Scavenge the Stars (Scavenge the Stars #1)(62)

Soria was laid up in bed, the lantern at her bedside making her a playground for restless shadows. She looked sallow today, her breaths struggling in her lungs, the skin beneath her closed eyes bruised.

Cayo poured the necessary amount of medicine into a small tumbler, careful not to spill a drop. Then he came to sit beside her.

“Soria,” he called, gently brushing hair away from her face. Her skin was feverish under his touch. The spot of gray behind her ear had grown larger, spreading down to her neck like a splotchy rash.

Her eyes fluttered open. She tried to smile when she saw him, but even that seemed to cost her energy she didn’t have. Cayo didn’t have the experience of a doctor or Miss Lawan, but he tried his best to sit her up and make her take the medicine, even watering down the last of it to make sure she drank it all.

When she was done, she leaned back on the pillows with a somewhat deeper breath. He held her hand, wanting to simply be with her, grateful for this fleeting moment of relief. A moment made possible by Romara, of all people.

Cayo took out the counterfeit coin and restlessly walked it over his knuckles. How could the Slum King not be part of this? Romara may have known plenty about her father’s business, but surely there were some things even she didn’t know.

“Where did you get that?”

Soria’s eyes were half-open, watching him fiddle with the black disc.

“A…friend gave it to me,” he said.

“It looks like something I’ve seen before,” she whispered, her voice cracking from disuse.

“You’ve seen something like this?” His heart gave a violent thud. “Where? How?”

“It was…” She stopped to suppress a cough. “Downstairs, in the cellar, where Father keeps his wine. It was where he put my chest containing my dowry for the Hizons. I would go down there and run my hands through the coins sometimes. It felt nice. Then a couple of the wine barrels broke, so I went down to check on it. Father must have moved the dowry, because it wasn’t there anymore. Instead there was a trunk full of those.” Soria weakly pointed at the counterfeit coin. “Just a bunch of worthless black discs.”

The last word broke apart as the suppressed coughs ripped through her, tearing up her throat. She convulsed with each rattling cough, curling onto her side as tears streamed down her face. Cayo hurried to fetch her water, but she couldn’t even come up for air, let alone drink anything.

Finally, what felt like a thousand years later, she stopped. She lay there, exhausted and bathed in sweat, as Cayo stared numbly at the blood that speckled the pillow under her.

He collapsed to his knees, grasping her thin wrist as he leaned his head against the side of her bed. The world had gone spinning around him, forcing him to look at the truth, to bear the burden of its terrible weight.

The truth that the Slum King was not behind the counterfeit after all.

Kamon Mercado, his father, was.





There are some who are lured to the Vice Sector not by greed, but by love. Yes, there are those who lust for these streets, for the desire to slip into the murk, into the same shadows that line their hearts.

—A COMPLETE GUIDE TO MORAY’S SECTORS



As a fresh wave of pain swept over her, Amaya ground her teeth and glared at the ceiling of her canopy bed. She grabbed a fistful of the expensive maroon silk sheets and waited for the worst of it to pass before relaxing back into the pillows, panting.

Of course, of course her cycle had to come now. She had only bled on board Brackish a few times, her body usually too malnourished for it, and it seemed now her body was trying to make up for lost time.

“I don’t see why I can’t just cut it out of me,” she mumbled.

Liesl snorted and set a fresh cup of tea beside her. “Is violence your solution to everything?”

“The best way to retaliate against pain is pain.”

Amaya couldn’t quite remember where she’d heard those words before. That is, until Liesl raised her brows and readjusted her glasses.

“You really are Boon’s pupil,” the girl said.

The statement made her clench her fists into the sheets again. As if Amaya could not belong simply to herself—she had to be Arun Chandra’s daughter, Captain Zharo’s prisoner, Boon’s pupil. Silverfish. Countess Yamaa.

The best way to retaliate against pain is pain, Boon had muttered into the mouth of a wine bottle one night, his eyes bloodshot and faraway. Pay them back everything they gave to you.

She had thought then that it was only the ramblings of a drunken fool, someone so embittered toward the world that compassion was a distant memory. Amaya had felt sorry for him.

But then she had come here, home to Moray, to the seat of her rage and loss. She had unpacked the truth like a fragile artifact from a crate, and now all she wanted to do was smash it to pieces. Pain—it made up the whole of her, driving her to inflict it on others, to almost revel in it.

Captain Zharo’s last breath rattled through her. Melchor’s lifeless face burned like a brand in her mind. She could still smell their blood on her, layering her dreams with copper and steel.

Everything smelled like blood—theirs, hers. She even lifted shaking fingers to her wet temple only to find that it was just sweat. Her body was a crossroads, her hands remembering the blood of death, her womb remembering the blood of life.