Her stomach growled, sharp and low, and she pressed her palm hard against it as though she could silence its betrayal. Hunger had a way of announcing itself to the world, of exposing need like a wound. And weakness was the one thing Elowen Caerthwyn had sworn never to show.

  She crouched in the shadow of a crumbling wall, rags clinging damp to her frame, bare feet blackened by soot and dust. Before her stretched the noble quarter of the Central Kingdom: marble halls gilded with paint that flaked in sheets, velvet curtains heavy with smoke, courtyards left hollow now that their masters had gone to their summer estates by the sea. The air carried a mix of scents—onion stew left to sour in alley pots, mildew creeping up stone, citrus peels curling black on an abandoned hearth. Beauty and rot knotted together until neither could be told apart.

  “Wait for their faces,” Theron, had told her once. His voice came back to her like wind through broken shutters. Don’t look at the locks. Don’t look at the doors. Look at the people. The way they stand, the way they speak before they leave. You’ll know when a house is empty.

  He had been fourteen then, only minutes older than her but always the leader. Quick grin, eyes sharp as glass, hands steady where hers trembled. He had been her other half, her mirror and shield. Until the war claimed him. Until the letters stopped and silence became his answer.

  Now there was only Lucan.

  Her little brother, thirteen and reed-thin, stood a few steps back in the alley. She had told him to stay home with the tallow candle and the cracked jug of water. But tonight he had followed, quiet as breath until it was too late to send him back. His wide eyes clung to her with trust that weighed heavier than chains.

  “I’ll do it,” he whispered, voice breaking like a reed in the wind. “Let me try, Elowen.”

  She shook her head sharply. “No. You stay behind.”

  Theron had once pressed her shoulder with that same steady weight. If there’s risk, I take it first. If there’s punishment, it falls on me. She had hated how he said it with such finality, as though his life mattered less. But here she was, echoing him without meaning to.

  The house they watched stood silent, its gate unbarred. Rumor said the master had gone to the coast, leaving only women and children within. Easy prey, some might say. But Elowen did not think of them as prey. She thought of bread—thick, dark, warm in her hands. She thought of her mother’s fragile frame, laughter that used to fill her lungs, now brittle as parchment. She thought of her father’s fists and the cupboards yawning like toothless mouths.

  She thought of survival.

  Lucan tugged at her sleeve. “Please. Just once.”

  Her heart twisted. She should have sent him home. She should have. But his eyes—Theron’s eyes—pleaded in a way she could not refuse. When the street grew still, shutters rattling like dice in the wind, she let him slip through the gate. She followed, every step a prayer she did not dare to voice.

  Inside, the air hung heavy. A jug rested half-empty on the table, beside a crust of bread turned to stone. Lucan’s hand reached, trembling.

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  Then a voice cut the dark. “Thieves.”

  The word cracked like a whip.

  A man stepped from the corridor, torch in hand, flame painting his face into something monstrous. Elowen’s heart slammed against her ribs. She shoved Lucan behind her, baring her teeth like a cornered wolf.

  “Run,” she hissed.

  Hands seized her from behind. She thrashed, clawing, the torch’s heat blistering her cheek. She could have slipped away—she always could—but Lucan was rooted, wide-eyed. She chose wrong. Or perhaps she chose rightly, though it doomed her.

  The last thing she saw as they dragged her into the street was Lucan’s face, pale and stricken, shrinking into the dark.

  The carriage smelled of rust and old piss, iron bars rattling with every rut in the cobbles. Elowen sat pressed against the splintered boards, wrists bound, her head tipped back to the jolting wall.

  How had it come to this? She pressed her palm to her brow, a humorless breath escaping her—half laugh, half plea.

  Once, there had been music in their house. She could still hear it if she closed her eyes: her mother’s laugh bubbling through her lungs like a songbird’s trill, her father’s voice booming as he boasted of festivals in far-off cities, of tables sagging with roast quail and candied fruit. Theron sparring in the courtyard with sticks that stood in for swords, golden curls flying, eyes flashing with fierce delight. Lucan darting behind them, too small to lift a blade, eager to be their page, their squire, their knight someday. She had sat on the steps, tongue caught in the corner of her mouth as she tried to comb her tangled hair into some semblance of order before giving up and racing after them.

  Then came the famine. The White Fortress, once proud and wreathed in banners, starved on its own marble bones. Bread became crust, then crumbs, then nothing. For Lucan, she had stolen. For Theron, too. For the fragile woman who had once been their mother and now sat by the hearth with hollow eyes, laughing at nothing, her lungs rattling as though laughter had become a sickness. For the father who had drowned his name in wine and fury until all that remained of his nobility was the signet ring Elowen now kept hidden like a relic.

  The first theft had been almost innocent. At the market, Theron had darted forward, plucked an apple, and tossed it to her with a grin. She had gasped, horrified, even as her teeth sank into the sweet flesh. He had laughed at her wide eyes. See? No one even noticed. We’re invisible until we choose not to be. From then on, each theft grew easier. Bread for Lucan’s hollow cheeks. Needles to mend her dress. A scrap of ribbon, so she could tie her curls when they tangled. Even a pair of boots once, too big, but Lucan grew into them. They fed each other, not their parents. The shame of it was theirs alone.

  But Theron was gone now. The kingdom had called, and he answered. She remembered the day soldiers came to the ruined gates, their armor gleaming like the mountain crest her family once bore. Her brother had stood straight, taller than she remembered, and placed the carved scrap of their house sigil into her palm. Keep it for me, El, he’d said. Keep the walls standing. Then he vanished into the war, and the storm inside her begun to howl.

  Elowen opened her eyes as the carriage jolted to a stop. Iron clanged as the door was thrown wide, and a rough hand clamped around her arm, dragging her out. She stumbled across the threshold into a corridor slick with damp. The air was heavy with mildew and unwashed bodies. Her bare feet slapped against the stone as the guard hauled her deeper inside.

  Cells lined the passage, iron bars thick as branches. Women sat hunched on straw, their faces hollowed by hunger, their eyes wide but strangely empty. They looked not merely afraid but broken, as if fear had seeped into their bones and left them hollow. One woman stared at the wall, lips moving soundlessly, as if whispering to someone only she could see.

  Elowen’s throat burned. Is this what happens to those who are caught? Do they vanish into these shadows until no one remembers their names? She tried to ask what would become of Lucan, but her voice snagged, caught in the same silence that had stolen Theron from her. And perhaps she already knew the answer.

  The cell door clanged shut behind her. Iron sang in her bones. She pressed her palm to her belly again, but this time it was not only hunger that twisted her—it was the storm inside her, restless, rising, and aching to be loosed.