I wanted to go to prison.

He sneered and pointed the club at me. “Stinking thieves, both of ya.”

Without thinking, I grabbed the night guard’s shin and drew, knitting bone and yanking every hurt, every sting from his ankle. His pain ran down my arm, seared my leg, and chewed around my own ankle. Yep. Definitely broken. My stomach rolled, but there was nothing in it to toss up.

I seized Heclar’s leg with my free hand and pushed. The agony the night guard hadn’t revealed raced up my other side and poured out my tingling fingers into Heclar. I caught myself before I gave him the knuckleburn. That would make his hands clench, and a hard, sudden grip on the pynvium club might be the enchantment’s trigger. Be just my luck to accidentally set it off.

Heclar screamed loud enough to wake the Saints. To be truthful, it was worse than he deserved, but sending me to prison for eggs I hadn’t yet stolen was worse than I deserved too. The Saints are funny that way.

It still didn’t justify what I’d done. What I’d promised to never do again. But life was easy when I’d made that promise—not the constant struggle it was now. And it got harder every day.

I left both men lying in chicken feed and feathers and sprinted for safety. Just five paces to the exit, then another five to Farm-Market Bridge. Once I crossed the bridge, I’d be off the isle and in the market district on Geveg’s main island, where it was easier to hide. If I didn’t pass out first.

At the foot of the bridge, two boys in Healers’ League green were staring at me in wonder. I skidded to a stop and glanced over my shoulder. I had a clear view of the night guard and the blubbering rancher. The boys had seen me shift for sure.

“How did you do that?” one boy asked. He was tall and skinny, but with hard eyes for a boy so young. Too young to be an apprentice. A ward, then. The war had left Geveg with plenty of us orphans about.

“I didn’t…do anything.” Breathing took more effort than I had. I held my side as I edged past them, checking for mentors or the cloying escorts who stuck to wards like reed sap. If either had seen me shift pain—I shuddered.

“Yes, you did!” The other boy nodded his head, and his red hair fell into his eyes. He shoved it back with a freckled hand. “You shifted pain. We saw you!”

“No, I didn’t…I stabbed him in the foot…with a nail.” I leaned forward, hands on my knees. The silver flecks were back at the edge of my vision, sneaking up on me from the sides. “If you look close…you can still see the blood.”

“Elder Len said shifting pain was just a myth, but you really did it, didn’t you?”

I wasn’t sure which Saint covered luck, but I must’ve snubbed her big at some point in my fifteen years. “You boys better get back to the League…before the Luminary finds out you sneaked free to go wandering.”

Both paled when I mentioned the Luminary. We got a new one every three years, like some rite of passage the Duke’s Healers had to go through to prove their worth. The new Luminary was Baseeri, of course, and like all Baseeri who held positions that should have been held by Gevegians, no one liked him. He’d been here only a few months, but already everyone feared him. He ran the League without compassion, and if you crossed him, you didn’t stand a chance at getting healed if you needed it. You or your family.

“You don’t want to get into trouble, do you?”

“No!”

I placed a finger to my lips. “I won’t tell if you don’t.”

They nodded hard enough to bounce their eyeballs out of their heads, but boys that age can’t keep a secret. By morning, the whole League would know about this.

Tali was going to kill me.

“Oh, Nya, how could you?”

Tali used Mama’s disappointed face. Chin tucked in, her wide brown eyes all puppylike, lips pursed, and frowning at the same time. Mama had done it better.

“Would you rather I’d gone to prison?”

“Of course not.”

“Then sink it. What’s done is done and—”

“—I can’t change it none,” she finished for me.

I had three years on her, which usually gave me implied authority, but since joining the League, she’d been forgetting who the big sister was. Hard to do with only the two of