Chapter 2 - The Embers Beneath the Skin
The pillar of white-gold light faded into a sickly yellow haze over the horizon, but the vibration in the air remained, humming like a plucked bowstring against Aurora’s bones.
Elias had slipped into a heavy, drug-induced sleep, his breathing finally steadying under the influence of the poppy tincture Aurora had bought off a shady apothecary in exchange for her winter coat. She sat in the dim light of a tallow candle, staring at her palm.
She pressed her thumb hard against her skin. A faint, golden luminescence flickered beneath the callus, vanishing as quickly as it appeared.
"Not yet," she whispered to the empty room.
For eighteen years, she had survived by being invisible. In the mire of the lower districts, beauty or strength drew predators; weakness drew scavengers. She had learned to fight with a rusted pipe, to pick locks with copper wire, and to melt into the shadows when the city guards came down to clear out the "undesirables."
Yet, tonight, the shadows felt different. They felt alive.
A sharp knock echoed against the wooden door of the lean-to. Not the polite rap of a neighbor, but the heavy, rhythmic thud of an iron-shod boot.
Aurora’s hand slid instinctively beneath her cot, her fingers closing around the cold, familiar grip of a ten-inch steel butcher knife she had sharpened to a razor edge.
"Rori? Are you in there, girl?" a gruff voice called out. It was Bram, the foreman of the southern dry docks, a scarred brute who usually only came around when he had dirty work that required someone small enough to squeeze through drainage pipes.
Aurora didn't answer. She stood up silently, sliding the knife sleeve up her forearm and letting her oversized woolen cloak drape over her frame.
"I know you're in there, little rat," Bram’s voice rasped through the cracked wood. "Open up. The Enforcers from the upper district are sweeping the lower wards. They’re looking for someone who matches your description—or rather, they’re looking for anyone with Ignia blood remnants in the municipal registry."
Aurora’s breath hitched. Ignia blood remnants?
That was impossible. Elias had falsified her registry papers sixteen years ago, listing her as an orphan of the plague-ridden iron mines. Unless...
"What do the Enforcers want, Bram?" Aurora asked through the door, keeping her voice low and steady.
"They’re dragging everyone in for a blood-rune scan," Bram muttered, spitting tobacco juice against the outer wall. "Word on the street is that Young Master Marcus—the great prodigy of the Ignia family—suffered a catastrophic core rejection during his ascension ceremony tonight. The Primordial Flame is burning him alive from the inside out. They need a compatible donor. A blood-twin."
A cold smirk touched the corners of Aurora’s mouth.
Marcus was burning. The golden boy, built upon the stolen marrow of his sister, was finally reaping the harvest of his father’s sins.
"Tell them I'm not here," Aurora said coldly.
"I already told them," Bram replied, his tone shifting from gruff warning to cold calculation. "And I told them you went down toward the river docks. They paid me fifty silver sovereigns, Rori. Good money for an old man who’s tired of hauling coal."
*A trap.*
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Before Bram could kick the door open, Aurora hurled her body sideways just as the wooden panels splintered inward under the impact of a heavy iron battering ram.
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