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Caya swallowed at the direction her thoughts had taken, slipping out of the room before the couple could try to talk to her.
As desperate as she was to be adopted today, she wasn’t desperate enough to live with witches.
She already woke up every day thinking of what she’d lost and who had destroyed it.
It had taken her eight of the last ten years to pare down her rage to something bearable; eight years of being so angry, it had felt like an inferno burning through her small body; eight years of nightmares and acting out and spitting on the ground in silent disrespect when the witches passed by in their carriages.
She had learned to accept the cost of witches. The justice they would never face. The privilege they would never relinquish.
But she would never accept their charity.
By the time the sun was ready to fall asleep, Caya was rethinking her morals.
A long day had grown longer when the other orphans had finally gotten up to find half a room full of prospective parents waiting to meet them.
Caya had been ignored by not two, not four, but twelve different couples, their eyes glazed and their smiles vacant when she spoke to them, only for those same expressions to light up when one of the children under six came by.
People melted while rocking infants in their arms, radiating a love that made Caya burn with longing.
Others sat with the three-year-olds in the back garden, listening intently to their rambling speeches about coloring and playing games.
The man she’d seen first turned out to be the only witch in the market to expand his family, but no one wanted a seventeen-year-old about to age out of her bed.
It didn’t matter how friendly, hardworking, or dedicated she appeared.
She was nothing to them but a distraction, at best, from what they’d really come for.
Even while staying up last night, she’d known that she’d be auditioning for a part that no one wanted her to play. And yet her foolish, foolish heart had actually hoped.
Outside, with no one to judge her, Caya pressed the heels of her palms against her eyelids to keep the tears from falling. She would survive. She had before, and she would again. She shouldn’t waste time being hurt that an impossibility had turned out to, in fact, be impossible.
“One should never berate oneself for hoping,” said a male voice. “To hope is to be human.”
Caya whirled around with her fists raised, even though all she knew about fighting was from childhood tussles.
Standing by the back fence, limned in the blood orange of the setting sun, was an unfamiliar man in a flat cap that covered most of his straight black hair.
He wore a black jerkin with gold thread lining, a white standing collar, and paned gold trunk hose that disappeared into black boots.
A thick mustache and neat beard covered his olive-skinned face, and his eyes were big and brown on either side of a small button nose.
His eyebrows were as thick as his lips, his ears as big and round as his cheeks, and he was watching her with a serenity that suggested he’d been standing there too long.
She took a step back toward the house, crushing myrtle flowers and newly planted fig trees underfoot. “Who are you?”
“An interested party,” said the man, nodding at the building. “But it seems I’ve come too late for adoption day.”
Caya glanced at the sky behind the stranger, an encroaching navy blue already peppered with stars and a full moon, and then back at him. “Then why are you still here?”
“I was hoping to make an impassioned case. But then I overheard your… crisis.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I didn’t say anything.”
“One hopeless soul can recognize another.” He pressed a hand to his chest, and she noted that his nails were clean and well-kept. “At my age, hope is in short supply. But I think that we can help one another, Cataleya Donant.”
“No, thank you.” She turned toward the open doorway and made it three steps before freezing with her hand on the doorknob. Slowly, her heart seizing with discomfort, she met the stranger’s gaze again. “I never told you my name.”
“Your reaction just did.” His eyes were bright with a fervor that Caya neither shared nor wanted. “Cataleya Donant. At last. After the coup, I thought…”
A chill ran down her spine. In the days after she’d lost everything, Caya had been in shock.
Adrift and grieving. Hungry and alone. By the time she’d been taken in by Kindred, it hadn’t occurred to her to go by a different name.
She’d been eight years old. She’d known nothing of strategy or subterfuge.
The closest thing she’d had to a plan had been to find a new home, one where she could sleep through the night without clutching a weapon and where her ribs no longer jutted through her skin as if her body had grown more teeth to eat her with.
“Who are you?” she asked, her fear retreating behind a protective shield of anger. “What do you want ?”
“My name is Gaspar Ruiz.” He removed his cap to sweep into a practiced bow. There was a smile on his face as he replaced it at a slight angle on his head. “And I want what you have, Caya: potential.”
Whatever that was supposed to mean.
“Gaspar Ruiz,” Caya said, “adoption day is over. Leave, or I’ll call the matrons to make you leave.”
As far as fibs went, it wasn’t her best work.
If he went inside, the matrons would take one look at his expensive clothes and fine manners and welcome him to take as many children as his potential carriage could carry.
But his sudden appearance and cryptic words disturbed something deep inside her, and she had to start listening to her instincts if she was going to make a life for herself on her own. Again.
For the second time, she tried to leave. And, for the second time, his words stopped her in her tracks.
“There is more power in this world than the magic the witches wield, Miss Donant. At least, for those willing to take it. I’ve been looking for you all these years because I think that you have the skill and fortitude to take control of your own destiny, as I have.”
Even though Caya didn’t turn around this time, there was a smirk in his voice that implied he could hear the raucous pounding of her pulse, the terrible lure of curiosity that dangled in the back of her mind.
“We will see one another again,” he promised. “And you’ll be very glad that we did.”