Father Fettle takes care of that. It’s believed that every century or so, he releases some new sickness to thin out our numbers.

  Maybe it’s because of him that I’m sick. Maybe my disease came from some long-ago pestilence he once spread through the world. And that is why I am dying too young.

  And I am too young. I’m only in my twenty-fifth year. If I was from the Commos Isles, where the humans don’t live very long, I would be old, perhaps. In the Capital, I’m at the age where marriage should be on the cards, proposals made and negotiations starting between families.

  Not me, though.

  No one wants to marry the sick girl who coughs up blood and has dizzy spells so bad that she sometimes faints on the street.

  But Olivia...

  I know I’m not supposed to be jealous of my sister, but Gods help me, I am. I’m envious of everything about her. We are only a year apart, we should look similar, but my sickness prevents such beauty imprinting on me.

  Where Olivia’s hair is golden, like a private river belonging to Trident, mine is pale yellow, almost with a burnt-hue to it, and my loose waves are nothing compared to her tight ringlets. Her eyes gleam like emerald stones and mine are a dull hazel that only sometimes shimmer amber—usually after I have a remedy to keep me strong.

  But it’s not just our looks that set Olivia and I apart. It’s how our father treats us, too.

  See, he doesn't like me all too well. In his words, I’m a burden, a nuisance, and it would better for the reputation of the family if I stopped taking my remedies and just fell away to my sickness already.

  His feelings about me show greatly in what he buys us. Olivia, for the Day of the Gods, wears a lovely gown that’s morning-sky blue and glitters when it swirls around, and her corset is covered in blue petals—the same that litter her braided hair. I wear an old dress of my mothers, a muddy brown colour with an old-fashioned exposed corset, and my hair hangs low in a dishevelled bun at the nape of my neck.

  And even more unfairly, in my sickness, no matter the dress I wear, my figure is always the same slender shape. There is no amount of corsets in Scocie to give me the illusion of a waist or a full bosom. Of course my wretched sister wears her dresses like bells that cinch her waist then flow out into wide skirts.

  She wears the dresses, Mother says, the dresses don’t wear her. It’s the opposite for me. And one of the many reasons I’ve collected over the years to begrudge my sister.

  You see, Olivia gets all the things that I want. Suitors, proposals and romance. I know, I should want for more out of life, but for me—with my sickness—marriage and love are all that I can afford to dream of. And hell, do I dream of those things.

  Sometimes I dream of them with the boy Olivia talks to. Mikhael, the son of Mayor West.

  Can’t help but feel a pang of jealousy hit my gut as I stand awkwardly beside them.

  Olivia is blathering on about the new ruby-red dress she has had made for tonight’s ball. Mikhael can’t get a word in. But he smiles politely and nods along with what she’s saying.

  Mayor West explains to my father the trouble he’s been having with the dock management to pay up with their taxes. Gertrude looks like she might just fall asleep standing there on the street.

  I wait out the mind-numbing chat for as long as I can. But it isn’t very long before slight swirls of dizziness start to wind around me. I stagger on the spot.

  Mikhael moves for me. He catches my arms in his warm, clammy hands and steadies me.

  “Are you all right, Keela?” A concerned crease wrinkles between his eyebrows. “Do you need to sit?”

  “Oh, don’t worry about her,” Olivia says with a dismissive flick of her lacy-gloved hand. “She’s all about the drama. Even in the temple, the Head Worshipper was in the middle of his sermon, and there she goes with her coughing and sputtering. Really,” she adds, exasperated.

  I throw her a look made of knives and murder. It’s all I can manage with the weakness hitting me, hard.

  “I do need to sit,” I say and untangle my arms from Mikhael’s hands. “Thank you, I can manage.”

  As I leave them standing on the street, I feel something rustle against my hip. Mikhael has slipped a note into my skirt pocket. Expertly, I pretend not to notice as I find my way to the bottom of the steps that climb up to Prince Poison’s temple. There, tucked between the steps and the bustle of the street, I sit myself on a stone bench.

