Chapter 1
Carried on the salted wind, the anthem, the rallying cry, the righteous song of protest resonated throughout the square.
Audra Evers stood with the crowd of wrathful women, her voice raised in harmony, for she knew this ballad well.
As the song swelled, their bodies coalesced, a monster with many heads—fitting, for this rage felt monstrous.
Another Nightly brutally slain, like so many others—her name added to a long list of victims left to rot in their graves without justice.
The women’s protest banners, painted in haste with the defiant words and slogans that had been on their tongues since they could talk, snapped and fluttered in the wind.
Audra gripped hers tightly, thankful for the gloves saving her fingers from freezing.
They shouted at the Coastal Watch, a pack of men armored in scarred leather and cudgels they lovingly called nightsticks, who stood between the army of sex workers, their loved ones, concerned townsfolk, and the sailors busy loading ships with enough supplies to last them until their next destinations—somewhere far from the small, inconsequential town of Salt Hollow.
The sailors ignored them for the most part, having already partaken in the town’s main attractions the night before—the brothels and taverns littering the wharf—and were now ready to board their ships and leave this town behind.
The Coastal Watch, many of them transplants sent by the capital to keep order in the small, unimportant towns, were the ones shouting back, meeting the women’s righteous anger with belittling jabs and insults.
The Coastal Watch didn’t care if another Nightly had been killed while at work; they had never followed up on a single case, not in Audra’s twenty-three years of life, and, according to her elders, not before that.
To them, despite their vocation being the protection of every citizen in this town, a dead prostitute was akin to a stray dog found bludgeoned in the alley.
The crowd heaved backward as one of the Coastal Watch withdrew his nightstick and hit a woman on the shoulder.
Audra stumbled backward but managed to keep her footing.
“Don’t engage!” she shouted, but of course, someone, overcome with righteous rage, reared back and hawked spit on the violent Coastal.
While he sneered, wiping his cheek, his buddy stepped in front of him and hit the woman in the jaw with his nightstick.
She dropped.
Another Coastal raised his stick and swung wildly into the crowd, caring neither who stood in the way nor what damage he caused.
The peaceful protest exploded in a riot of skirts and fists.
Finally, Audra’s gaze found the woman she sought.
Her dearest friend’s mother, a once-proud woman with biting wit and a laugh that could be heard from the streets, was now a wisp of a thing whose laugh had been lost with the death of her own daughter, butchered by a sailor who’d vanished with the tide, five years before.
Despite that, Fiera’s mother still pushed herself to the front of the protest with ease.
“Eilissa, no!” Audra screamed, but the wind tore her words away, not that Eilissa would have heeded them.
Eilissa raised her own sign, one that had seen many protests, and slammed it into the head of a Coastal. A paper sign wouldn’t do much, and yet she would be jailed for this, the fine so high she might be sent to the debtors’ mines inland.
Audra cursed, dropped her sign, and barreled forward. A well-placed kick between the Coastal’s legs, and he released Fiera’s mother. “Run,” Audra panted, pulling the woman behind her.
They burst from the chaos but only made it three steps before another Coastal blocked their path—the lower half of his face obscured by a kerchief. Audra was about to kick again, aiming for the same spot as the other, when she heard, “Audra, it’s me!”
Audra gasped in relief as he lowered the kerchief. “Shea, thank goodness. Can you get us out of here?”
At the same time, Eilissa hissed, “The traitor.”
Shea Odie was well practiced in ignoring the term, but he couldn’t hide the hurt flickering across his face. Not from Eilissa, who he’d known his entire life. “Follow me.”
Despite Eilissa’s dislike for Shea, she still followed his lead as they cut behind a fishmonger’s stall and dipped into an alley.
The sound of the protest faded as they raced through alleys, Shea and Audra pacing themselves so that the older woman wasn’t left behind.
All three of them knew these alleys like the backs of their hands, having been born and raised in Salt Hollow, but Eilissa wasn’t as young as they were, and her grief had taken its toll on her body as well as her mind.
The door to The Salty Serpent, Eilissa’s longtime brothel and now retirement home, was wide open, waiting for any at the protest to find haven inside.
Shea knew better than to follow Eilissa inside; he wasn’t welcome, having joined the Coastal Watch three years prior to keep his mom and siblings from being thrown out on the street.
The Salty Serpent didn’t close its doors to others of the Watch, just the ones they knew.
Not that Shea needed these establishments, he and Audra scratched each other’s itch when they could.
Shea and Audra exchanged a quick look, saying all they needed to within that moment, and then he tipped his hat to Eilissa (who ignored him) and was off, hoping to help quell the protest without too much violence, though Audra doubted he would be able to do much to quell his fellows’ tempers and thirst for brutality.
Audra would thank him later, likely with more than words.
“Sit,” Audra ordered Eilissa.
“Don’t order me about like I’m a child, Audra Evers. Don’t forget I’ve known you since you were in nappies.”
Audra snorted. “You are little better than an unruly child, Eilissa. You promised you would stick with me at the protest today.”
Eilissa dropped onto a couch in the showroom before reaching out to still the rattling vase on the oak side table.
