Once Kohl left, Aina only had to wait a moment until she heard the sound of several quick gunshots fired, each one making her grit her teeth. After a door below opened and shut with a creaking noise, she walked down the stairs, taking in each dead Jackal Kohl had left behind. Then she crossed the street and entered Teo’s apartment building with Kohl’s last words echoing in her mind: One day, you’re going to admit how much you need my help.
She shook off the chill that came with those words and knocked on Teo’s door. Footsteps came a few moments later and the door swung open. Teo stood there in his nightclothes with a gun pointed at her.
“Hello to you too,” she said, limping past him into the apartment.
“Didn’t know who it would be,” Teo said, locking the door behind him and turning on the lights. “What happened to your leg?”
Instead of replying immediately, she turned to take in his new, sparsely furnished apartment, even though she’d seen it a few times already. She didn’t know how to, or if she even should, explain what had happened—all she knew was that she’d needed to come see him. Her eyes flicked to the window, from where she could make out the balcony of the restaurant across the street. Kohl’s wicked smile as he’d pointed the gun at Teo’s window. Her shoulders tensed as she locked that image in her memory.
“Kohl sent some Jackals to the Dom to threaten us,” she said, staring at the city lights through the window. “But he offered me a job. He wants to turn on Bautix and kill him, and wants my help.”
“What did you say?” Teo asked quickly, and in his reflection, he wore the same worried look she’d seen countless times when she spoke to him of Kohl, the same concerned tone he used when he feared Kohl was hurting her.
A bitter taste rose in the back of her throat, and she swallowed it down. This agreement wasn’t because she needed Kohl—it was how she would kill him and Bautix. But the more people who knew about her working with Kohl, the closer it would feel like going back to the past. She didn’t need anyone underestimating her in this. She turned back around to face Teo.
“I told him I don’t need his help.” She brushed a loose strand of black hair behind her ears and avoided meeting Teo’s eyes. “But Bautix is becoming a real problem; you know he doesn’t want anyone in charge of the tradehouses who’s not aligned with him. Kohl still wants the tradehouses, but as long as Bautix is in the way, I’m not his priority.”
“So, you want to go after Bautix? We could just let them kill each other.”
Aina scoffed, and she didn’t have to fake what she said next, or the dread it made her feel. “For now. The Dom isn’t safe as long as Bautix is around. Besides, Kohl may have killed my parents, but Bautix gave him the job.”
Teo let out a sharp exhale. “And he’s the one who told the Diamond Guards to hunt you down last month, the one who got my mother killed.”
A rush of anger flowed through her, and she fought the urge to run outside right now and find Bautix. There was plenty of reason to hate him just as much as, if not more than, Kohl—so why had she only been focused on Kohl?
Her head spun and a sickened feeling built up inside. All the times he’d tricked and manipulated her had hurt, made her feel worthless and pathetic … but Bautix was the one behind these murders and ruining the city. Bautix was the one threatening her now. The thought came like a punch to the gut, raising questions of why every cruel word Kohl had ever said was imprinted on her mind; why it hurt so much when he’d never actually tried to kill her.
Was I just too weak to stand up to it all?
“Aina?” Teo asked. The circle of light from the ceiling lamp above gilded his brown skin, and his eyes were warm, making her want to go closer—farther from Kohl’s chill. “I’m in. Kohl can wait. Bautix had the Jackals leave that note for you, didn’t he? He might attack the Dom soon if we don’t stop him. He’s already terrorizing the south, and we know he’ll kill the Inosen too if it gets him ahead. I’m sick of Steels like him, using us all as scapegoats while they fight one another for power. He doesn’t expect any of us to fight back, but we’ll prove him wrong.”
Her thoughts slowly came back into focus, and her voice was clearer than she expected it would be. “Let’s do it, then. We’ll show them we’re the real survivors in this city.”
Their eyes met, and his blazed with that fire of revenge she knew so well. It drew her toward him, and she stopped inches before they touched. His breath caught as he looked down at her, but she didn’t move any closer. Not while she was hiding the truth from him, like Kohl had done to her so many times. She wouldn’t hurt Teo in the same way.
She sat at Teo’s table as he made tea for them both, and tried not to let her eyes slide closed. As much as she wanted to get to work immediately, her body ached from the fighting and her race through the city to get here in time. She needed plenty of rest for tomorrow, when she would meet with Kohl again. And tomorrow night, she, Ryuu, and the Inosen would begin learning to use the Mothers’ magic as a weapon. The Mothers’ teachings had always said that life was precious. Her parents had fiercely believed that, but her mother had killed someone too—the first taking of a life that Aina had ever witnessed. She’d done it to protect them, to survive—something Aina understood all too well.
Aina had been seven. She’d curled into a ball under the kitchen table, as if the man her mother was treating wouldn’t be able to see her. As if she were invisible and could melt away from this one-room home where her parents risked their lives and prayed for protection. As if she could hide from the light of the moons pouring through the window from the outside world, where the war had ended but people still killed one another every day.
Her mother had hummed in Milano under her breath as she brushed sweat and blood from the man’s face with a cool washcloth. The man had no eyes and one of his hands had no fingers. Aina didn’t know much about blood magic at the time, but she knew these were injuries her mother and father could never heal.
“I gave them up,” the man said as if in disbelief. “I gave them up.” His voice was scratchy and hoarse, as if the inside of his mouth had been burned.