  After a glance at my family across the street, I’m certain they have forgotten me already. Olivia talks to Mikhael with renewed vigour, flailing her arms about and gesturing to her dress a half-dozen times, and my father looks engrossed in whatever boring business Mayor West is telling him now.

  I slip the note out from my skirt.

  ‘Merchant Market. Midday.’

  I hide a small smile that starts to take my lips. I scrunch up the note.

  Stuffing it back into my pocket, I look up as footsteps come out of the temple doors.

  Silver walks out from the parted lacquered doors. His legs slink like those of a beast’s, prowling through the Wild Woods.

  He glances at me as he leaves the temple, his hands in his pockets, the unbuttoned middle of his ruby-red coat parted behind his arms. He pauses beside the bench, never taking his deadly, yet lazy gaze off of me, and pulls out a black cigarette from his pocket. The move causes his coat to fall back over his shirt and cravat.

  I watch as he lights it, then runs me over with his gaze.

  I must look horrid, sitting all hunched and tense on the pew, blood stains on my lips, and an ashen paleness to liken me to a sun-bleached stone.

  His eyes are hollow ash as he studies me. Then, with a lingering, dark look he travels over me, he strides off, disappearing into the thinning crowd on the street.

  It’s an understatement to say that aniels make me uneasy. But they especially make me frightened when they notice me. To Silver, I’m weak, ripe for the picking, and what’s to stop him fixing his wicked amusement on me?

  I shake my head to throw away those thoughts from my mind. Before my family can leave Worship Street, I fish out the chain that vanishes into my cleavage. Attached to the chain there used to be a small pendant of a mermaid. Now, it’s a tiny figure of Prince Poison’s symbol; a teardrop shape, meant to signify a drop of poison, darkened with an ash-grey hue.

  I unscrew the lid. The tiny metal cap rolls off, revealing that it’s a hidden phial filled with my remedy.

  I throw it back. The burn of the remedy hits the back of my throat like a thousand matches. More and more of late, I’ve needed double—sometimes triple!—my regular dose just to keep standing. Mind, the Day of the Gods is a long and gruelling day, so I shouldn’t feel too guilty about indulging in my remedy. I need it, especially if I’m going to meet Mikhael at the Merchant Market.

  He might listen to Olivia ramble on right now, but every few moments, I feel his gaze fleetingly cut to me. He is waiting for my answer.

  I nod so slightly it’s almost indecipherable.

  Still, he catches it and I see the whisper of a smile on his thin lips.

  Guess that’s one thing I have over my sister. Mikhael. She might flirt with him, fancy herself marrying him, but it’s me who sneaks off to the markets with him every week, it’s me he hides in alcoves with during the balls—

  It’s me he wants.

  2.

  The facade of my home is a perfect shade of sun-bleached berry. Slightly slanted by age, it stands three stories tall.

  All the buildings in the Textile District are painted lovely pastel colours, but the salt in the air, from the seaside not too far away, eats at the paint. Our home is no exception. The paint on the windowsills is cracked and peeling at the edges, and there are orange rust-like stains that mark the corners of the facade.

  Still, it’s a pretty home—at least, I think so—and the sight of it never fails to stir up nostalgic memories of when Mother was healthier and she sat on the stone steps leading up to the front door and would watch me play with chalk on the sloped street.

  Now, Mother lingers behind the window on the top floor, forever confined to her bedchamber by the sickness that plagues us both. That’s where I got it from—my mother. She came down with the sickness while I was in her belly, and since the healers don’t have the faintest clue what it is, she just got worse with time. We have our remedies to thank for us still managing to fight off death.

  At the foot of the cracked stone steps, Olivia shoves past me and shadows farther up to the door. I’m slower, using the rusty iron rail to help me up behind them.

  We’re not in the door a moment before a servant is rushing over to us. Of course he moves for Olivia first, and helps her shrug off the sheer blue shawl draped over her arms. Father throws off his coat and discards it on a waiting seat against the wall.

  I’m ignored and I have no shawl or coat to toss away. So I weave around Olivia—who blathers on about her late dress delivery—and make for the creaky stairs.

