moons to crawl out of the black hole that Papa’s death had left in her heart; several more wasted on bounty hunters and trackers that went nowhere; a few more to find Quicktongue and form a plan to enter Ghost Falls.
She was close. So close.
Almost a year ago, Papa had been murdered, and everything in her life had fallen apart. And, in three weeks, she would be on her way back to Salskoff to clear her name.
That was her endgame.
Ana stared at Quicktongue’s hand. At the crooked grin on his face. At the gleam of intent in his eyes.
“Trade up,” she echoed, and grasped his palm.
Ramson woke long before the first light of dawn broke, its cold blue rays filtering through the tattered curtains and rimming the thin window. He leaned against the wooden walls of the shack, running his fingers over the inside of his left wrist.
A tattoo the size of his thumb occupied that spot: a simple yet elegant design of a single stalk of lily of the valley, with three small, bell-shaped flowers and a razor-sharp stem. The ink was black as night, carved so deep into his skin that it had become a part of his living flesh, just as the Order of the Lily had consumed his life. And then destroyed it.
The sight of the tattoo brought back memories as vivid as they were painful. It was as though no time and all the time in the world had passed since he had stumbled up the gleaming marble steps to Alaric Esson Kerlan’s home. Kerlan was the founder of the largest business enterprise in Cyrilia. The sprawling Goldwater Trading Group held monopolies over most of the prominent industries in the Empire—timber, nonferrous metals, weaponry, and the prized blackstone mined in the far north at Krazyast Triangle—as well as private ownership of Cyrilia’s busiest trading port, Goldwater Port.
The trading port that Ramson had run, up until several moons ago.
But few associated the Goldwater Trading Group with the most notorious criminal organization in Cyrilia: the Order of the Lily, which ran underground businesses with traffickers and illegal Affinite trades. Indentured labor was the backbone of the Goldwater Trading Group, and the cheap employment contracts it purchased from its owner’s criminal organization helped keep its prices the lowest in Cyrilian markets.
Amid all this was Alaric Kerlan: successful businessman who had built his commercial empire as a foreigner to Cyrilia with merely a cop’stone to his name, and ruthless Lord of the Lilies in the dark underbelly of Cyrilia.
On the day of Ramson’s initiation, Kerlan had strapped him to a hard iron table in his basement and crushed a white-hot tong into the flesh of his chest. You feel this, boy? he’d gritted out to a screaming, half-delirious Ramson. You’ll only feel pain like this twice in your life. The first time, when you’ve earned my trust and passed the gates of hell into the Order of the Lily. The second time, when you’ve broken that trust and I throw you back into hell. So remember this moment, and remember it well. And ask yourself if you ever want to feel this kind of pain again.
Kerlan had flung the iron tongs onto the floor and asked the stencilmaster to tattoo Ramson.
Ramson closed his hand over his wrist, blocking out the sight of the tattoo and the memory of the searing pain from the brand. In the silver-blue sheen of an impending wintry dawn, he could just make out the outlines of the two sleeping girls, huddled beneath a ragged fur blanket, their chests rising and falling with each breath.
Which meant it was time for him to move.
He stole across the dacha, carefully planting his feet near the walls where the old wooden floorboards had the least flex. He had noticed the small worktable by the door as soon as he’d stepped inside last night. Its worn surface was strewn with papers and scrolls and pens.
Life had taught Ramson that he would never allow himself to get the short end of the stick. Even as the conditions for his end of the Trade had rolled off his tongue, smooth as marbles, another plan had quickly taken form in his mind.
This girl was by far the most powerful Affinite he had seen in this empire throughout all his years of working for Kerlan’s organization. He’d studied enough about Affinites to surmise that hers was likely an Affinity to flesh. He could draw up an unending list of people who would kill