“What are you talking about? You have friends and now the Siren’s Hair. You’ve built yourself a good life here.”
“This is not my life!”
Nes opened her mouth. Shut it again. Not once had she ever heard Suri shout. Her friend’s voice had always been a gentle melody in her ear, so much so that she’d doubted Suri could raise her voice. “What do you mean?”
Suri shook her head, her exhale coated in exasperation. “No, I— Never mind. Forget it. Thank you, Nes.”
“If you don’t want it, just say so,” she spat, reaching for the parchment. “I’ll take it back.”
“No!” Suri gripped the paper tight. “It’s fine. It’s great, I mean.”
The lie couldn’t have been clearer. Tension snaked between them, thick and fresh and alive. She couldn’t bring herself to look Suri in the eye; both of them stared heavily at the deck of cards splayed out on the bedspread.
“What did I miss?”
Nes looked up. Genna stood in the doorway, croissant crumbs on her chin. Nes quickly pushed up off the bed. “Nothing.”
Genna glanced between the two of them, but Nes knew Suri wouldn’t say anything more.
“You ready to get started?” Nes asked Genna. She grabbed one of the pillowcases from her bed.
Genna nodded.
With her dagger, Nes sliced open the stuffing. Inside the pillow, scattered among the feathers, were bits of bright green lichen. The green was brighter and more vibrant than Suri’s eyes. Even the afternoon sun seemed dim in comparison.
Genna plucked the pure magic from the pillow and deposited it in a shallow bowl Suri handed her. Nes watched as Genna crushed the glowing lichen into a paste, then dribbled water from her canteen over it, swirling the two with her finger. The magic’s alluring smell—one of a crisp first snowfall, elegant and cold—tickled Nes’s nose.
Genna swiped a finger through the glowing mixture, held it up to her face, and ran her finger down the length of her outstretched tongue. The scent of metal screeched within Nes as the magic sank into Genna.
Their plan was simple. Get Genna to create enough coins to spread the magic throughout the entire gambling den. If the magic wasn’t in a singular location, then when Damari showed up to steal it, she wouldn’t be able to take enough before Toran and Nes captured her.
Genna collapsed, knees slamming the floorboards, arms outstretched. And then her lips were glowing with the magic. She looked reverent with her head tilted back and her palms up, sun and magic alike aglow on her face. But then she coughed, a great hacking cough, and doubled over, spewing the contents of her stomach across the floor.
Nes wrinkled her nose and stepped back, her own gut churning at the sight. Bits of half-digested food, coated in saliva and stomach bile, spread over the floor, seeping into the grain. Surely this wasn’t how it was supposed to happen. Something had to be wrong.
But then she caught a glint of metal.
A wave of shock slammed through her as she funneled out every sound but a soft clinking coming from where Genna sat. Coming from the contents falling from her glowing lips. She should have recognized it right away. It was a constant in the Siren’s Hair. The ringing sound of coin on coin.
Genna wasn’t only throwing up her stomach contents. She was vomiting gadots.
The pile of money grew steadily the more Genna heaved. The sight of it made Nes’s fingers itch. Of all the ways magic could react to a human body, she never would have imagined this. She watched, hungry and eager, as Genna’s shoulders shook and her body forced more money out into the world.
Several more gadots fell from her lips—the glow slowly fading as the magic made its escape—pinging against the mound of coin at her knees. At last, Genna took a deep breath and closed her mouth.
There had to be at least fifty gadots on the floor between them.Fifty. Melting metal, like that in a forge, replaced the snowfall scent in Nes’s nostrils as she breathed deep.
“Are you okay?” Suri asked. She’d swung her legs over the side of the bed and leaned toward Genna—who looked rather pale—to rest a hand on the guard’s shoulder.
Genna wiped her mouth on her sleeve and nodded to Suri.
Nes held the bowl of diluted magic out to Genna. “Ready to go again?” she asked. “We’re going to need a lot more where that came from.”
Genna dipped her finger in the bowl. Sticking out her tongue, she ran the green sludge down the length of it. And then the heaving started all over again.
Toran’s lieutenant—Quint, Nesrecalled—appeared on the doorstep of the Siren’s Hair two hours later. By then, they had nearly five hundred gadots distributed between small pouches.
But Genna was slowing. The last time she’d consumed the diluted magic, she’d vomited nothing but stomach bile and two coins. Upon seeing this, Suri insisted they take a break and was quick to usher Genna onto her bed, where the sergeant had fallen asleep instantly.
