Not even the people on Eastside want to live on Eastside, but most of them have no way of leaving. With trash at my back, puddles at my feet, and my owner blocking my way, I know the feeling. Nowhere to go, nowhere to hide.
He jerks his chin. “Then get to work. Now.”
Hanging my head, I squeeze past him and start to walk down the street while my heart pounds in my throat and thrums down my spine. Two of Zakir’s cronies step in front of me to lead the way, while he follows behind like an ominous shadow, steering me to my decrepit fate.
My shoes stick to the washed out gravel, but I barely notice when pebbles lodge inside, gritty pieces stabbing the soles of my feet. I barely notice the busy market either, full of shouting and haggling and arguing. I don’t look at the ships again, because that taunt of freedom is just too much to bear. So, I search for that platitude of numbness inside of me and try to pretend that I’m anywhere but here.
I drag my feet, but it doesn’t matter how slowly I walk to The Solitude. I still end up at its white-washed door, still see my bubbled reflection in the crude arrangement of bottom-cut bottles cemented in place like a window. The poor person’s stained glass.
My heart hammers so hard that my feet waver, as if I were standing on one of those ships instead of solid ground.
Zakir steps up to my side, and I feel a breath of his blue smoke blown against my ear. It’s the same color as those bottles. “Remember what I said. Earn your keep, or I’ll let Barden East have you.”
With a stern look, he walks off, a hand in his pocket jangling the coins I’ve made him, while two more of his men materialize and follow like guard dogs. The others stay behind with me and take up stances by the door, herding Zakir’s sheep. I already know without looking that there will be another man stationed at the back.
The spindly man on my left looks me up and down, the gray pallor of his face mismatched with his sallow eyes. “Hear Barden East likes to try out his whores first. Makes ’em go through tests before he lets ’em work,” he says, causing the other man to trudge out a snort.
I stare at the door, stare at the blue glass bottoms that remind me of the circular eyes of a spider, knowing I’m going straight into its mouth, already trapped in the web Zakir threw me into.
I try to remember.
I try to remember the lyrical pitch of my mother’s voice. The breeze through the wind chimes that hung outside my window. I try to remember the sound of my father’s laugh. The way the horses nickered in their stalls.
But a blink goes by, and it’s all drowned out with the sound of the men taunting me. With the market banging in my skull, pitched in shouts and clacking, just as the clouds crack and start to pour again, drenching us all with fetid water.
No, the sky doesn’t sing here.
And every year that passes, the song of home gets drowned out from my memory just a little bit more, washed away to a polluted seashore rife with cragged cruelty.
Just lie down on the pallet, girl.
I shun the ships sailing away at my back, shun the choice that is no choice at all, between the East and the West, between Barden and Zakir. Between life and death. Then, with a raindrop on my cheek that might have spilled from my eye, I open the door and walk into the inn.
And I die, just a little bit more.
Chapter 1
AUREN
Truths are like spices.
When you add some in, it means you have more layers to digest. You get a taste of things you were missing before. But if you add too many, life can become unpalatable.
But when those truths are repressed for too long, when you realize you’ve grown accustomed to the bland lies, there’s no hope of removing the overpowering taste from your tongue.
And right now, my mouth is charred with the revelation I have to somehow swallow down.
You’re King Ravinger.
Yes, Goldfinch, I am. But you can call me Slade.
Rip, Ravinger—whoever he is—he watches me choke on his truth.
What do you do when someone isn’t who you thought they were? In my head, Rip and the king were two very different males. King Ravinger was an evil I didn’t want to face. Someone with a foul power that I wanted to stay far away from.
And Rip was...well, Rip. Complicated and dangerous, but someone I considered as a sort-of ally who taught me a lot in our short time together. Someone who both scared and irritated me, but who I came to care for.
But now I have to reconcile all of those previous thoughts. Because the person who pushed my buttons and forced me to admit what I am, the male who kissed me in his tent and stood on the snowy shore of an arctic sea to watch a mourning moon...he’s someone else.