“I went to work today, at the duke’s, and I…” Flashes of blood sprang through my mind’s eye, but I shoved away the thoughts. I touched my pocket where the vestren from the duke’s son rested. I’d changed back into my clothes before leaving the arena, and somehow, now that I was back here, it all felt like a dream, the only proof of the morning’s affairs this coin in my pocket. How could I explain the past few hours to her?
Mother’s face was red, her voice edged with anger. Her hands were now crushing the soft scarf in her lap. “Were you mugged?” she asked. At my head shake, she blurted, “Arrested?”
“No, Mama,” I replied, my excitement instantly deflated. She had two modes: vacuous and vicious, and I never knew which one I’d walk in to meet.
“Did you take any drugs? Half the city takes drugs on race days.”
I turned to her, the way I assumed someone might face a firing squad. “No.” I decided to let her finish before attempting to explain my day.
Mama scoffed, her eyes examining me for any hint of mischief, any hair out of place. Her gaze paused when she saw the dark smear on my skirt that I’d acquired at the Covingtons’ lair. “You were assaulted.” Mama said it matter-of-factly, like it was a statement about the weather or the fact that Covington’s dragon had won the race. Evie glanced up then, her eyes wide.
“No, I wasn’t,” I said, trying to keep my tone even. “I’ll get the stain out, don’t worry.”
Mama’s hard eyes held me firmer than any chains. “If you would stick to a woman’s place, Ari, someone might decide to marry you and I wouldn’t have to spend half my days worried that you were washed up in some gutter somewhere.”
The softshhof Evie’s finger tracing along her book paused, leaving the only sound my bullish breathing.
My mother stood, stepping away from the heap of yarn on the table. “You may talk too much and have not a graceful bone in your body, but someone will want you.” The small smile on her face was proof enough that she considered her words a compliment. I didn’t smile back at her as she bustled over to me, eyeing my hair still neatly stacked on my head. “When did you learn to do your hair like this?”
“Actually, I went to the race today.”
“Sure you did.” My mother snickered. At my silence, her expression darkened. “It’s never the truth with you. Always these grand imaginings. They will ruin you, Ari. Mark my words, living in your own reality won’t change the real one. Dreams killed your father, and they’re on their way to destroying your brother.”
Her words knocked the air from my lungs. Dreams were what held me aloft on the nights I heard the pistols firing in the streets when the gangs crossed paths. Or the screams of women caught outside too late. Or when I was plagued by the only memory I had of my father, falling so hard on the floor after stumbling back home, drunk, that he’d knocked himself unconscious and we’d thought he’d died. The next day, he’d left, and we’d never seen him again. Dreams were what tied the fragments of my heart together.
As Mother spoke, I moved toward the kitchen area, where all the bowls and pots were still as clean as I’d left them this morning after leaving for my job at the Covington estate. The bread was gone, though. I sighed and reached for a pot hanging from a hook. My enthusiasm for discussing Lord Fairfax’s offer drained like rainwater down a gutter.
“Arivelle, what are you doing?” Mama rose from her seat.
“Cooking.”
“You’ll burn down the place. Here, I’ll do it.” She shuffled toward me, her bad knee clearly bothering her.
The pot clanked a little too loudly as I set it on the cast-iron stove. “You want me to dowomanthings, and yet you don’t trust me to boil a pot of water. I held a dragon down today as its injury was treated, Mama. I served beer to a hundred drunk idiots at Mim’s.” My voice was loud, my arms moving rapidly. Mama’s eyes widened, but I wasn’t finished. “And I’ll do it again, as long as it takes, so we can eat. So we can sleep inside rather than out there, even if my work isn’t on your list ofacceptablejobs forladies. Selling knit scarves on the street corner isn’t a guaranteed income, Mama. Especially in thesummer.” I pointed violently at the window.
For a moment, no one spoke.
Then, softly, “My headache has been worse today,” Mama began, as if I hadn’t even spoken. “What with the commotion outside and worrying about where you’d gone. Whether those gangs had snatched you up, too.” She wiped at one eye, though I doubted it was an actual tear. A piece of dust, perhaps. “You know what it does to me to worry. I can’t even knit when the pain gets too bad.”
For a moment, I stared at my mother, unsure how one person could be so incongruous and not see it. When she took the pot from the stove, I let her, at a loss for what else to say. As soon as Mama slipped into the hall to fill up the pot, Evie tiptoed toward me, her eyes wide with unspoken questions. I hugged her, but I no longer had the energy to describe today’s events. The shift at Mim’s had gone late, thanks to the post-race celebration, and I was more exhausted than I’d realized.
And suddenly, the excitement over possibly bonding with a dragon dimmed as I thought about leaving Evie for a whole school year.
I trudged over to the single bed Evie and I shared and began unlacing my shoes. My eyes landed on the stack of old books by the bed, pages still brown and split from the fire years ago. I’d read them each countless times, and Evie was slowly making her way through them now.
I turned to her. “Have you gotten to the part where the dragon egg hatched?” I asked, setting my shoes under the bed.
She shrugged. “It’s not as exciting as you said it would be. It’s just history. I wantromance.”
Shaking my head, I lay back against my pillow. “You’re too young for romance, Eve.”
“I’m fourteen!” she protested, settling beside me, her legs crossed.
I smiled, but my eyelids were so heavy that by the time Mama returned with the full pot, I was already halfway asleep. I barely heard my mother’s snide remarks about my ingratitude as I drifted off.
The next morning,I slipped from the apartment, padded down the rickety steps as quietly as the creaky wood allowed, and strolled through the mostly empty streets toward the edge of the city. The stone that encased the bottomside of Treston pressed an unseasonable chill over the streets that felt more like catacombs than avenues. Though I’d grown up here, walked beneath the bridges more often than over them, I still felt a bit like a rat running through the sewers. But there was one place I could go where the walls disappeared, the stone vanished, and the air turned sweet. One place where I could walk alone and not fear the shadows.
Mornings had a stillness to them, which, after the bustling crowds on race day, felt strange. I passed several dark shapes piled in the shadows at the base of bridges, where the streetlamps’ yellow light didn’t quite reach, and hurried by.
