"Let go of me, Kasian." Anja tore her arm free. The studio bench rattled between them, littered with fractured slag and flakes of gray silica. "Listen to reason," Kasian said. He stayed still, though the line of his mouth tautened. "Every gram of glass you pull from your ribs shaves another week off Misha's breath. You wanted Igor ruined. Fine. He is ruined in the salons, but he will bury your brother in an unmarked parish ditch before the magistrate ever drafts a warrant. We need the apothecary. We need the physical receipt of the draughts." "And then?" She took a step toward him, iron dust clinging to the hem of her apron. "You buy my debt from Raskina? You place me in another gilded sitting room and tell me to be grateful?" "I am asking you to survive," he snapped, the low gravel of his voice cutting through the hiss of the gas jets overhead. "Damn my pride, Anja, and damn yours. If Igor dies tomorrow by your glass needles, Misha chokes on copper-rot by sundown because you won't have the cure. We break the supply. We take the antidote. Then you may burn the Baranov estate to ashes, and I will hand you the tinderbox." Her chest rose and fell in ragged spasms. The logic was an icy blade, stripping away the red film that had clouded her vision since the gala. Igor had not simply beaten them; he had methodically hollowed Misha out with an apothecary's spoon. "The south canal," she whispered, the forbidden stem slipping out before she could catch it. "Old district. Behind the salt tanneries." Kasian pulled a pair of heavy leather riding gloves from his coat. "Borek's cellar. He trades in unrefined quicksilver and dead-root. My brougham is waiting by the river gate." *** Rain drummed against the attic shingles three miles north, leaking through rotted pitch into a rusted iron pan. Ping. Ping. Ping. Misha curled beneath the moth-eaten wool blanket, his teeth chattering despite the damp wool tucked under his chin. His lungs felt coated in powdered lime. Every rattle in his throat scraped like gravel. On the raw fir floorboard beside him lay his mother’s calfskin journal, propped open against a cracked saucer. The entry, set down in pale walnut ink, insisted that glass answered endurance rather than raw agony, urging the artist to anchor the pulse within the marrow. With shaking thumbs, Misha fumbled in his pocket and produced a tarnished brass thimble, abandoned years ago by a seamstress who had lived in the boarding rooms below. He cradled the hollow metal against his sternum. He did not think of Igor’s heavy boots on the stairs. He did not think of the bitter tea forced between his lips every evening at curfew. He thought of Anja’s woolen scarf wrapped around his ears during the Great Frost, the scratchy wool smelling of boiled cloves. A prick of golden needle-fire flickered under his thumbnail. The brass did not melt. Instead, a dull amber radiance seeped through the metal grain, spreading across his palms like midday sun on river pebbles. The damp, icy ache in his ribs receded an inch. His cough quieted, trapped beneath a blanket of sudden, fragile heat. Misha squeezed the thimble tight against his throat, weeping silent, burning tears of relief into the straw pillow. *** The cellar under the tannery smelled of curdled fat and distilled sulfur. Borek was a squat man with thumbs stained yellow by vitriol. He sat behind an oak counter reinforced with iron bands, staring at the five gold crowns Kasian had laid out like five severed teeth. "I supply many households with rat-bane, Lord Volkov," Borek croaked, his gaze sliding toward the shadowed entry where Anja stood, her hooded cloak dripping rainwater onto the cobblestones. "The law does not require me to record every kitchen maid who buys a vial of antimony." Anja stepped into the pale circle of the tallow candle. She did not reach for an emotional spark; she let the bitter, cold certainty of her hatred settle into the open air. The oil in the lamp trembled. On the shelf behind Borek, an array of green glass carboys began to sing—a high, razor-thin vibration that climbed the scale toward shattering. "You sold him the gray tincture," Anja said. Her voice lacked inflection. It sounded like two millstones grinding together. "Three drops in milk, every evening. Designed to mimic the wasting sickness. To bind the lung vessels so light cannot gather in the blood." Borek glanced up at the vibrating glass jars. A fissure ran down the largest vessel, weeping emerald acid onto the wood. "Look here—" "Where is the neutralizing wash?" Kasian’s hand closed around the collar of Borek’s leather jerkin, hauling the stout man forward until his chin hovered an inch above the gold. Kasian’s face was utterly devoid of aristocratic courtesy. "Give us the sales register showing his signatures for the purchase, and give us the belladonna-charcoal base. Or