No matter how hard she’d tried, inhaling glue over and over again, it never cleansed her mind of the sight of her parents’ dead bodies on the floor. But it could make her forget those images for a while and dull the emptiness in her stomach.

She’d known the risks. It could put her in a coma, cause her breaths to come so fast, her lungs would simply give up, or just kill her in one sudden, unlucky sniff. But she hadn’t cared and had inhaled it regularly for a few years until one day when she was eleven. She’d been scouring the banks of the Minos River for dropped kors and had stumbled upon a body.

The girl was Milana, like her, but in her teens. The dead girl had kept her dark brown hair like Aina’s mother had, in a short cut, waves brushing against her jaw. A plastic bag was stuck to the girl’s face. Suffocation often killed glue inhalers. With a shaking hand, Aina had reached out to pull the bag away and revealed the girl’s mouth and nose ringed with a rash that marked her addiction—they called it Kalaan’s Kiss. Aina’s hand had trailed to her own mouth, feeling the buds of the rash, picturing herself dead and forgotten on the riverbank.

After that, she’d pulled away from glue and nearly died from the withdrawal. Kohl had found her a year later, and the constant training kept her mind off glue most of the time. Becoming a Blade and working toward some kind of future kept her focused. Pushing herself in training, and later in her work, was a release.

“Is he all right?” Ryuu’s voice climbed through her reverie.

“He’s fine,” Aina answered, hoping she was talking about herself as much as the boy on the side of the road. “Go inside.”

With a shrug, Ryuu left her there and entered the house. Once the door closed behind him, Aina walked to the boy and lifted the bag from his face. Paper bags were safer than plastic, but kids like him often either didn’t know that or didn’t care. Maybe he was trying to forget something, like she had. Part of her wished she could tell him that some memories were etched into you, and some wounds never healed. But she would never stop him from trying.

He was still breathing, so she stood to get back to her job. If she didn’t, Kohl would kill her, or worse, she might end up on the streets again with a plastic bag suffocating her. She turned and walked into the blood magic practitioner’s home.

21

Raurie’s aunt’s home was similar to Aina’s old one, but larger. Two wooden chairs and a table stood on the dirt floor, a straw mat was in the center of the room, and lit candles surrounded a small, gold-wire sculpture of the Mothers on their table.

In Aina’s old home, there had also been dirt floors, a few blankets and pieces of cardboard on the ground, spiders crawling in the corners, a makeshift stove, and little else. One image stood out: a small porcelain horse statue her mother had owned. It had sat behind the stove throughout Aina’s childhood. Its glimmer in the light of the flames on the stove still recalled itself clearly in her memory, even though it had all shattered when she was eight years old.