“My old boss taught me.” His gaze had flicked to the vulture tattoo on his forearm. “My parents were illiterate. After they got arrested and I was on my own, I joined the Vultures, and reading was the first thing he made sure I knew how to do.”

Her brow had furrowed. “Why’d your parents get arrested?”

Instead of answering, he’d shoved the book closer to her and tapped the top of the page. “Read.”

For Kouta Hirai, reading was just another thing he could take for granted, something he’d grown up with. Shoving down an intense feeling of having been cheated, she waited for him to finish. Finally, an hour later, he placed his stack of documents into his bag.

“Let’s follow him home and figure out the rest of our plan,” she proposed to Teo as Kouta stood. His guards immediately flanked him.

A loud, girlish voice sounded nearby, and Aina had to fight the urge to whip out a knife.

“Your scarf is really pretty!” squealed the young woman from a few feet away. She wore a silk blue dress and gems at her ears that indicated how rich she was. One of Kouta’s guards turned around, so Aina put a smile on her face and pretended to be intrigued by what the girl was saying.

She’d bought the scarf as a joke when the shop had run out of red ones and only carried white, so she decided to dye it herself with blood. The redness had faded to a rust color she wasn’t very fond of, but apparently this girl liked it.

“Thank you!” she gushed as the guard turned back around and left with Kouta; time to follow. “You’ll never guess how it got this way.”

The girl tilted her head to the side, mouth popping open in curiosity, but Teo pulled Aina away.

“Come on. Don’t traumatize the poor girl,” he grunted, but smiled anyway.

“Live a little, Teo!”

7

It was a short walk out of the city with the setting sun at their backs as they followed Kouta and his entourage eastward. The path curved away from Rose Court, turning from cobblestone to dirt. She beckoned to Teo, and they both stepped behind trees that lined the path out of the city.

A carriage with two horses waited ahead. The guards’ voices were the only sound as they quickly confirmed with Kouta whether he would like to go anywhere else before heading home. He got in the carriage moments later, the carriage lurched forward, and she and Teo stepped through the trees, their footsteps in time with the sound of the wheels churning through mud.

At a safe distance, they followed the carriage across a bridge and through a dirt path enclosed by a small forest. The farther they walked, the less tainted the air became.

Soon, the carriage left the forest trail. Aina and Teo hid behind the trees at the fringe of the forest and watched the carriage approach the gate surrounding Amethyst Hill, the community where the rich stored their mansions and jewels. She’d heard enough stories of the people there to be disgusted by them. Last year, one of the women who lived here threw a bonfire party by burning all her out-of-season dresses, which had cost thousands of kors each.