These Hollow Vows (These Hollow Vows, #1)(2)

I knew Gorst was rich, but I didn’t expect riches like these. Prostitution and drink make wealthy men, but this wealthy? I scan the shelves and instinctively reach out when I spot the only explanation. I hover my hand over a stack of life deeds but yank back at the magical heat radiating from them.

Had I been born into a different life, I would have very much liked to become a powerful mage for contracts like this alone. I would unravel the magic that binds these lives to evil men like Gorst. I’d gather my resources and free as many girls as I could before I was caught and executed. Even knowing that I don’t have the skill to undo the magic in those documents, it’s all I can do to leave them where they sit. Everything in me screams that I should at least try.

You can’t save them.

I force myself to step away. Choosing a cluttered shelf where a missing coinbag might go unnoticed, I scan for markings. None. Maybe Gorst should pay me to teach him how to truly guard his treasure. I lift a single pouch and peek inside to check the contents—more than enough raqon for our payment. Maybe enough for next month’s as well.

He has all this wealth. Will he really notice if I take more?

I scan the shelves and carefully choose two more bags that are tucked behind unorganized piles of treasure. I knew Gorst was despicable, but this is the kind of wealth that people of Fairscape see only if they do business with faeries. With that realization, each of those magical contracts takes on a new meaning. It’s bad enough that he can make those people do his bidding, bad enough that they’ll spend their lives paying an impossible debt, but if Gorst deals with the fae, he’s shipping humans off to another realm to spend their lives as slaves. Or worse.

There are three stacks of contracts. I can’t risk touching them, but I make myself look at each pile. Someday I’m going to buy my freedom, and once my sister isn’t relying on me, I’ll come back here. Someday I’ll find a way.

My gaze snags on the stack closest to the vault door and the name on top. I reread the name and the date the payment is due in full. Once. Twice. Three times. My chest ratchets tighter each time. I don’t believe in the old gods, but I send up a prayer anyway at the sight of that name, that child’s scrawl. At tomorrow’s date highlighted with a streak of her own blood.

Steps sound overhead, the booming of men’s boots, and I hear a deep voice. I can’t make out his words from down here, but I don’t need to understand what he’s saying to know that I need to run.

My satchel is heavy with my stolen goods, and I clutch it to my side so it won’t clang against my hip as I race out of the vault. I lift the starworm off my wrist, gasping as it fights me, trying for more blood.

“Patience,” I whisper, guiding him to the floor. The leech crawls across the threshold, cleaning away my blood with its tiny tongue.

More steps above. Then laughter and the sound of clinking glasses. He’s not alone, but if I’m lucky, everyone up there will be too intoxicated to notice me slip out.

“Hurry, hurry,” I whisper to the starworm. I need to close the vault, but if I leave my blood behind, I’ll risk Gorst knowing someone was here. Or worse—taking a sample to a mage and tracing it back to me.

The voices come closer, then steps on the stairs.

I have no choice. I wrench the starworm from his bloody feast and slip him into my satchel.

I splash water from my canteen onto the stones before I swing the vault closed.

“I’ll get a new bottle,” Gorst shouts from the top of the cellar stairs. I know that voice too well. I used to clean his brothel. I mopped his floors and scrubbed his toilets until a month ago, when he tried to corner me into working for him in a very different capacity.

I’ve spent the last nine years living by two rules: I don’t steal from those who give me honest work, and I don’t work for those who steal from me. That night, I added a new rule to the list: I don’t work for those who try to blackmail me into prostitution.

Every scuff of his boots brings him closer, but I keep my movements smooth and steady.

I latch one lock. Snick.

Scuff, scuff.

The second lock. Snick.

Scuff, scuff.

The third—

“What the hell?”

Snick.

“These glowstones are worthless,” he grumbles from the foot of the stairs.

I keep my breathing shallow and press myself against the wall, where the darkness is deepest.

“You coming or not?” A female voice from the top of the stairs. She giggles. “We found the other bottle, Creighton. Come on!”

“I’m coming.”

I count his steps back up and inch closer to the stairs as he stumbles his way toward the top. He’s drunk. Perhaps luck is on my side tonight.

Listening carefully, I track their progress through the manor house until there’s no more noise in the servants’ quarters above me and the sounds all come from the front of the house. I can’t risk opening the vault again to remove the rest of my blood. Not tonight.

I pad silently up the stairs, retracing the steps that brought me here.

I don’t register the extent of the tension locking my muscles until I’m out of the house and it leaves me in a rush. Under the cool night sky, I’m hit by a wave of exhaustion. I won’t stop now, but I’ve pushed myself too hard this week and I can’t deny my body much longer.