Aunt Taiki nodded in compliance before handing her own amulet over to Aunt Melaina. Then she glanced down at me as if to say goodbye, and she stepped toward the glowing portal.
“Wait.” Aunt Melaina grabbed her arm.
Aunt Taiki paused and turned back.
“Be careful,” Aunt Melaina ordered. “I’ll see you in a minute.”
Aunt Taiki smiled at her. “I love you, you crazy heifer.” She leaned forward and pressed her mouth to Aunt Melaina’s.
Aunt Melaina kissed her back before she pulled away, whispering, “I love you, too. You’ll be a better mother to them than I ever was.”
Aunt Taiki’s brow furrowed in confusion. “What—?” she started, but she didn’t get a chance to finish the question.
Aunt Melaina slipped the amulet back into the pocket of Aunt Taiki’s cloak and shoved her through the portal.
“Mom!” Questa gasped, rushing forward. “What have you done?”
Aunt Melaina merely shrugged. “What needed to be done. She’ll take care of you and your brother much better than I ever could. After I’m forced back here, she’ll be your new mother. Got it? And she’ll love you just as much as I do.”
“But—”
“Just go!” Aunt Melaina shoved her through the doorway as well. “You’re insane if you think I’m leaving this world without securing the safety of the people who mean the most to me.”
Then she grabbed Quailen and pushed him into the glowing, crackling portal as well.
After all three were gone, she blew out a long breath and slowly turned to glare at me.
I shrank a step back.
“I guess that leaves just you and me now, brat.”
I gulped. “You’re going to make me stay behind, aren’t you?”
With an amused smirk, she sniffed. “I wish.” Then she took my arm roughly. “But Taiki would murder me if I showed up without you in tow, so you better come with me, huh?”
I nodded, feeling stupid and scared. Stalling, though I wasn’t sure why—I guess because I still had no idea where we were going—I peered up at her.
“Did—was Qualmer not immune, then?” I asked of her middle son that I hadn’t seen since the reaping had begun.
Her eyes narrowed before she smirked. “Of course not. Who do you think killed your mother?”
My skin went cold.
Qualmer had murdered Mama?
Aunt Melaina stepped toward me, looming darkly. “Let’s get one thing straight, kid. Don’t cause problems for Taiki or either of my children, or I’ll end you, just like my son ended your dear, sweet mama. Got it?”
I nodded, suddenly unsure if I should go with her or not. “G-got it.”
“Great.” She tightened her grip on my arm. “Then let’s go.”
Behind us, a voice roared, “There you are!”
I glanced back to find Qualmer peering over the door of the stall.
“Trying to leave without me, Mother?” He struggled with the latch. “That just earned you a death sentence right there. You too, cousin. I’m going to gut you both and then bathe in your blood before going through that portal and taking out Questa and Quailen and that fucking lover of yours.”
He finally flung the door open and stalked into the stall with us.
Reacting on instinct, I pushed him back with a propulsion of air, just as I had with Uncle Palmer. And beside me, Melaina produced a dagger from her cloak before she threw it at him. When she caught him right in the eye, he screamed and fell to his knees, clutching the protruding handle.
My eyes widened as blood gushed down his cheek. “Is he going to die?”
“I doubt it.” Aunt Melaina’s punishing grip jerked me backward toward the portal. “But let’s not wait around to find out, either.”
With that, she swirled her hand, and the crackling edges began to darken and shrink, closing rapidly. Before the portal had completely compressed into nothing, she jumped into the dwindling gap and took me with her, leaving her enraged son behind.
In front of us, a black hole loomed. We were sucked into it with a rush of wind. A pulling sensation gripped my skin, and it felt as if I were falling.
Screaming, Aunt Melaina and I held on to each other for dear life as we left the Outer Realms behind and entered the unknown.
Chapter 1
Quilla
EIGHTEEN YEARS LATER
“Do you remember the plan this time?”
The goading question caused me to cinch my drawstring bag closed with an irritated snap, momentarily imagining the pull cord was tightening around my aunt’s throat instead of the sack. Inside the burlap, the freshly baked loaves I’d just stuffed into it tumbled about uneasily.
But do I remember? Really?
Casting Melaina a hard glance, I ground out, “I told you, last time wasn’t my—”
“Fault?” she finished for me, flashing that ever mocking and sardonic smirk of hers. “Yes, so you said, darling. Multiple times. And all I’m saying in return is that I don’t give a shit. Don’t fuck things up this time.”
Flipping her mass of red hair behind her shoulder, she tipped her chin up like arrogant royalty. From the way she sat with a rigidly straight spine while smoothing the extravagant pools of her emerald green skirt over her lap, one might think she should be seated on a throne in a castle right now, ordering about a kingdom. But no, lucky me, I was the only subject she liked to boss around. And we were far and gone away from any kind of opulence that could even resemble a castle.
The back alley we occupied smelled pungently of decaying cabbage—wait, make that horse shit, since her mount was currently lifting its tail and defecating between us.
Melaina sent the horse a dry, unimpressed glance from atop the broken wagon that lay turned on its side where she’d perched herself, and she sniffed. “Rude.” Then she dismissed the animal with an arch of her eyebrows and turned her haughty expression back to me. “The goal is to sell all the bread, not give it away.”
“I know that,” I muttered. “And I only gave away one loaf.” One. But she acted as if I’d dispersed our entire stock without any compensation whatsoever.
“To a filthy street urchin,” Melaina argued. “Making all the other little ragamuffins loitering about and watching think it perfectly acceptable to take their own free loaves as well. Seriously, Quilla. How could you not notice when five more were stolen right out from under your nose?”
With a growl, I unceremoniously tossed our bag full of wares I planned to sell in the market into the pushcart beside me and ground my teeth.
The problem wasn’t that I hadn’t noticed the robberies; I just hadn’t put all that much effort—or any effort at all—into retrieving the stolen merchandise. But the kids had been so thin and half-starved to death. Being out the price of six stupid loaves wouldn’t sink us. And it had probably fed them for a week.
“We’re not running a charity,” my aunt lectured. “That profit is our livelihood. How the hell are we supposed to go anywhere after this with no funds?”
“We still turned a profit,” I argued, but not too heatedly because our so-called profit hadn’t been impressive. At all. It might cover the cost of meals for us, but it wouldn’t come close to paying for any kind of room and board along the roads. We’d have to sleep out on the ground in the open air and around a campfire every night.