Page 4 of This Monster of Mine

“Maybe get another new nose while you’re there,” another hooted.

Trapping her tongue between her teeth, she picked up the fallen cup and braced herself for another blow. Marus’s fist rose right as an ear-splitting cheer went up outside. Past the window, a stampede of Arsameans launched themselves onto the snowy streets.

“The assessors are here!” a passerby yelled. “Drag your sotted selves out!”

Thank the High Elsar.

Sparing her an ugly glance, Marus raced out the door. Chairs scraped across stone as the town’s fairest and finest elbowed past each other to parade behind the magi. A mismatched assortment of bells chimed in chorus, dull peals mingling with the deep boom of a gong that some enterprising villager must have dug out of the cellar. It was nothing she hadn’t seen before, and tonight would be no different. She’d man the tavern, manage the raucous magi and their helpers who showed up expecting Arsamean women to do anything to please them—and wonder if she’d ever have enough coin to leave this glacial hellhole.

Snow swirled through the open doorway, ice clinging to threadlike fissures in the tavern’s stone walls. Rubbing the shoulders of her thin tunic,she straightened the chairs and collected the grease-covered plates left on the tables.

“Tunnel rat.” Cretus hobbled over, holding out a wrinkled palm. “You still owe a denarius for this month’s rent.”

She frowned. “I’ve paid my two denarii.”

“Rent’s gone up.” He stuck a finger in his ear and dug for something. She hoped whatever it was tunneled all the way to his brain.

They’d played this game before. As the only person in Arsamea who’d house and employ her, he meddled with her rent and wages as he saw fit. And every time, he would seek a reaction.

Cretus snapped his fingers, beady eyes slitted. “Deaf now? You paying or moving out? Plenty who’d take your room.”

It’s a fucking storage shed. She held back the urge to snap his wizened wrist. “I’ll pay.”

His mouth pulled back in a triumphant smile. “Keep everyone drunk tonight. I want an accounting of every bottle sold. And for the Elsar’s sakes, duck your head while serving, or you’ll put the assessors off dinner.”

With that, he dragged his hood over the wisps of hair valiantly clinging to his scalp, and plodded toward the outhouse. She saluted his back with a middle finger, then sank onto the nearest chair.

Cretus paid her one bronze assarius a day. With rent going up, she’d have to miss meals to maintain her current rate of saving. Sarai quashed the ache in her stomach warning her that she ate too little as is. Four years ago, she had felt life drain from her with every agonized breath. Had barely survived, only to be thrown out of Edessa without justice and left with no recourse but to save coin after coin serving wine, while the man who’d destroyed her body, her hands—herlife—ran free. Hunger held little weight in comparison.

Unknotting the coin pouch from her neck, she spilled her savings onto the drink-spattered table. Firelight winked off three gold aurei and five silver denarii.Not enough.It would take years for her to afford the Academiae’s tuition. But only Petitors and Tetrarchs could access sealed caserecords. And somewhere in sun-drenched Edessa, within the restricted Hall of Records, was a wax-sealed scroll bearing her name.Victim. Beside it would be a single charge—attempted murder—and details of the night she couldn’t remember four years, three months, and twenty-eight days ago. Details someone had wanted hidden. And somewhere in that same city lurked her assailant. Becoming a Petitor was her best chance at revenge.

Once she could afford the Academiae’s tuition at least.

Sighing, Sarai scraped the coins off the table. “I hope at least you’re doing well, Cisuré.”

For a moment, she could almost see the other girl sitting across from her with a blinding smile, enthusing over a new bit of frippery, or sobbing into her shoulder after Marus had beaten her for yet another imagined show of defiance. But that had all been four years ago, before Cisuré had become a Candidate and the Fall had made vengeance Sarai’s master. Before they’d discovered that even friendship couldn’t entirely bridge some divides.

Swallowing, she rose and halted at a movement past the snow-streaked window. A figure stealthily emerged from the shadow of Cretus’s smoke chamber for wine, lugging an amphora behind her.

Havïd. Sarai snatched her birrus from behind the counter, locked the door, and raced outside into a blast of icy wind. Cursing roundly, she covered the scant yards to the fumarium and shoved both the girl and the amphora into a snowdrift, just as Cretus emerged from the outhouse. She ignored the wine-thief’s annoyed squeak, waiting until he’d faded to a thumb-sized speck in the direction of the town square before releasing her grip to scowl at the sputtering girl.

“I thought we’d agreed that you’d stop.”

Vela brushed snow from her closely-cropped dark hair. “Coin’s got to come from somewhere. Cretus can afford the loss.”

“You can’t afford being caught. He’ll whip the blood out of you.”

“The last time Cretus moved faster than an inch a minute was when Marus was in swaddling furs.”

Sarai’s lips flattened. “He sliced off another tunnel rat’s fingers only two weeks ago for pocketing a loaf off the counter.” The boy had met her eyes with knowledge of his fate—infection, fever, which would become sepsis without a healer, and a delirious, prolonged end. Before the Fall, she might have been able to heal him. Now, her hands were too ruined to save anyone.

Undaunted, Vela shrugged. “The boy was careless. I’m—”

“Clearly as bad, because I saw you. Wrath and Ruin, if there was a drunk asshole around, he’d break your hands if it meant getting his on this.” She took the amphora from her. “There are worse things in life than Cretus’s retribution.”

“I know.” The twin moons lit Vela’s wince as her gaze darted away from Sarai’s scarred features.

Pretending not to notice, her grip tightened around the amphora, a ruby-red drop leaking past the loosened seal to hit the ground. Blood on ice.

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