PROLOGUE
Nero Zanthos
SIXTEEN YEARS EARLIER
“Keep your voices down,” I complain when Apollo and Drako start arguing—far too loudly—about the best way to dump salt into the massive pot of bubbling sauce on top of the old iron stove. “We’re going to get caught like this!”
I glance around, just to make sure we haven’t already been discovered, but no one seems worried about three stray boys today. On any other day, the caretaker would have caught us by now, and at this point we’d be locked inside the third-floor bathroom, keeping Atlas company. But today, even old Orpheus has been given new duties—just like the rest of us.
For him, that means no prowling the corridors of the parish house looking for rebels breaking curfew or slipping away from chores. For us, it means new clothes, forced smiles, and rehearsed lines written specifically to charm potential parents. I swallow the hiss threatening to slip through my teeth.
An oven beeps loudly. Rosa rushes to turn it off, and the moment she opens it, the scent of cinnamon and apple drifts into my nose, making my mouth water. Cookies. I smile and look at Apollo and Drako. They’re smiling too.
The cook pulls a full baking tray from the oven and sets it on the counter. Nina, her daughter, cranes her neck to peek inside. The girl is small, with blue eyes as big as saucers. I hope they shrink when she grows up. I think that would be good for her. Her eyes are strange.
A woman I’ve never seen before, wearing an apron, bumps into Rosa as she heads back to the oven, and the cook mutters under her breath. I can’t hear her, but I’m almost certain it’s the same thing Atlas, Drako, Apollo, and I have heard from her countless times—complaints about the invasion of her kitchen.
With us, those complaints always come with a smile and the fruit or cookies we came to steal. But today, Rosa isn’t smiling. The kitchen—like every hallway and room in the orphanage—is chaos.
Even after fourteen years in this place, it’s still strange to witness the transformation that happens during Christmas week. In my early years, before I understood how things truly worked here, this was my favorite week of the year.
I got to wear clothes without rips or stains, ate well for several days in a row, no one hit me, and there was always the hope of finding a family—one that would choose me, take me away from here. I stopped believing in all of that when I saw my first return.
I was eight when Pietro came back, and that’s when I realized parents could be just as bad as orphanage guardians. I didn’tneed more bad people. I already had enough bruises—though back then, I didn’t even know that’s what the marks scattered across my body were called. Consequences of the “corrections” every child in this place eventually suffers. Some more than others.
“You didn’t come up with a better idea either!” Apollo snaps, his narrowed eyes pulling my attention back to him.
The freckles scattered across my friend’s nose and cheeks look darker after we spent yesterday afternoon up on the roof clearing away dry leaves so that today every inch of the orphanage would look perfect. Even the roof—where no one would actually bother to look.
I roll my eyes at the thought that it was saying exactly that which got Apollo’s twin brother beaten. Atlas has been locked in the bathroom since yesterday, without food or water.
Apollo’s brown eyes narrow at me when I take too long to reply. Now that his hair has been shaved down to the scalp—a punishment for snapping back at Orpheus last week—his irises seem even darker, and he no longer looks quite as identical to Atlas as he always did.
Looking at it that way, Atlas should be happy. He’s locked in the third-floor bathroom, but at least he didn’t get his head shaved.
“I didn’t say your idea was bad,” I whisper. “I just said you need to keep your voice down, or we’ll get caught!”
“How long are you three planning to stay crouched behind that wall?” Rosa asks, and the three of us exchange looksbecause even though she isn’t facing us, we know she’s talking to us. “Hurry up. Come get your cookies before they cool.”
Looks like it’s too late. We’ve already been discovered. Damn it.
***
“Have you memorized your lines yet?” Rosa asks while I stare at my cookie, unable to decide whether to eat it now or save it for later.
Drako has already shoved his into his mouth, and Apollo is taking tiny bites, trying to make his last. I bite the inside of my cheek when I think of Atlas. These are his favorite cookies. He always says it’s the only time of the year he has something—besides Apollo, Drako, and me—to call his own.
Every year, Rosa bakes them and decorates them with the names of all thirty-eight children in the orphanage. One for each of us. And no matter how much we beg her throughout the year, the cook never gives in. She says it’s something special for Christmas. I decide to save my cookie so I can share it with Atlas once he’s out of punishment.
“We’re not going to say anything,” Drako answers. He’s the youngest among us—and the most impulsive.
At eleven, Drako is constantly getting into trouble because he never thinks before he speaks or acts. No matter how many times we’ve told him it’ll just get him caught—which is the real problem. Atlas, Apollo, and I get into trouble all the time too, but we’re rarely caught because we always plan ahead.
Drako’s greenish gaze locks onto Rosa’s round, pale face in open defiance, and her expression twists into something I’ve learned to recognize on any face: disapproval. The cook shakes her head from side to side, making the cap that hides her brown hair streaked with gray sway along with it.
“You boys need to stop getting into trouble! You know this won’t get you anywhere! If you want to be put at the front of the adoption line, you have to follow the rules!” she scolds, though her tone is nothing but affection. Rosa is the only person in this hell of a place who does anything besides telling us, over and over again, how useless we are. If she were the director instead of the witch, things here would be very different. Her voice drops to nearly a whisper before she adds, “You know how things work around here.”
“But we don’t want to go anywhere, Rosa,” Apollo replies loudly, completely ignoring the confidential tone she’d been using—and several heads around the kitchen turn in our direction. “We already have everything we need right here.” He says it, then turns his head, looking at me first and then at Drako. “We don’t need parents.”
