I’m running out of time.
I dip my finger into the blood welling in my palm and carefully draw the counterspell runes atop those etched into stone. I wipe my bloody palm on my pants and study my work carefully before rising.
I don’t let myself hold my breath as I cross the threshold, immediately passing the symbols in each direction to make sure my runes are working. When I step into the vault, I cast the light from the starworm across the space and gasp.
Creighton Gorst’s vault is bigger than my bedroom. The walls are lined with shelves holding raqon coinbags, jewels, and shining weapons. My hands itch to take as much as I can carry, but I won’t. If I let my desperation get the best of me, he’ll know someone was here. Perhaps he will anyway. Maybe I underestimate the drunkard’s ability to account for the wealth he’s amassed dealing in pleasure and flesh, but if I’m lucky, he’ll never know that someone breached his wards.
I knew Gorst was rich, but I didn’t expect riches like these. Prostitution and drink make wealthy men, but this wealthy? I scan the shelves and instinctively reach out when I spot the only explanation. I hover my hand over a stack of life deeds but yank back at the magical heat radiating from them.
Had I been born into a different life, I would have very much liked to become a powerful mage for contracts like this alone. I would unravel the magic that binds these lives to evil men like Gorst. I’d gather my resources and free as many girls as I could before I was caught and executed. Even knowing that I don’t have the skill to undo the magic in those documents, it’s all I can do to leave them where they sit. Everything in me screams that I should at least try.
You can’t save them.
I force myself to step away. Choosing a cluttered shelf where a missing coinbag might go unnoticed, I scan for markings. None. Maybe Gorst should pay me to teach him how to truly guard his treasure. I lift a single pouch and peek inside to check the contents—more than enough raqon for our payment. Maybe enough for next month’s as well.
He has all this wealth. Will he really notice if I take more?
I scan the shelves and carefully choose two more bags that are tucked behind unorganized piles of treasure. I knew Gorst was despicable, but this is the kind of wealth that people of Fairscape see only if they do business with faeries. With that realization, each of those magical contracts takes on a new meaning. It’s bad enough that he can make those people do his bidding, bad enough that they’ll spend their lives paying an impossible debt, but if Gorst deals with the fae, he’s shipping humans off to another realm to spend their lives as slaves. Or worse.
There are three stacks of contracts. I can’t risk touching them, but I make myself look at each pile. Someday I’m going to buy my freedom, and once my sister isn’t relying on me, I’ll come back here. Someday I’ll find a way.
My gaze snags on the stack closest to the vault door and the name on top. I reread the name and the date the payment is due in full. Once. Twice. Three times. My chest ratchets tighter each time. I don’t believe in the old gods, but I send up a prayer anyway at the sight of that name, that child’s scrawl. At tomorrow’s date highlighted with a streak of her own blood.
Steps sound overhead, the booming of men’s boots, and I hear a deep voice. I can’t make out his words from down here, but I don’t need to understand what he’s saying to know that I need to run.
My satchel is heavy with my stolen goods, and I clutch it to my side so it won’t clang against my hip as I race out of the vault. I lift the starworm off my wrist, gasping as it fights me, trying for more blood.
“Patience,” I whisper, guiding him to the floor. The leech crawls across the threshold, cleaning away my blood with its tiny tongue.
More steps above. Then laughter and the sound of clinking glasses. He’s not alone, but if I’m lucky, everyone up there will be too intoxicated to notice me slip out.
“Hurry, hurry,” I whisper to the starworm. I need to close the vault, but if I leave my blood behind, I’ll risk Gorst knowing someone was here. Or worse—taking a sample to a mage and tracing it back to me.
The voices come closer, then steps on the stairs.
I have no choice. I wrench the starworm from his bloody feast and slip him into my satchel.
I splash water from my canteen onto the stones before I swing the vault closed.