Scavenge the Stars (Scavenge the Stars #1)(91)

Soria had started coughing again, and Yamaa, or the girl who had once been Yamaa, looked over with pinched eyes.

“I’ll explain later,” she’d said. “Can you help them?”

“I can.” Roach had approached Cayo then, dropping to one knee. Cayo had stayed back, untrusting, despite the warmth in the young man’s eyes. “I can help your sister get better, but it would require leaving Moray. If you’re all right with that, then we’ll need to head to my ship before the Port’s Authority starts snooping around.”

Cayo had no idea what he was doing, or why he had agreed. As he now stared down at Soria, standing on a stranger’s ship, the immensity of what had happened flooded over him. He sat hard on the edge of the bed, barely feeling the pain of the wooden frame as it dug into his thighs.

“Cayo?” Soria wormed an arm out from under the sheets and grabbed his hand. “Why are we leaving Moray? What about Father?”

He closed his eyes and clenched his jaw. He had to tell her the truth—all of it.

It came out of him like a frayed thread. Cayo told her about the counterfeit, about Kamon’s dealings with the Slum King, about how their father had been willing to let her waste away. It hurt, as if he tore that thread from his own skin, ripping apart his seams and undoing all that made him Cayo.

When he opened his eyes, Soria was crying quietly, her face half-turned into the pillow. He squeezed her hand.

“We need to get away from him,” he said. “And this man, Roach, says that there’s a way to help you. That’s why we have to leave.” He pressed her fingers to his lips. “I’m sorry, Soria. I wish I could fix this.”

But she shook her head and sniffed. “There’s no fixing some things, Cayo. I just…” She sobbed brokenly, her breath rasping. “I thought he loved me.”

He leaned over her. “I love you. And I’m going to do whatever it takes to save you.”

Soria scrubbed a wrist against her eyes and looked at the jade ring on her finger. “I wasn’t honest with you before. When I told you where I got this.”

Cayo frowned, not sure what it had to do with anything, but nodded for her to continue.

Soria brushed a thumb against the ring, her lips trembling. “It was a long time ago, but I remember it clearly. It’s because Father was so angry, and it scared me. I was supposed to be in a lesson with Miss Lawan, but instead I was going to the gardens because I’d left a toy out there. That’s when I heard Father yelling at someone. I peeked around the corner and saw he was with another man, who was dirty and clearly drunk.”

His sister closed her eyes, as if to better focus on the memory. “Father was saying that the other man had screwed up, that he had ruined his plan. That he was supposed to deliver a girl to the manor, not sell her to a debtor ship.”

“Deliver a girl?” Cayo’s frown deepened. “Was this a debt collector?”

“He must have been. He was nervous, but he laughed to hide it. He said something about needing to repay a debt to a captain. Father was…” Soria shuddered. “I’d never seen him so furious before. He hit the man and he went down.”

It didn’t surprise Cayo to hear about his father being violent, but the image still made his stomach ache.

“The debt collector told him to wait, that he had payment for his troubles, and showed him a ring. ‘The girl’s mother gave it to me as payment,’ he said. ‘For smuggling her out of the city. It’ll make up for the cost of you hiring me.’ But Father wouldn’t accept it and flung the ring into the garden. He said that it was worthless compared to the price of the girl. That if the man didn’t want to die that day, he would leave and never come near him again.”

Soria opened her eyes and fixed them on the jade ring. “I chased after the ring and picked it up, kept it in my jewelry box until I was old enough to wear it. I don’t know why—maybe because it was pretty, or because I wanted to remember that day. As hard as I tried to convince myself that Father was a good person, that he was someone I didn’t have to fear…”

More tears slid down her face. She angrily tore at the green band, scraping her knuckle as she popped it off her finger and threw it weakly across the room. It bounced against the wall and landed in a clatter.

“I’m glad we’re leaving,” she whispered.

He stayed with her until she stopped crying, until she let her exhaustion make way for uneasy sleep. Cayo stood and swayed, not quite used to the movement of a ship despite his childhood longing to live on one. But more than that, he was still dizzy and sore from last night, from his reckless descent into debauchery.

If he had simply gone home, would he have been able to avoid this? Had his vices finally ruined his family for good?

Cayo pocketed the ring before he climbed the stairs to the deck with a pounding head. The others were there: Roach, a man and two women he vaguely recognized from the countess’s estate, and the countess herself.

The girl who had pretended to be a countess.

She felt his gaze and turned to meet it. She opened her mouth as if to say something to him, then looked away.

Cayo bristled. Fine, then.

He walked up to Roach. “You said you came here to investigate the source of ash fever. What do you know about it?”

Roach sighed and dug something from his pocket. The buttons of his blue uniform jacket winked in the meager starlight as he pulled out a folded handkerchief.