He repeated the words over and over until Aina’s mother’s coaxing and patient voice finally got him to reveal who, exactly, he’d given up. He’d been taken for questioning by the Diamond Guards, and Inosen fighters had broken him out of prison, but not before he’d lost his eyes and the fingers of one hand during the interrogation. His knees were shattered and he’d only made it to her house because the Inosen had deposited him here, knowing her parents took care of injured people when they could. In the middle of his torture, he’d choked out the location of the Inosen safe house he’d lived in on Lyra Avenue. All the Inosen there were now dead, and if the Inosen fighters hadn’t broken him out that night, he would have followed with his own execution the next morning.
“Kill me,” he’d demanded of her mother.
Her mother had shaken her head, her eyes wide. She began whispering, and if Aina didn’t know the words by heart already, she wouldn’t have caught them at all: it was the Mothers’ scripture from the Nos Inoken that currently sat under a cloth on the table above Aina.
“Aina, vete afuera,” her mother had barked over, but before she could demand it again, the man took all her attention.
Aina didn’t leave. She didn’t blink or even breathe as she watched what happened next.
The man had begged her mother and shouted at her, his voice rising as he yelled out that there were Inosen hiding here and if her mother didn’t want them to be given up too, she’d better kill him quickly. Her mother slapped him and held her hand over his mouth until he bit her. He called her terrible names, but also called her an angel, someone who understood mercy and when it was too late to save someone. It went on for at least an hour until he started threatening Aina, saying that if he survived the night, he wouldn’t rest until he killed her as revenge on her mother. Aina kept her eyes fixed on him as her mother finally placed a pillow over his mouth and nose and pressed down.
When it was done, and when her mother asked a boy outside to get rid of the body, Aina moved from under the table. She placed her hands on the sheets where the man had died and wondered how her family could sleep there peacefully that night.
Her mother washed her hands, her face surprisingly calm, then sat beside Aina on the bed to undo her braids and brush her hair.
She leaned forward and kissed Aina on the cheek, then said, “Don’t tell your father.”
In the present, she shook her head. When her mother had killed that man, she’d set aside magic and used her hands, not wanting to use the Mothers’ power for something deadly.
But Aina would.
As Teo sat down and passed her a cup of tea, she nodded toward a stack of boxes in the corner. He’d moved a month ago, yet most his things were still packed and gathering dust.
“I know I barged in uninvited tonight, but if you’re going to have people over, you should probably decorate,” she murmured. “Looks a bit barren. Any girls you bring over might guess you kill people for a living without you even having to tell them.”
“Says the girl who walks around with a bloodied scarf.” Teo laughed, then his voice softened. “You’re the only girl who’s come here, Aina.”
He tapped his knuckles on the table as his eyes trailed toward the boxes. Her cheeks warmed at his words, but she didn’t know what to say to that, so she looked at the boxes too. A wool blanket peeked out of the corner of one, and she could make out the edge of a landscape stitched onto the fabric in jewel tones and geometric shapes.
“I remember your mother’s paintings,” she said slowly. “She did some of them herself, didn’t she? Like the blankets. All the steppe land, the plains, falcon riders.”
As she spoke, he pulled a necklace from under his shirt. Only the gold chain was visible until he drew out the pendant. It was the same amber necklace his mother had often worn, with an image of Terroq, Linash’s falcon god, etched onto the pendant.
“You know my parents were falcon riders—we call them terrishan aleph. Giant ones that they rode into battle in border wars for decades. They left and came here for me, without knowing how dangerous Sumerand would become. And you know how it is, growing up poor in Kosín after the war. There are only two choices: fear or be feared. Violence that never ends. I’m too far down that path to hope for anything else, but maybe the only way to stand up to the Steels is to be worse than them. I want to believe that will make a difference. But at the same time … that’s what got her killed.”
Leaning across the table, Aina reached for the pendant and brushed a finger over the falcon etching. Its gold eyes seemed to stare at her, as if the thing were alive, but it was the light gilding the curves and angles of the design. In the past few weeks, he’d avoided talking about his mother, and had shut down when she’d tried to comfort him before—he must have had this guilt and doubt running through his mind constantly.
“You know something?” she asked, her voice the only sound in the still night. “Your mother asked me to protect you when she couldn’t. We can protect each other, and if violence is what we’re good at, then we’ll do whatever it takes to stand up to those who took our families and homes from us, and we’ll stop them from doing it to anyone else. They don’t stand a chance, Teo.”
She let the pendant fall back to his chest, but Teo caught her hand in his before she could pull it back.
The night deepened around them. Aina knew she had to return to the Dom to let Tannis know what had happened. But right now, time froze, this moment etching itself into their history. When it was the two of them, nothing could penetrate the way they stared at each other, the heat between them, the way their thoughts seemed to pass to each other without needing to speak a word—the way thoughts did when you knew you were each other’s best friend.
Then Teo lifted her hand to his lips and kissed the top of it. A light kiss, but one that still sent a blush to her cheeks. She kept her eyes averted from his, not trusting how she might react if she met his gaze. For a long moment, her thoughts roiled, a storm on two sides; one that wanted to draw closer to him and feel this connection between them grow, the other that reminded her she couldn’t really love anyone until she got Kohl’s voice out of her head—she’d only end up hurting them.
They stayed exactly like that for a long while after. He didn’t kiss her hand again, and neither of them said a word.
“I have to get back to the Dom,” she finally said, bringing their hands down to the table, where he let go first.
“Good night, Aina,” he said when she stood and finally met his eyes. The light glinted off the copper color just as it had on the falcon pendant, and it was like the sun shone on her, even in the dead of night.
She tried to take a little of that warmth with her when she slipped outside and cast one more glance at the balcony where she’d agreed to work with Kohl.
The moment had broken, time moved again, and she was on her guard once more.