Read Iron Kin: A Novel of the Half-Light City for Free Online Page B

closer.
    “Fen?” Holly’s voice sounded concerned.
    I shook myself, trying to break the trance. There was no logical explanation for the touch of Saskia’s hand stopping my visions. I must have imagined it. “Yes. She left in a ’cab just now.”
    “And you?” She tilted her head, eyes shining bronze gold in the gaslight, matching her dress. The unusual color didn’t distract from the worry they held.
    I shrugged. “Reggie said she was staying the night here with you.”
    “She is.” Her tone suggested that wasn’t the point.
    “She had plenty of partners in there.”
    “You said you’d stay.”
    “I—” I turned back to the gate, my palm tingling with the remembered sensation of Saskia’s skin. “I have somewhere I need to be.”
    “Fen, you’re not going to do something stupid, are you?” Her voice held more than a hint of censure.
    My hand clenched, sensation fleeing. I turned back to Holly. “Such as?” I asked silkily.
    She jerked her head toward the gate. “She’s not one of us, Fen. You can’t toy with someone like her.”
    “Guy is hardly one of us,” I pointed out.
    “I’m not toying with Guy.”
    “You were when you first started.”
    “It’s different.”
    “How?”
    “She’s human. She’s grown up with all this.” Holly gestured at the pillars that supported the domed portico. At the expensively intricate gas lamps and impeccably manicured topiary standing in enameled pots at their feet. It was a long way from the back alleys of the border boroughs, from the sweaty, stuffy attic rooms above the brothel where our mothers had worked, from hunger and learning survival the hard way. A long way from the childhood Holly and Reggie and I had shared.
    “Too good for a gutter rat like me?” I couldn’t quite keep the anger from my tone. Holly was supposed to be on my side. Had always
been
on my side before now. Until Guy had come along.
    “I think she could hurt you,” Holly said softly, stopping my anger in its tracks. She was worried about me, not about what I was going to do. Or maybe a little of both.
    “What makes you think I’m even interested?”
    Holly laughed. “I know you, Fen.”
    “Do you?” I tilted my head at her. We’d shared that childhood and had kept each other safe in the years since then, but she was leaving our world now. Joining Guy’s. Keeping secrets.
    She looked hurt and I regretted my temper. “Sorry.” I took a deep breath and pressed my fingers into the base of my skull where brandy and the visions had joined forces to make my head ache like hellfire.
    Holly’s gaze followed my hand, narrowing as if she wanted to see through my shirt to the chain beneath. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”
    I shrugged.
    “You have to do something about it, Fen. You can’t just drink yourself unconscious every night.”
    “Why not? You don’t seem to approve of my other choice of distractions.”
    “Screwing the entire female population of the border boroughs won’t help either,” she said tartly. “You need to learn to control your visions.”
    “And would you recommend I go groveling to one of the packs or to the Veiled Court for that? Just whose slave should I become, Holly?”
    She looked away, mouth twisted. “You’re going to kill yourself.”
    “Then I’ll die free.”
    “Don’t even say that.” She blinked rapidly, hugging herself, and I cursed under my breath. Holly had lost everyone except for Guy and Reggie and me. I didn’t want to be her next loss.
    But nor was I willing to find the type of cure she recommended. My mother had been a whore, selling her body in lieu of any other talents; her life, after my appearance, governed by the demands of Madame Figg and the threat of being cast out into the streets. If I was going to sell myself, then it would be on my own terms and I would be the one to profit from it.
    A clatter of wheels and hooves announced the hackney, saving me from having to figure out what the hell to say next. As it