I step outside, and the lady shatters every container of vitriol on these shelves while the door is bolted from without." Borek’s skin grayed. "Under the flagstone," he sputtered, spittle hitting the counter. "The blue volume! Under the cask of brine! The wash is in the amber phial behind the dried kelp—take it, take the whole crate, you lunatic!" Ten minutes later, they were back inside Kasian's coach, the iron-shod wheels clattering furiously over the wet cobblestones of the river boulevard. Anja held the amber vial against the interior lantern. Inside, a thick, milky suspension drifted, pale as curdled wax. The cure. Beside it lay the sales register, filled with Igor Baranov’s precise, arrogant hand, detailing twelve months of steady purchases under the column heading *Pest Eradication*. "We have him," she breathed. "The magistrate cannot dismiss his own handwriting." "The magistrate answers to the ministry of culture," Kasian countered, adjusting the velvet lapels of his heavy cloak. He was sitting opposite her, but the cab swung sharply around a bend, throwing them shoulder to shoulder. He did not pull away. His leather glove brushed against her bare wrist, cold outside, but searing where it touched skin. She looked up into his eyes. In the swinging lantern light, the guarded arrogance he wore like a breastplate had dropped away entirely. There was only a terrifying, naked intensity that made her mouth dry. "When this is over, Anja," he murmured, his voice dipping low enough to be lost under the rumble of the iron wheels, "you do not return to his house. And you do not remain in Raskina's kennels." "And where would I go, Kasian? The whole capital knows my name now. They want to see the freak who weaves glass from her marrow." "With me." His hand moved, his bare fingers finally finding hers, twining with a roughness born of long restraint. "To the northern estate. There are no kilns there. No patrons. No demands. Only the coast." The hollow inside her ribs, carved out by months of sorrow, throbbed with a strange, terrifying light. It was neither cold nor sharp. Her fingers curled around his, answering the pressure. "Kasian—" The vehicle lurched to a violent, screeching halt. The horses screamed in the dark. A boot kicked the door inward with enough force to splinter the lacquered frame. The crest on the iron breastplates was unmistakable: the two-headed hawk of the Zorya Academy’s internal provost. Four armed guards stood in the rain, heavy cudgels and light-dampening iron collars in hand. Behind them, sheltered by a silk umbrella held by an apprentice, stood Patron Raskina. Her lips were painted the color of dried oxblood. "How touching," Raskina purred, her gaze raking over their locked hands with glacial disdain. "The secret patron and his prize bird, plotting treason in a hired coach." "Step back, Raskina," Kasian snarled, placing himself between Anja and the door, reaching beneath his coat for his sidearm. "You have no jurisdiction over my property." "I have absolute jurisdiction over academy collateral, Lord Volkov," Raskina snapped. She produced a parchment sealed with black wax and held it near the lantern light. "Clause Nine of the Zorya Indenture. The artist has refused her primary commissions for forty-eight hours, deliberately allowing her emotional yield to spoil while trafficking in unapproved private engagements." "She is not a slave!" Kasian drew his flintlock, but two guards lunged simultaneously, striking his wrist with lead-weighted saps. The pistol discharged into the cobblestones with an ear-splitting crack, the ball ricocheting into the canal. Kasian went down on one knee, three guards pinning him against the cushions of the coach. "Anja!" he shouted, blood tracking down his temple. Heavy iron clamps snapped around Anja’s wrists before she could gather the breath to call upon her gift. The metal was lead-lined and ice-cold; the moment it touched her flesh, the nascent embers of her power died in her throat, extinguished like grease under sand. They dragged her into the freezing mud of the street. Raskina stepped forward, her cane clicking against the pavement until the tip rested against Anja’s chin, forcing her head up. "You thought your petty family squabble mattered to the Crown, little girl? You produced nothing today. Your heart rate is level; your sorrow is dissipating into romantic nonsense. You are worthless to me happy." "Misha—" Anja gasped, thrashing against the guards' grip. The vial of antidote rolled into the gutter, disappearing down the storm grate into the filthy canal water below. Raskina turned her back, walking toward the academy's black coach. "Take her to the lower vaults," the headmistress commanded, not bothering to look behind her. "Default of contract. Strip the name. Begin the asset liquidation."

A Pact of Light and Shadow