“Usually these parties don’t end dangerously,” Sid said.

“Usually?” I repeated.

She crouched down next to the weeping man and pinched his ear.

“Ow!”

“Pay attention. Stop crying. Answer her questions.”

He wiped away his tears. “It was not a normal memory. It was like I was there again. The smells. The tastes. Everything was so real, so now. Please don’t make me say what it was.”

“All right,” I said, though Sid cut a disapproving look my way.

“The memory hurt,” he said.

A sick feeling had been growing inside me. I turned over his earlier words in my mind. “You said that Middling blood doesn’t work, and neither does High-Kith blood. You’re taking it from the tithes, aren’t you? From Half-Kith prisoners. What does Half-Kith blood do? How does it work?”

“Maybe three drops was too much,” he said.

A realization seized me. I looked at Sid. “The elixir isn’t pink tea. It’s watered-down blood.”

44

“I WANT YOU TO TASTE IT,” I said to Sid when we returned to her house after the party’s end, when Middlings filled the floor below us with velvet pillows. A dancer detached from the ceiling like a petal and sailed down, landing in the pillows with a whump. Eventually, we did, too, as did the blue-braided man, who had cried himself to sleep after our conversation and continued napping on the pillows below, one hand tucked beneath his cheek.

“No,” Sid said. She stalked up the stairs to her room and shut the door behind her.

I followed her, shoving the door open. “You have no right to be angry. Nothing was done to you. The Council took my blood. They have been stealing from the Ward. Hair for wigs, limbs for High-Kith surgeries, blood for magic. They have been taking children, and I don’t even know why. I get to be angry. Not you.”

“Fine,” she said. “I don’t get to be angry.” But she looked furious. “Now let me be. Go away. I am not tasting your blood.”

“Is it because he said the memory hurt?”

“No.” Her dark eyes were wide, her face paler than usual, the freckle beneath her eye stark against her skin.

“It’s not like you to be afraid.”

“You have no idea who I really am.”

Frustrated, I said, “I know only what you let me know.”

“Yes, I am afraid,” she said, “but that is not why I don’t want to do it. Maybe I don’t have the right to be angry, not like you do, but I am angry. I am angry because of what’s been done to you. I am angry because so much has been taken from you and you are asking me to take something else.”

“But I want you to. I need to know.”

“Ask someone else. Ask your sweetheart.”

“I want it to be you. I trust you.”

A defeated, worried look stole over her. She sat at the edge of her bed, which was plainer than mine, narrower, and impeccably made. She yanked the hem of her tunic out of her trousers, exposing the dagger, which she dragged from its sheath. She offered its hilt to me. “I keep the edge very sharp.”

When I sat next to her she let herself fall back against the mattress with a strangled, frustrated sigh. “I have gotten myself in over my head,” she said. “This trip was supposed to be fun. The whole idea behind running away is to escape responsibility.” She screwed her eyes shut. “Do it, then. Quickly. I don’t want to watch you hurt yourself.”

The dagger’s hilt was chased in gold. Now that I could see the weapon up close, I noticed that its intricate decoration included, at the pommel of the dagger, the same sign as on the card Sid had taken from her queen. “Did you steal this, too?”

She groaned. “Please just get this over with.”

I nicked my finger on the dagger’s edge. Blood instantly welled. She opened her eyes. “Gods,” she said.

“Just one.” I held out my hand.

She lifted herself onto her elbows, her head tipped back, her short hair bright in the rising sun. She gripped my wrist and lifted her face to my hand, licking my finger like a calf. I shivered. The cut stung, but I loved the feel of her tongue on me. I couldn’t look away from her dark eyes, her mouth on my hand. Then her eyes glazed over. Her fingers slackened around my wrist. She dropped back down, heavy as wood, rigid, and staring.

She lay like that for a long time, long enough that I grew concerned, trying to tell myself that the blue-haired man had tasted my blood and survived, and his brain had seemed addled well before.

Sid’s chest rose and fell with steady breaths. Her lower lip was pink with my blood.

I curled up next to her on the bed. I waited. I breathed in the scent of her smoky perfume. I closed my eyes.

Finally, I felt her stir beside me. She made a soft noise deep in her throat. Her hand reached out and found my thigh. She pulled me close, then turned onto her side to face me, her eyes wide, blinking rapidly. Then she burrowed into my arms and pressed her damp face against my neck.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

She nodded. I felt a tear slide down my neck.

“Did it hurt?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“I’m so sorry. What can I do? Tell me what to do.”

She shook her head. “Nothing. It hurts inside. It’s because I remembered something I don’t have anymore.”

“But it was real?”

“Yes,” she said. “It was. It used to be real.”

“Can you tell me?”

“I don’t want you to see me like this.” She started to pull away.

“Stay.”

She relaxed a little but kept her face buried against me. “It was like that man said. It was not a normal memory. I was living in the past. I didn’t even know I had forgotten it.” She was speaking softly, her words little breaths against my skin. “I remembered my mother holding me. I could smell the cypress trees waving against the sky. We were on the grass outside my home. An irrielle bird sang. The wind made the grass shimmer. I was small, unsteady on my feet. I didn’t know, then, that I had nearly killed my mother with my birth. My father raged at the doctors. He practically lost his mind with fear. I didn’t know, when I was a baby, that I would be the only child my parents would have. I didn’t know that all their plans would rest on me. I didn’t know what plans were. I didn’t know that anything would ever be more or less than it was at that moment. I fell in the grass. My mother lifted me into her arms. Her hair is similar to mine, but much longer. I pushed it aside and said, Away, so I could press my cheek against the smooth skin of her chest, just above her heart, and I felt so sure that she loved me more than anyone or anything in the world.”