I can’t meet Benji’s eyes.
It’s not okay. It’s very much not okay,I want to cry.
Instead, I can only watch in horror as the teller gestures for Jeremee’s ringed hand. Reluctantly, he slides it across the counter. A prick from the quill.
I blink away the tears, staring down at the small space beneath his chin. If that amount pushed him to a new level, then a ring would sear along the empty skin there.
A palace vendor once told me of an Unluckie’s corpse found on the edge of the Peri, picked over by vultures. Even the bones were carved with the debt that marred the flesh in life.
“You could declare the Desert Walk,” I offer weakly.
Jeremee shakes his head, mouth set.
Of course he will not abandon Benji here, with no family. Even for the sliver of a chance at freedom. Very few survive crossing the Amyrian Desert, but those who do join the House of Death in banishment with their balance wiped clean.
“Why is Avvie crying?” Benji asks, voice shaking.
Avvie,what he used to call me when he couldn’t pronounce my name. A baby’s babble. Benji needs his big brother, and his big brother needs him. The palace pays more than the market, the farms, the building projects in the cities beyond Versara. It is not the torture of the mines. It’s our safest bet, even if it isn’t safe.
Jeremee cries out, doubling over, then collapses. Benji screams, and I pull him away.
“It’ll be okay, it’ll be okay,” I rush to say, holding the child to my chest so he doesn’t see.
Jeremee scrabbles at his ankle, pushing up his trousers. Three thick black tattoos curve around his calf.
He is only a limb away from becoming an Unluckie. The line behind us shifts uneasily, whispers growing, sympathy and fear alike in the onlookers’ voices.
“Next!” the teller shouts over the noise.
I grab Jeremee’s arm and haul him to his feet. He leans against me, breathing through the last of the pain, tears streaking down all three of our faces now. I slip my remaining three copper coins into his pocket.
“It won’t make a difference,” he rasps.
“I’m going to pay this off, every single coin.”
“Me too,” Benji sniffs.
“No,” Jeremee snaps. “No.Please.”
“Bee, keep your money,” I say. “And, Jae, I swear to you that I will.”
“How?”
An idea comes. “The night shifts. They pay more.”
He shakes his head. “Because they’re dangerous. I can’t let you.”
“Becoming an Unluckie is dangerous. Think of it as repayment.”
Jeremee raises my chin with an inked finger, his eyes overflowing. “You willneverbe indebted to me.”
My throat pinches with pain. I force out my next words. “But you are indebted to them, so we’ll fight it together.”
We reach Jeremee’s room, a four-cot space he shares with other male faeries. I lower my friend to his cot, and Benji climbs onto his brother’s lap. The siblings cling to each other, weeping.
“I will hurt them!” Benji wails.
“Shh!” Jeremee clutches him tighter. “Shh, do not say that. Never say that.”
