3. Saige #2
I instantly taste bile, and I force myself to suppress the shudder that comes with it.
I hate it now as I hated it back then. Little.
As though I’m small, fragile and trapped, powerless and easily crushed.
Thing. Like I’m not even a person. I suppose I never really was to him.
More like an object to please him, or a problem to manage. “What do you want, Reid?”
“That’s no way to greet your old lover,” he replies, signaling to the barkeep for a fourth ale. His chestnut hair falling across his face. I found him handsome once, before I knew how rotten he is on the inside.
Reid Farrow, Thorne’s right-hand man—not that I knew that when we met.
Back then, he was the cobbler’s charming apprentice who could make light of any situation—a trait I admired and tried to mirror myself.
He was a man who invited me and Raven to parties, who seemed genuinely interested in me.
It happened slowly, the loss of self, the silencing of my voice, all while I tried to search for healers and scholars, desperate for answers about the searing pain in my side.
When I struggled to pay the ongoing costs, Reid suggested a loan through his friend Ivor.
“You’re not joining us,” I tell him flatly.
“You don’t want to share a drink for old time’s sake?” Reid asks with false warmth, placing a hand on my lower back as he leans in, feigning intimacy.
I will the barkeep to hurry up with the ales, careful not to look over my shoulder and catch Raven’s eye. The last thing we need is a brawl tonight. “You know the answer to that.”
“You think you’re too good for me now, little thing?” he scoffs. “Fuck knows why.”
Unlike Raven’s awful, albeit harmless, men, the first boy I had a crush on, his father called me a whore for wearing trousers.
The second boy I liked, his uncle told me the now-faded birthmark on my shoulder was a disease and he wouldn’t have me near his nephew.
Every interaction after was designed to tear a young girl down, to make her feel small and unworthy.
And Reid Farrow is the same as all the rest. Worse.
“I don’t have time for this shit, Reid. Say your piece and get out of here.”
The pressure on my back increases, and his fingers brush around my wrist. From the outside, I know it looks like two friends reuniting, sharing secrets, but Reid’s breath is hot and sour on my face.
“Came here to warn you that you’re out of time. Thorne’s coming to collect. I was going to offer my assistance, but that’s out the window now after your prickly welcome. He can have his pound of flesh and whatever else. Maybe I’ll watch.”
I break out in a cold sweat. “Piss off, Reid,” I mutter as the barkeep slides our ales across the surface.
“Stupid little thing. You never learn, do you?” He tosses a handful of coins on the counter. “Best enjoy your evening, because you’ll be fucking sorry before long.” With that, he takes his tankard and saunters away, disappearing into the crowd.
Through the grimy tavern window, movement catches my gaze, and a shudder ripples through me as I find the source.
Thorne himself, the crowded street parting around him as he approaches the local apple cart.
He stares down the merchant as he plucks a piece of fruit, polishing it on his vest before taking a large bite.
He doesn’t pay.
He never does.
Instead, the poor trader hands over his takings for the day, and Thorne crosses the high street, leaving broken men in his wake and greeting a hooded stranger like a long-lost brother.
Only it’s not a stranger. It’s the same Azkari who visited the bindery yesterday.
A knot forms in my stomach and the blood rushes to my ears. What’s he doing here?
My hands are shaking as I reach for my coin purse, my gaze catching on my reflection shining in the mirror of the backbar.
Looking at my reflection, it’s easy to argue that the years haven’t been kind to me—the dark circles under my eyes, the deep lines in my forehead, the crease between my brows.
But whoever the woman staring back is, she’s stronger, fiercer, more unyielding than the lost girl who came before.
Oftentimes, hope is a stubborn thing to feel, given everything, but I’m determined to feel it anyway, lifting my chin, and holding out my silver to pay.
“No need,” the barkeep tells me. “Mister Farrow covered your drinks too.”
“Over my dead body.” A cold, humorless laugh escapes me as I hand over my own money and pull the tray of foaming tankards towards me. “I’d rather be indebted to the damn Azkari than owe that snake a gods-damned thing.”
We don’t make it to the Underhill Exchange. Several hours later, the tavern has closed to the public, and I find myself sitting out the back on the terrace cradling a tankard, so Yevna can smoke her pipe and Grim can chase the fireflies. Raven is half asleep in her chair.
