Page 1 of Between Smoke and Shadow
PROLOGUE
Cycle 892 / Blizzard Season / Day 47
Rune
“It’s time, Rune.”
I ignore my dad, watching blood pool around the drain. I should still be at work, not soaking my blistered hands in the sink. I grimace before glancing in my sliver of mirror. It’s a small and misshapen shard, slim enough to fit up my sleeve but big enough to watch for descendants–and apparently, overbearing fathers.
“Come,” he insists. His voice is soft and kind, and I hate it. He’s staring at me with worry and pity, but not with anger. Gods, I wish he’d be angry.
I lift my fingers from the sink, inspecting their gruesome blisters. A bored guard had infused my rag with magic, forcing me to clean with it for eight hours. Only he grew bored before my shift ended and dismissed me. Eight hours, mutilated skin, and no pay.
Blood drips to my wrists. I slip the mirror back up my sleeve and dry my hands on the hanging towel. It’s stale and stinks of something sour. Now, it’s also stained with blood and pus.
Dad touches my shoulder and guides me from the bathroom. I let him pull me down a twist of corridors, keeping my head lowered. My mask, a pathetic scrap of veiled fabric, dangles loosely from my ears. I should tighten it, but I can’t see the point.
Servants filter around us, their faces made sickly by yellow walls and dim lighting. I barely register them, instead focusing on the cracked floors and cheap wooden doors. When we reach our quarters, marked with numbers 246 and 247, Dad leads us into the darkened room. I catch a final glimpse of his appearance: blonde hair, stained coveralls, and ratted shoes before he disappears into the shadows.
I’m sure I look similar, if not worse.
“They took my pay,” I tell him. I’m sure he already knows. His magicked brand should have lost a half mark today. Instead, only a quarter mark is gone. My portion remains.
Dad doesn’t respond. He sits on the edge of his bed, springs creaking against his meager weight. I force myself to move, leaving the doorway open. My bed is a mattress on the floor, squished between Dad’s narrow cot and my long-broken metal frame. I’ve insisted on the floor bed, because Dad’s knees are too bad. Honestly, every bone in his body is too bad.
“I workedall day,” I say, voice cracking. I clench my hands, letting the pain of it scorch through me. “All day, Dad. I scrubbed and scrubbed, even though I knew it wouldn’t work. He made me scrub foreight hours, watching my hands blister, only stopping when he was bored of it. And then, a sweep of his hand, a thread of smoke. And it was gone. Every drop. Gone.”
Dad rests his elbows on his knees, his gaze drifting to my drenched shoes in the corner. He looks at me, half of his face remaining in the shadows. Dark circles line his eyes, surroundedby too many wrinkles for a man his age. A large bruise, purple and black, blossoms just below his ear. He still won’t tell me what happened.
“And then—then he took my pay,” I say. A sob chokes my throat, but I swallow it, grinding my teeth to keep it contained. “He said I wastedhistime. As if—as if it was my fault that their blood is demonic?—”
“Don’t speak like that,” Dad hisses, head snapping toward me.
I don’t respond. He’s right—and I know better—but I can’t admit that. I can’t admit anything beyond the fact I’ve been wronged and I’m angry for it. I want Dad to be angry too, not at me and my dangerous words. At them, at the guards and the royals and the crown, at all the monsters who take, just because they can.
“We will make it through,” is all he says. His words are soft and empty, a hollow lie in the dark.
“Saying it does not make it true,” I whisper. I sit on my mattress and hug my knees to my chest, as if squeezing hard enough will keep me whole.
“Rune—”
“They are going tokillus, Dad. They are going to torture us until?—”
He surges to close the door, letting darkness swallow us—servant quarters do not have lights. I fidget in discomfort, but I don’t argue.
“You must stop,” he says as he returns to his cot. My emotions twist and choke, suffocating in their loneliness. There must be someone,anyone, who feels this poisonous rage—and actually wants to do something about it.
“It’s been six cycles,” I say. My voice wobbles with the words, struggles beneath the weight of them. “It was only meant to be five.”
“We are almost there,” he says. He believes the lie. I can sense the surety of his tone, as if we haven’t built debt faster than we’ve cleared it.
“Six cycles,” I repeat. “For a crime that didn’t deserve to be punished.”
The springs shriek as Dad moves again, coming to kneel on the mattress beside me. His hands find my shoulders through the darkness, his overgrown nails digging through the fabric.
“Enough,” he says. No, hebegs. “Rune, there are ears everywhere. If they hear these accusations, they?—”
“They’ll what? Lock us up for eternity?” I don’t know when I started crying, but my words break with choppy sobs. Now that I’ve begun, I don’t know how I’ll stop. “I know you want me to trust you, but I’m going todiehere. I can feel it. I don’t—I don’t want to die here.”