  Father stops me. “Keela,” he says, his curt tone cutting me like a fragment of broken stone. He keeps his back to me as he loosens his cravat, then peels off his brand-new gloves. “My study. Now.”

  Without a word, I trail him through the lobby to the door hidden behind the ascending staircase. He opens it to his familiar study, where the flavour in the air tastes like old leather-bound books, cigar smoke and cheap ink.

  He doesn't tell me to sit, but I park myself on a button-tufted leather armchair opposite his desk, and settle myself in. Good thing I do too, because he makes a ceremony of preparing himself to sit at his parchment-crowded desk. He pours himself a tumbler of cheap whiskey—the crystal glass is cracked, I notice—and he fishes out his gold cufflinks, then tosses them onto a dish that’s dangerously close to falling off the desk.

  As he drapes himself on his high-spine chair, I study him too closely; the shadow of grey stubble on his dimpled chin, the bulbous slant to his blotchy nose, and the thick furrow of his brows that hang too low over ordinary brown eyes. Olivia didn’t get her looks from him—she got them from our pretty mother. Well, pretty before the sickness.

  Can’t imagine why Mother chose Arthur for a husband.

  I’ve seen old paintings of Mother in her prime, before she fell ill and had children. Her curves were envious, her heart-shaped face plump and gentle, and her golden hair halo’d her. It wouldn’t have been too difficult to believe she was an aniel or something.

  But Arthur?

  Not only is he ordinary to look at, he’s a mean man. He picks favourites among his children—and makes no attempt to hide it, either—and he has practically locked Mother in her bedchamber to wither away and die.

  And now this—

  “I don’t have enough coin to purchase both yours and your mother’s remedies,” he tells me while he sets the ceramic pot of money on the desk. As he pops off the lid, he adds, as some sort of weak explanation, “Taxes were raised this month, so one of you will have to go without. Or you can share whatever this will buy.”

  Delicately, he plants two golden coins on the desk. It costs three and a half golden coins to buy what Mother and I need.

  Despite his excuse, he can afford to purchase our remedies. Taxes might have been hiked, but that doesn't mean we don't have the money to keep Mother and I well. Olivia’s new—and expensive—dress arrives sometime today, and she just purchased it three days ago. Not to mention, Father smokes about five pipes of tobacco every day, some cigars too, and he was sporting a new pair of brown-leather gloves at temple this morning.

  I sit forward on the chair. “I only need another golden coin and a half.”

  He doesn’t spare me a look. “Well, I can’t give it.”

  As he closes the lid on the flowery money-pot, I catch a glimpse of what’s inside it. I quickly count three pouches of coin, a ribbon-bound stack of paper notes (those are worth a lot!), and a dish full of golden coins.

  “Looks like you have enough,” I mutter under my breath.

  He hears me and his eyes lock onto mine like two boulders charging down a hill. “Not all of this is ours,” he snaps. “I do have financial responsibilities to this city, Keela. Not to mention taxes and donations to the Lost Square. But I would not expect your small mind to comprehend anything regarding duty.” He spits the word at me like venom.

  My spine stiffens as my lashes lower on him. “Well, what about the dress Olivia just bought? And the new shawl she was wearing today? How many golden coins did those cost?”

  His brown eyes turn muddy. “Your sister is close to a proposal from Mikhael West. She needs a new dress more than you need your remedy.”

  “She needs a dress more than Mother and I need our health?” I arch my brows at him, though I’m truly not surprised. How can I be, when this has been the only life I’ve ever known with Father and Olivia?

  He tucks away the money-pot in his deep desk drawer. It’s lockable, and he makes a point of turning the key. “Health,” he parrots, a sneer taking his whiskery lip. “No amount of remedies in this Godly world will ever show you what true health is. Even with the amount you ingest, you are on the verge of death every day. Olivia,” he adds, his sneer flittering away to a beefy look of pride, “is healthy and pretty and educated. She is the daughter I must focus my efforts on, since she is the one who will be married soon. You will not.”