“A profitable evening,” Yevna declares, swaying as she raises her glass for the hundredth time.
“I can’t believe I have to be at the foundry in a few hours,” Raven mutters, covering her eyes. “My head already hurts.”
“You’re a bad influence, Yev,” I add, laughing as I down the rest of my ale. “I need to call it a night.”
Yevna scoffs, chewing on the end of her pipe. “Youth is wasted on the young.”
“We’re not that young anymore.” Raven yawns, dropping her hands from her face to glance at me. “Though tonight did remind me of our wilder days.”
“I don’t remember dancing on any tables this evening,” I reply.
“Perhaps not. But…” She sighs. “Oh, I don’t know.”
“No, go on,” I encourage her.
“Well, it’s rare that it’s just us anymore. There’s always the bindery, the metalwork shop, the Consortium—”
“It’s not fucking called that, Rave—”
“—of Difficult Women,” she finishes with a smirk. “Being an adult… it can be a bit shit, can’t it? When’s the last time we closed the shops and went off to enjoy ourselves, like this? Nowadays it’s all responsibilities, bills, paperwork and my back hurts all the fucking time. What’s with that?”
I give her a sympathetic grimace. “I know. Maybe napping on Yev’s outdoor bar furniture isn’t the best move.”
Raven snorts. “It’s probably better than my bed.”
I laugh. “Rave, if I sleep on a different fucking pillow I manage to put my neck out, so I don’t know how you do it.
” As I get up to fetch us some water, my step falters, my breath catching as a pulse of familiar pain blooms at my side.
I hide the wince that threatens to pinch my face, and I focus on putting one foot in front of the other, desperate not to let Yev and Raven see my discomfort, but it’s too late.
“Saige?” Raven’s already halfway out of her seat.
I wave her off and force a smile, because if I don’t, the injustice of it all will become too much, and I’ll be swept up in the current of rage that churns inside me, where it’s easy to slip beneath the surface and drown.
I’d been doing so well today, I’d barely thought of the pain—or lack thereof.
But now it hurts, and I almost tell them, I almost say something true, until my gaze catches on a symbol someone has carved into Yev’s table.
Grateful for the distraction, I ask, “How long has this been here?”
Yevna studies the design and makes a noise of disgust. “Who knows. Every now and then there’s someone who thinks using Malevron’s brand proves something about them. Shockingly, they’re usually compensating for something.”
I’ve seen the offending carving depicted in several history books Leo and I restored—an almond shaped eye that was rumored to see all for Malevron.
From what I can remember, it was strangely beautiful, but I doubt an illustration captures the true horror of the disfigurement that was seared into the flesh of the Silver-Tongued Deceiver’s followers.
Once, Raven and I crossed paths with a man who had the mark tattooed on his arm as though it gave him some sort of edge—he was beaten to within an inch of his life in the town square.
When we saw him again, he’d burnt that tattoo right off his skin.
“Malevron’s been dead for centuries,” Raven says with a frown. “Why would someone draw this here? It looks recent.”
“Fools,” Yevna says simply. “If they knew what the monsters branded with this mark did… They’d be running home to their mothers with wet trousers.”
Raven snorts. “That’s how I prefer the state of most men—”
At Yevna’s feet, Grim tenses, his ears flicking towards something us humans can’t yet hear.
“What is it, boy?” Yevna asks quietly, sliding off her stool, looking towards the back door of the tavern.
Unease filters through me, but as I get to my feet, my knee completely buckles with agony flaring down my left side. My breath rattles in my lungs as I bite back a sob, the pain radiating through muscle and bone, through my whole being.
Grim growls, hackles raised.
“Someone’s in there,” Yevna says, reaching for the rake she keeps outside. “Bloody drunken revelers breaking into my pub. I won’t fucking have it—”
My vision starts to blur as the agony takes hold, but just before the tears spill, I see that it’s not a bunch of drunkards who find us, who corner us in the dead end of the terrace with blades, sneering as they overwhelm us, binding our hands, gagging us with rags soaked in chemicals.
It’s Ivor Thorne’s men.