like a ring,” he said. “The way it meets the black band around your finger. Almost like a . . .” His eyes shot to hers. “Almost like a diamond.”
She jerked her hand away and studied it closely.
It wasn’t supposed to be a glistening star, she realized. Lucky was right. Cassian must have modified her markings just slightly—just enough not to raise suspicion—to hide this human symbol there as a secret between the two of them. A diamond ring.
“That . . . that can’t be right,” she stuttered.
But Lucky’s face had darkened. “I bet Cassian did it intentionally. He hid a diamond ring in your markings as some kind of twisted kind of declaration. A vow.” He squeezed his fist, hiding the markings on his own palm.
Cora kept staring at it. It couldn’t be true, could it? A tattooed diamond ring? She parted her lips to deny it again, but the door shoved open, and Dane looked in.
“Well, songbird?”
She let her hand fall. “Give me some scissors,” she said quickly, ignoring the marking on her fourth finger. “I’ll cut my hair off right now.”
“It isn’t quite that simple.” Dane held up two fingers, snipping them together like scissors. “Roshian wants to do the honors himself. Odd, I know. But to each his own.”
Cora glanced back at Lucky, whose face was set with worry.
“Roshian will have to make complicated conversions to change up the new date. It will take some time,” Dane said.
“We don’t have time. Lucky turns nineteen in two days.”
Dane’s eyes shifted to Lucky over her shoulder. “Lucky isn’t going anywhere, don’t worry. I’ll make all the arrangements and let you know when Roshian is ready to make the exchange. It’ll have to be after closing. I’ll leave a signal for you onstage.”
“A signal?”
“You’ll know.”
She ran her hand down her curls. She’d had long hair for as long as she could remember. Jenny, Makayla—theirs was shorn close, and it didn’t seem to bother them. She’d get used to it, but still, how much could they snip, snip, snip away at themselves before they stopped being human and started to be something else?
“All right,” she said, reaching down to squeeze Lucky’s hand, and only then remembered that, after closing, Tessela and Fian wouldn’t be there to look out for her.
Lucky’s eyes lingered on her ring finger, and his face darkened again.
A DAY PASSED. CORA felt the time slipping away as she went about her tasks like each minute was a token falling through slats, never to be recovered. She barely knew what words she was singing, and half the time they came out as jibberish. That night, she snuck out of her cell and curled up with Lucky, holding tight to his shirt collar, as though that could keep him there.
All during the next day—Lucky’s birthday—she tried to catch a second alone with Dane to ask him about the plan, but he only ignored her. She sang her first set. Then her second. Roshian wasn’t in the audience but Arrowal was, with Fian and two other Council members. The walls felt even more claustrophobic than they usually did. She was nearly dizzy by the start of her final set. She stepped onstage, and stopped.
Dane’s yo-yo was tied in a pretty little bow around the microphone.
She whirled her head toward the bar, where Dane was shaking a drink for a Kindred woman. For a second his eyes met hers, and he gave a slight nod. This was the signal. She sang through her set with a shaky voice, singing songs she vaguely remembered from her middle school years, innocent songs about tire swings and first loves that wouldn’t give the Council any reason in the slightest to stick around after closing to question her again.
At last, Tessela announced the Hunt was closing. Cora held her breath until every Council member had left. Shoukry finished cleaning the bar, and then they were alone. Dane turned down the lamps.
“Where’s Roshian?” Cora asked.
Dane untied his yo-yo from the microphone, slipping it back in his pocket. “Waiting for us.”
He started toward the veranda doors, but Cora snaked out an arm. “I need to see proof first. I’m not going anywhere with you until I know Lucky’s birthday is changed.”
Dane took a small envelope from his pocket. She fumbled with the flap and dumped out a metal tag, engraved with the Kindred’s writing. “Flip it over,” Dane said.
She did, and her breath caught. A date, in English. October 21, 1998.
Exactly one year after Lucky was born.
Dane