Scavenge the Stars (Scavenge the Stars #1)(67)

“You really are a stranger to Moray, aren’t you? He’s the Slum King. He owns the entire Vice Sector.”

The center of Amaya’s aching belly went cold. Of course she had heard of the infamous Slum King, but to know that she had been speaking to him, touching him…A shudder went through her.

“Yeah, he gets that reaction a lot,” Romara said, polishing off her drink. “But you still haven’t answered my question. What brings you to this piss-stained corner of the city?”

“I…I’m looking for someone.”

“Then you’re talking to the right person. I know everyone. I can help you find them in no time.” She leaned in with a smile, stroking Amaya’s jaw with a slim finger before using it to lift her chin. “For a price,” she crooned.

Amaya flushed, her heart beating harder. With a shaking hand, she reached into her inner pocket and drew out a gold sena coin, pressing it into Romara’s palm.

“Cayo Mercado,” she whispered in the space between their mouths.

Romara pulled back as if she’d been bitten. She stared at Amaya, her eyes narrowing.

“What would a countess like you need with Cayo Mercado?” she drawled.

“We’re friends. Um, sort of.”

The girl’s eyebrows rose. “What kind of friends?”

“What does it matter to you?” Amaya bit the inside of her cheek, cursing at herself. This was the daughter of the Slum King—she couldn’t afford to get on her bad side.

Romara leaned in again, danger written in the curve of her painted mouth.

“It matters to me,” she said softly, “because he is my fiancé.”

Amaya’s lips parted, but words wouldn’t come. She looked at this girl, glittering and perilous, and tried to make sense of what she’d said. Tried to understand how someone like her could ever possibly be matched with someone like Cayo.

I’ll do whatever it takes to help her, Cayo had told her at Laelia’s, when they had discussed his sister’s illness.

You complete and utter ass, Amaya thought, forcing herself not to bare her teeth.

How had this come to happen? Why hadn’t Liesl or the others caught wind of this?

“Why does no one know, then?” Amaya asked. Why didn’t I know?

Romara flipped her hand dismissively. “Oh, people know—those who like to keep their ears open. Word will spread once Cayo finally tells his daddy. And he will, if he knows what’s best.” She stood and pocketed the coin Amaya had given her. “You won’t find him here, though, I can tell you that much. Oh, and you better not show up here again either, unless you want my father to recognize you as well.”

Romara blew her a kiss and walked away, leaving Amaya reeling at the counter. Amaya gripped the edge of it, worried she would fall off her stool otherwise.

Cayo was engaged to the daughter of the Slum King.

Was this why he wouldn’t respond to her? Why he hadn’t come for dinner?

But she remembered the look in his eyes when they had swum together in the inlet, the way he regarded her as not a countess, but a person. Not Boon’s pupil or Silverfish or any of that.

He had seen her as Amaya that day, and she had been grateful for it.

Her limbs tight and her body burning, she knocked back the rest of the Toxin and gasped for air as her insides clawed themselves to ribbons.

She had her secrets, but so did Cayo. And she was going to do whatever it took to drag them out into the open.





BREAGAN: You claim harm and misery at my hand, and yet yours holds the key to all my undoing.

SOLAS: Shall we pretend, then, that we are equals?

BRAEGAN: There is nothing equal about vengeance—only the victor and the defeated.

—THE MERCHANT’S WORTH, A PLAY FROM THE RAIN EMPIRE



Cayo stared up at the sign of the Port’s Authority, clenching and unclenching his hands. The street was busy at his back, yet all he heard was a distant roaring in his ears, like a wave about to crash down on a dinghy.

Just a few words from his mouth would become that wave, capsizing his father’s business, their family, and everything they had ever worked for.

The weight of it slammed into him, made him stagger back. His throat was tight, his breathing thin. The space behind his eyes flared and pulsed through his temples with a steady, pounding pain.

He hadn’t slept at all last night—not since Soria had given him that unbearable revelation. Not only had he been tormented by its implications, but his sister had had a bad night as well, tossing and turning with fever interspersed with terrible bouts of coughing. Cayo had stayed beside her, sweating and shaking as if he were also feverish, dabbing the blood from her pale lips and patting her forehead with a cool cloth.

When she finally fell into a doze, Cayo had crept downstairs to the wine cellar. Walking from the humid warmth of Soria’s room to the cool cellar beneath the manor had been a shock to his system, pebbling the skin of his arms and raising the hairs on the back of his neck. The cellar had smelled of cold stone and aged wood, with a slight vinegary tang left from the recent barrel spill.

Cayo had spotted the stain on the floor and followed it to where the chest must have been. But it was no longer there, leaving only a vague rectangular impression of where it once sat. Suddenly furious, Cayo had heaved the remaining cluster of barrels onto their sides and rolled them to the far wall until he spotted the corner of a small stained box.