Scavenge the Stars (Scavenge the Stars #1)(69)

Cayo rubbed his shoulder with a wince, knowing it would bruise. He turned around, fully expecting the boy to have dashed off, but received a surprise when he saw the boy sitting in the street, staring up at him in awe. He was small and mousy, a birthmark as irregular as an island on his jaw.

“Are you all right?” Cayo asked, extending a hand to help him up. “How badly did he hurt you?”

But the boy remained silent. After a moment, he finally jumped to his feet and took off running, nearly tripping over himself in his haste to get away.

Cayo sighed. The counterfeit money—his father’s counterfeit money—had the potential to break the city, but perhaps it was already too broken to fix.



In the end, he just couldn’t do it.

He’d turned his back on the Business Sector and returned home, his relief spoiled by regret.

Coward, his mind spat at him.

But he kept telling himself he had to know for certain, despite the insistent clawing in his skull that whispered he already knew.

Cayo waited in his father’s office until he returned home, but Kamon went straight to his bedroom, claiming he was too exhausted to even sit for dinner.

“Father, I have to speak with you,” Cayo said, his voice tight and on the verge of breaking.

“Not now, Cayo. I have an early meeting tomorrow, and I need to get rid of this headache.”

“It’s important. I found—”

“Cayo.” Kamon turned to him, a hand on the knob of his bedroom door. He wore the frown that Cayo remembered most from his childhood, the lines between his brows warning Cayo that he was trying his father’s patience. But there was also genuine weariness, as if Kamon was finally beginning to bend to the pressures he had exposed them to. “Have you fallen back on your vices?”

“What?” Cayo shook his head. “No, it’s not that.”

“Then whatever it is can wait,” his father said before disappearing into his room.

So Cayo stayed in bed for hours, feverish and sore. His whole body ached, as if to physically repel the truth. As if that was all it took to reverse the fact that his father was a criminal.

Somehow, he managed to sleep throughout the night. When he was fully aware of being conscious again, a watery gray light softened the edges of his widow curtains. His stomach was hollow, his shoulder and neck were stiff, and his mouth tasted like rot.

Still, he hauled himself out of bed, not bothering to glance at himself in the mirror like he usually did before he shuffled down the hall to check on Soria.

But his sister wasn’t in her rooms. Instead, he found Narin changing her bedsheets.

“The lady decided she wanted to go downstairs to eat,” the footman said with a tone of pride.

Relief loosened Cayo’s limbs. The medicine Romara had given him was already taking effect. “My father?”

“Meetings all morning.”

Cayo sighed and scrubbed a hand through his hair, wincing when the motion pulled on his bruised shoulder. How was he supposed to talk to his father about the counterfeit when he refused to sit still long enough?

What would happen if I just turned him in? he thought as he went downstairs, taking in the manor that his father had worked so hard to obtain. What if I can end this now?

The prospect was an arrow aimed between his eyes, sharp and unavoidable.

As he neared the dining room, he heard two voices in conversation. Cayo frowned. Who else was around other than Narin?

Pushing open the door, he took two steps into the dining room and froze.

Soria looked up with a grin, dressed only in her nightgown and robe. The young woman beside her turned and met his incredulous gaze, the thinnest razor-sharp smile on her face.

Countess Yamaa.

“Good morning, Lord Mercado,” she said. She swept her eyes over him, from his mussed hair to his wrinkled sleeping shirt to his baggy trousers and bare feet. Cayo flushed hot all over, desiring nothing more than to run back to his room and put on his best suit with a healthy spray of Ladyswoon.

But he made himself stand still, carefully clearing his throat. “Countess. What…Ah, to what do we owe the pleasure of such an early visit?”

“Early?” She quirked an eyebrow at the nearest window. “It’s past noon.”

Cayo swallowed a curse. The overcast sky had deceived him.

“The countess was telling me her ideas for her next party,” Soria jumped in, barely able to contain herself. “Sit down and eat, Cayo.”

He looked between them, shoulders tense. Although the countess knew his sister was ill, he hadn’t told her about the ash fever. Yet there was no disguising the gray mark on Soria’s neck. The countess said nothing about it—in fact, she didn’t seem troubled by it at all—so he could only hope she would keep it to herself.

He moved awkwardly to a chair opposite theirs, his body jerky and uncoordinated under Yamaa’s intense stare. Unable to resist the urge, he tried to flatten down his hair, wondering just how wild it looked to her.

“How are you feeling?” he asked Soria.

“Good,” she said. There was some color in her cheeks to contrast with the gray spread along the side of her neck, her eyes brighter and her breathing more even. Cayo couldn’t shake the memory of blood touching her lips, her ragged gasps for air. “I wanted to take a walk in the garden, but Narin said it’s too cold.”