At this early hour, the elaborately decorated room was empty.
In a few hours, it would be filled with freshly arrived sailors, surrounding farmers, deep-sea fishermen, and merchants, all looking for a Nightly or two to entertain them during their stint in Salt Hollow.
“I had meant to!” Eilissa huffed, smoothing out her skirts.
A look of guilt passed across her face. “Especially since you were so kind to pick me up this morning and take me—but I just get … so angry, and I knew today was going to be a violent one. Too much electricity crackling in the air, it was only a matter of time before the Coastals went after the girls. Better it be me than one of them, they still need their faces intact to work.”
Audra’s expression softened, despite her frustration.
“It’s better if everyone keeps their faces intact, Eilissa.” Audra lowered herself beside Eilissa, patting her hand. When had it gotten so wrinkly? Her skin so thin?
“Fiera should’ve been there … protesting with us.” Eilissa’s voice was small again. The only thing that got her out of the brothel now was attending protests; it was as if protecting the girls, fighting for a better life for them, was like fighting for Fiera.
When Eilissa wasn’t protesting, she was writing letters to the king and surrounding nobles, begging them to do something, anything.
Sex work was legal in Ruscal; every Nightly paid taxes—they deserved protection. Though even if it wasn’t legal, they still deserved a safe, consenting work environment.
“She is here with us. Mist knows she would’ve been swinging her sign with you, Eilissa.” Audra squeezed her hand again. “I suspect the others will be back to sit with you soon. I must return to the inn.”
“Yes, yes, I’ve taken up enough of your time. Give my love to your father, will you? Tell Kamari he’s welcome down here if he ever wants some company.”
Audra raised a teasing eyebrow. “Eilissa, don’t you dare—”
Eilissa laughed. “Not that kind of company. You know your father never once gave any of us the time of day, too in love with your mother. Such a rare man, that.”
Audra laughed, her chest warming with pride. “So I’ve heard from all the matrons.”
Eilissa clasped her hands on her skirts, settling into the pillows. “But if he ever wants to play a game of cards and get out of that inn …” She yawned.
“I’ll tell him,” Audra promised, as she stood. However, her father hadn’t left the inn in six months. And a game of cards with old friends wouldn’t be enough to drag him out, let alone down the treacherous ice-coated cliffs into town.
“I hope you find a love like that, Audra. One that lasts, inspires such devotion.”
Audra groaned. She’d almost made it out before—
“Not like that Shea. Such a bright young boy. Always so sweet. And then he went and joined the Watch. No loyalty, that one.”
Shea, with his mostly symmetrical face, smattering of endearing freckles, and a smile full of his own teeth, was one of the only decent-looking men hailing from Salt Hollow.
She’d harbored no hopes of a great love with the man; he had practically no sense of humor (despite she herself being rather hilarious, she thought), and he wasn’t particularly clever (proof: he’d willingly joined the Watch).
Still, she valued the comfort their quick romps brought whenever either of them could carve a sliver of time from their tremendous responsibilities to enjoy one.
Audra winced. “It was that or follow his father on the boat to keep a roof over his family’s head—and you know how dangerous it is to fish in the deep waters.”
“At least it’s honest labor.”
Audra didn’t have a reply to that. The Coastal Watch was deplorable—and most who joined it had the personalities to match, and none knew that better than Eilissa, a former Nightly.
Audra kissed her on the cheek and winked at one of the brothel kids who came down to check on Eilissa.
Eilissa was a matron now, one of a few elders who lived on the retirement floor of the brothel.
She’d put in years of service and was now treated with the utmost respect in her later years.
She gave back by helping with the many offspring on the children’s floor, children of the Nightlys, while their parents worked, and they, in turn, took care of her.
Audra slipped outside, bracing for the cold, though there was no preparing for the way the wind slapped her face.
It was disappointing that Shea had joined the Watch, but she didn’t think he deserved to be so absolutely ostracized—he’d known Eilissa as long as she had, and he’d been friends with Fiera too.
And Shea was one of the good ones—much too kindhearted to waste on Salt Hollow’s corrupt Coastal Watch.
Though, Audra didn’t know how much longer she could justify sleeping with him, given his employment. She would give him an ultimatum—quit them or quit me, but she knew what his answer would be, and she wasn’t ready to give up such an easy fuck just yet.
She’d already given up so much.
And at least she had someone on the inside who not only watched out for the Nightlys but was there to act as Fernwell’s protector when they had to kick out a particularly violent patron.
Through an alley, she spied a sliver of white-capped, cobalt sea, and that old ache swelled bright and fierce and painful.
For one wild moment, she wanted to run toward the docks, purchase a ticket away from here …
but she had a decade of practice quelling this urge, so she hunched her shoulders and headed toward the cliffs, toward Fernwell Inn, toward home.
Audra pulled her coat tighter and blew into her hands, despite her breath not being able to warm her gloved fingers at all. Habit, she supposed, and then she stopped dead in her tracks as she spied a set of Wanted posters tacked to the lamppost, and the three familiar faces blazing on them.