. She was scrubbed clean and given a nightgown.

She sat before the vanity as Liesl brushed out her hair, taking care of the tangles. Amaya couldn’t look at herself in the mirror. Her hands were buzzing, and it was silent in her mind, although she couldn’t stop smelling blood underneath the lavender of her soap.

It reminded her of being on the Brackish, the way the odor of a fish’s innards could cling to her for days and weeks at a time. The infuriating knowledge that she couldn’t escape it—that she just had to live with it, tolerate it, until it became a part of her.

Finally, Liesl asked, “Who?”

Amaya closed her eyes. “Melchor.”

Liesl set the brush down, sighing. “Amaya.”

“Don’t lecture me.”

“If anything, this is my fault. Perhaps I should have let you kill Zharo after all. Then you would have seen what a horrible mess it makes. Not just on yourself, but here.” She tapped Amaya’s temple.

She swallowed. “I wanted…He had…”

“I know.” Liesl came around and rubbed some lotion onto Amaya’s hands. It was scented with lemon. “But you need to keep an eye on the bigger picture. Zharo was found dead, and now a former debt collector who sold to Zharo’s ship. It’s going to look suspicious, and we can’t afford any more obstacles.”

Amaya nodded that she understood. Liesl moved away, then came back with a sealed envelope.

“This came today,” Liesl said, handing it to her. “It’s from Boon.”

Amaya hesitated, her heart beating sorely against her chest. She took the envelope from Liesl and broke it open, reading the short message inside.


Heard about Zharo. Don’t get too cocky. Remember what you’re there for, and how you got there in the first place. If the countess is found out to be a fraud, it won’t only be your head on the line, as mine’ll be sitting on the pike next to yours.

Our goal is Mercado. Focus on the son and getting him wrapped around your little finger.

I can expose you at any time, Amaya Chandra. It’s up to you whether or not to make me.

—B



“What does he say?” Liesl asked.

Amaya set the letter down, steadying her voice so as not to give away her rising panic. “As if you didn’t tamper with the seal.”

Liesl smiled. “Guilty. He’s right, though. Mercado needs to be our only target from now on, and the young heir is the best way to get to him.”

Amaya thought back to that afternoon, swimming with Cayo and feeling that strange, unexplainable connection. The way his eyes had lit up when she had won their race, the smile on his face at the sound of her laugh.

She didn’t want him to become a casualty of her and Boon’s revenge. But what other way was there to strike Mercado where it hurt most?

There was still a bit of Melchor’s blood under her thumbnail. Scraping at it, she turned to Liesl.

“Get some paper,” she said. “We’re inviting Cayo Mercado to dinner.”





Women with knives are sharper than any mind.

—KHARIAN PROVERB



The scrapes on his hands and feet throbbed, but Cayo barely noticed. He was still swept up in the dusk spell between him and the countess, the diamond shine of the water and the warm kiss of the air that dried him off as he climbed out of the rocky inlet. It made him feel the way that looking at her felt: as if possibilities were fruit he could pluck off trees, sweet and ripe and easily within his grasp.

He carried that feeling with him as he walked deeper into the city, the key he’d lifted from Romara heavy in his pocket. The lantern light and the deep blue of the night sky kept his spirits lifted until he got closer to the Vice Sector. Then dread began to seep back into him like water into a porous rock, reminding him that most things in this world weren’t possible after all.

Such as sneaking into the Slum King’s office without being noticed.

Cayo leaned against a building on the outer fringes of the Vice Sector, chewing nervously on his lip. He could already hear the din of debauchery nearby, nipping at his blood and making his finger-tips buzz.

That’s not why you’re here, he told himself. But his body so thoroughly remembered this place it was like muscle memory, phantom pangs and reflexes that had no place in the outside world.