  I roll my jaw, biting back the scathing words that sting my tongue. With a huff, I snatch the two golden coins from the desk and stuff them into my skirt pocket.

  Father doesn't stop me from storming out of his study.

  I head up to the third floor. On the second flight of stairs, I pause to lean on the bannister. My lashes flutter as a wave of vertigo rolls over me. My legs suddenly feel like they are made of damp twigs and could snap beneath me at any moment.

  Tempted to down another dose of my remedy. But my necklace-phial is only a quarter full, and I don’t have much left in the bottle stored in my bedroom. With only two golden coins to buy more with, I have little choice but to ration.

  Unless—

  Mother still has some jewels stowed away from her younger days. Suitors who tried to dazzle her with glittery things, thinking she was just another silly young girl who could be bought. (Again, why she picked my father, I’ll never understand.)

  If Mother is resting, I might be able to snag a jewel or something pretty enough to catch a few coins in the Lost Square. That way, I can maybe afford to purchase enough remedy for the both of us.

  I know she clings to life with a slippery grip, but I can’t be the one to deny her of the remedy just to keep enough for myself. And I suspect that’s what Father’s game is here. He wants at least one of us to fall away. At this point, he doesn’t care which one, as long as he’s free of one burden.

  Mind, if I had to choose between Olivia and me, or Father and me, I would choose myself without hesitation. But Mother is different. She’s a sweet woman, poorly like me, and she’s the only one in our family who actually seems to care a damn about me.

  Maybe I should feel a tinge of guilt at my plan to steal from a dying woman, but I feel nothing other than anxiety that starts to tickle deep in my gut. I knock on her bedchamber door and am greeted with silence.

  I poke my head inside.

  The curtains are drawn, and there’s a dusty darkness in the room. The air carries a stuffy stale smell that reminds me faintly of urine. I shoot a glance at her chamber pot—the lid is set on top of it, but I suspect it hasn’t been washed out since last night. I’ll have to remind the servants to check on her before I go.

  Relief uncoils throughout me that Mother is asleep on the bed. Dim lantern light illuminates her frail, skeletal silhouette on the bed. She’s so still that I pause to watch her, searching for any signs of life. Then, a single cough jolts her on the bed, and a spray of black blood hits the pillow she rests her head on.

  I feel a fist clench around my heart.

  Even in the dim light, the spray of blood on the pillow gleams a dark crimson. An ache twists high in my chest as I look between the spatter and Mother’s limp frame.

  I shouldn’t risk waking her, since I mean to steal from her. And yet, as I make to move for her dressing table, my feet seem stuck to the carpet. I can’t move.

  I release a defeated sigh and bow my head. My feet lift easily from the carpet as I move for the bed instead. Moth-eaten curtains drape from the canopy. I ease my way around the sturdy frame, towards the bedside table. On it, there is a glass of tepid water, half-full, and some blood-stained napkins. Tucked by the side of the gas lantern, I recognise the bottle-green phial of remedy I bought for her last week.

  The gas lantern burns low, but the light is enough to illuminate Mother’s hollow cheek. I stand by her bedside for a moment, studying her—studying my future, what I will one day become. Lips so dry and cracked that there are fractured lines of raw flesh staining them, spatters of blood on her chin and pillow, a face so sunken that her eyes seem to bulge out from it.

  She’s hardly ever awake these days.

  A soft breath loosens from me as I reach for a murky brown handkerchief on the table. I fold it over onto a clean side, dampen it with a few drops of water from the glass, then dab it over Mother’s mouth. At the touch, she releases a ragged-sounding breath that freezes me in place.

  I wait a heartbeat. Two heartbeats.

  But she doesn’t wake.

  Relief ribbons through me. I wipe the handkerchief over her chin before I discard it onto the bedside table. I almost make to move away from her, but then I hear the hoarse sound of her breaths, like cold air scraping over the rough surface of seasalt-paper.

  I take the glass in my hands and inch it closer to her parted, chapped lips. With my other hand, I turn her face upwards before I let droplets of water sprinkle into her mouth.