Serina
The blood on my hands wasn't mine.
I stood in the narrow alley behind Karrick's Textiles, rain hammering the rusted metal overhead, and watched red-tinged water swirl down the gutter. My knuckles throbbed. Somewhere in the dark behind me, Vex groaned. He was still breathing, unfortunately.
"Should've paid me, asshole," I muttered, flexing my fingers. They'd gone stiff in the cold.
He'd owed me wages for three weeks of sixteen-hour shifts, and when I'd finally cornered him after closing, he'd laughed. Said Nullborn labor didn't count as real work and that I should be grateful he let me operate the looms at all.
So I'd punched him.
Yeah. Probably not my smartest move.
I pulled my threadbare coat tighter and stepped out of the alley, keeping my head down as I merged into the evening crowd.
My stomach cramped. I'd skipped lunch to save money but I ignored it. Aden needed medicine more than I needed food. That was the math. It was always the math.
Sixteen coppers for fever-root. Twenty-three for pain suppressants. Eight for clean water because the stuff from the public pump will kill him faster than the cough.
I'd gotten twelve coppers from Vex's pocket before I'd left him groaning in that alley. But it was barely enough.
"Serina!"
I turned, heart jumping, but it was just Mira from the dye-house. She jogged up, her own coat patched in a dozen places, her dark hair escaping its braid. She looked worried.
"Did you really hit Karrick?" she hissed.
"He had it coming."
"He's going to report you. He's probably already done that."
"Let him." I started walking again, faster now.
"I'm not going back to that shithole anyway."
"Where else are you going to work? The smelting plant? They don't hire women. The-"
"I'll figure it out." I always did.
Mira grabbed my arm, her grip surprisingly strong for someone who looked half-starved. "Serina. Listen to me. Karrick has a cousin in the Luminal Guard. If he files a complaint, they won't just fine you. They'll-"
"They'll what? Throw me in a cell? Execute me?" I laughed, the sound bitter even to my own ears. "I'm Nullborn, Mira. We're already dead. They just haven't made it official yet."
Her face crumpled. For a second I thought she might cry, but then she just let go of my arm and stepped back.
"I'm sorry," I said, softer. "I didn't mean-"
"Yes, you did." She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "And you're right. But that doesn't mean you should make it easier for them to kill you."
She turned and disappeared into the crowd before I could respond.
I stood there for a moment, letting people jostle past me, feeling the cold settle into my bones. Then I kept walking. What else was I supposed to do?
The boarding house squatted at the end of Cinder Street like a rotting tooth…three stories of warped wood and cracked plaster, held together by rust. I took the stairs two at a time, ignoring the way they creaked under my boots, and unlocked the door to our room.
Aden was awake.
He sat propped against the wall on his thin mattress, a blanket pulled around his shoulders, reading one of his battered books by candlelight. When he saw me, his face lit up in a way that made my chest ache.
"Rina!" He coughed wet and rattling but tried to smile through it. "You're late. I was worried.
"Got held up at work." I locked the door behind me and crossed to the corner that served as our kitchen. "How are you feeling?"
"Better." I knew he was lying. He was getting worse. Even in the dim light, I could see the gray tint to his skin, the way his collarbones jutted out sharp enough to cut. Sixteen years old and he weighed less than I had at twelve.
I lit the hotplate and started boiling water for soup. That's if you could call watered-down lentils soup. "Did you take the suppressants this morning?"
"Yeah." Another lie. I could see the pills still sitting in the bottle on the windowsill.
"Aden."
"They make me foggy. I can't read when I take them." He held up his book, The History of Pre-Pillar Kaldris, one he'd stolen from a library cart months ago. "Did you know there used to be schools for everyone? Not just the Refined. Everyone could learn magic and history and-"
"That's a fairy tale." I stirred the pot, not looking at him. "The Council says-"
"The Council lies." His voice went sharp, more forceful than I'd heard in weeks. "Rina, I've been reading about the old days. Before the Pillars. Magic wasn't something you got from a tower, it was something you had.The whole system is—"
"Aden. Stop." I turned to face him, and whatever he saw in my expression made him go quiet. "Those books are illegal. If anyone hears you talking like that"
"No one's listening. We're Nullborn. No one cares what we think."
"Exactly. Which means we survive by keeping our heads down and our mouths shut." I poured the soup into our two chipped bowls and carried one over to him. "Eat."
Later, after Aden had fallen asleep and the candle had burned down to a stub, I sat by the window and counted my coins.
Twelve coppers from Vex. Three more I'd saved from last week. Fifteen total. Fever-root cost sixteen.
I pressed my forehead against the cold glass and tried not to cry. There has to be another way.
The thought came unbidden, dangerous. I'd been fighting it for weeks, but tonight, with Aden's blood-flecked cough still echoing in my ears, I couldn't push it away.
The Dragon Shrine. Everyone in Ashfall knew the story. Deep in the old district, past the condemned factories and collapsed tunnels, there was a place the Council had sealed four hundred years ago. A temple from before the Pillars.
Supposedly… powerful.
The rumors said desperate people went there sometimes. People with nothing left to lose. And sometimes….very rarely they came back changed. Most of them just disappeared.
I looked over at Aden, curled up under his blanket, so small and fragile it hurt to see.
I stood up, my decision made before I'd fully thought it through. I grabbed my coat and the rusty knife I kept under my mattress, not that it would help against whatever haunted that place, but it made me feel better. Then I headed for the door.
"Rina?"
I turned. Aden was awake, watching me with fever-bright eyes.
"Where are you going?"
I should have lied. Should have told him I was just going to beg the healer for credit or grovel at another factory. But I was so damn tired of lying.
"Somewhere dangerous," I said. "But if it works… I'll be back with medicine. Enough to actually help."
His eyes widened. "The Shrine. Rina, you can't. People who go there-"
"Die. I know." I tried to smile. "But we're dying anyway, right? At least this way I'm doing something."
"That's not-" He struggled to sit up, coughing. "That's not how this works. You can't just-"
"Go back to sleep, Aden."
"Serina, please-"
I left before he could finish, closing the door behind me.
And as walked into the dark cold night I thought. If I was walking toward my death, at least I was walking toward it with my eyes open.