1
HEIDI
The sound hits me first—a pulse that thrums through the obsidian stone beneath my boots, crawling up my spine like a living thing. Music spills from Vestige's entrance in waves of heat and shadow, carrying voices, laughter, the crack of magic against skin. I press my back against the alley wall across from the club's entrance, letting the chaos wash over me.
This is why I love New Solas. The noise drowns everything else out.
I adjust the bronze cuffs wrapped around my wrists, making sure they catch the light from the enchanted sconces. The metal's warm against my skin, mimicking the natural heat signature of a low-caste xaphan. My hair falls loose around my shoulders, dark waves hiding the absence of wings, and the deep burgundy dress I'd lifted from a merchant's cart this morning shows enough thigh to distract from what I'm not.
Human. The word tastes like ash in my mouth, even thinking it.
But here, pressed into shadow while xaphan nobility strut past in their finery, wings spread like declarations of power, I'minvisible. Just another face in the crowd, another body seeking escape in the city's most infamous den of sin.
The line outside Vestige stretches around the block. Bodies pressed close, magic crackling in the air like static electricity. A pair of pure-blooded xaphan with pristine white wings laugh as they bypass the queue entirely, the bouncer's nod sharp with deference. Behind them, a group with mottled gray feathers wait with practiced patience, knowing their place.
I've watched this hierarchy play out for years from the shadows. The golden-winged elite, the silver-touched merchants, the gray masses who work and serve and pretend they don't resent every moment of it. And below them all, the humans—though most pretend even that’s not true. That we’re slaves to be ignored entirely.
Better that way.
My fingers drift to the small blade hidden in my hair, then to the coins tucked into my bodice. Tonight's take had been decent—three purses from distracted nobles, a pair of silver earrings from a merchant too busy eyeing the working girls to notice my hands. Enough to eat for a week, maybe find a few warmer clothes for the incoming cold.
There was a time when I was fed and clothed. But it was never worth the cost.
The memory slides in before I can stop it, sharp-edged and unwelcome.
"Heidi, get up."
I'm twelve, maybe thirteen. Time blurs together in the cramped dormitory above the tavern. Madam Cordelia's voice cuts through the pre-dawn darkness like a blade.
"You've got work today."
Work. The word makes my stomach clench. I know what work means now. Have known for months, since the night shefirst brought me downstairs to the red rooms with their stained silk and the smell of sweat and coin.
"Please." The word slips out before I can stop it. "I don't feel well."
Cordelia's laugh is sharp enough to draw blood. "Feeling poorly, are we? That's unfortunate. Considering you still owe me for your clothes, your food, your bed." Her fingers dig into my arm as she hauls me upright. "Seventeen nodals this week alone. How do you plan to pay that back?"
I don't answer. Can't. The number grows every week, no matter how many times she sends me downstairs, no matter how many men's hands I endure. She calls it compound interest. I call it a cage.
"That's what I thought." She shoves me toward the washbasin. "Clean yourself up. Master Vrain is particular about his investments."
I shake my head, forcing the memory back into its box. The present bleeds back in—music, heat, the distant sound of glass breaking followed by raucous laughter. A xaphan couple stumbles past, the male's hands already wandering beneath his companion's dress, her wings fluttering with intoxication.
Nobody looks at me. Nobody sees me.
Perfect.
Another memory slithers forward, this one sharper, more recent.
I'm sixteen. The scars on my wrists are fresh, still tender where the shackles bit into skin. Cordelia had started chaining the older girls after Mira tried to run. Tried and failed. They brought her back bloody and broken, and we all learned what happened to birds who forgot their cages.
But I'm smarter than Mira. Quieter. I've been planning this for months, stealing drops of hemlock from the kitchen, hoarding the bitter coins men sometimes leave as tips. Tonight,while the others sleep, I swallow just enough poison to mimic death without achieving it.
The convulsions are real. The foam at my lips, the way my body goes rigid—all genuine responses to the toxin coursing through my veins. When Cordelia finds me in the morning, cold and still, she curses the loss of investment but doesn't waste time on sentiment.
"Dump her in the river," she tells the tavern keeper. "Can't have the other girls getting ideas about giving up."
But Marcus is lazy, and drunk, and the river is three blocks away. He leaves me in the alley behind the brothel, my body wrapped in dirty sheets like garbage. I wait until his footsteps fade, then force myself to move despite the poison still burning through my system.
