The boy stared at Oriana’s hands, which were clapped together, holding something, something he wanted. He was little, though, and he had no idea what awaited him.

Oriana tilted her head down at him and squinted.

“You sure you want to see this?” she asked. “You sure you can handle it?”

The boy’s eyes grew round, and he took a step back. But he nodded.

She smirked. Oriana wasn’t a mean girl, but she wasn’t a nice girl, either.

She took a step closer to the boy. Then, all at once, she opened her hands, each of them filled with a fistful of fireplace ash, and smacked him hard on each cheek, leaving black, smeary handprints on the boy’s face.

She was out of there before the kid even realized what had happened.

She sprinted through the cobblestone streets in her family’s part of town, but she wasn’t going home.

Not yet.

She could just hear the shouting beginning when she ducked behind an alley door and put her eye up to the peep hole cut into the wood.

There were a few boys after her, friends of the kid’s, and even though they were smaller, they outnumbered her. She tried hard to control her breathing, to stay quiet, but she had run so fast that her breath seemed to have left her. For a moment, she felt concerned, and had the silence in the road remained, she might’ve started to feel a little scared.

But the sound of the boys growing closer caught her attention, and she found herself holding her breath instead of gasping for it.

Two of the boys, one of them the boy whom she’d tricked, flew by on the street, howls of protest escaping them as they pursued her.

But a third boy, the biggest boy, stopped not far from where she was hiding, gasping for breath, himself.

Oriana froze, watching the boy walk back and forth in front of her door. Then, just as she thought things were going to work out, she felt a tickle in the back of her throat; ash that she’d breathed in after smacking the kid.

Horrified, she coughed.

It was entirely involuntary. And after she coughed once, she found that another followed, and another, until a full-blown coughing fit commenced. She couldn’t stop, and the coughing hurt her throat badly enough that she forgot for a moment what she was doing there kneeling on the hard cobblestone.

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The boy, curious, pushed the door open and peered down the alleyway, Oriana hiding behind the open door. She was trying desperately to hold her breath, to prevent another sound from escaping her.

And then, a reprieve. The pursuer didn’t hear her, and he couldn’t see her hiding spot, so he stepped back into the road, leaving the door ajar. She saw him take off again, and just as he ran away, the world around Oriana began to swirl.

Beads of sweat broke upon her brow, a wicked chill began to creep up her spine, and the coughing began again. This time there was no reprieve, and she coughed so hard and so long that by the time she emerged from hiding and sank down into the street, the taste of blood had touched her tongue.

A woman bent over, her face uncertain.

“Oriana?” she said. “Is that you? Oh, girl, what are you doing out here! Your mother’s going to kill you! But—Oriana? Are you all right?”

The words sounded garbled in her ears, and her field of vision was obscured by blackness closing in on her. When she finally began to lose consciousness, she was glad for it, for already in those early days she was learning that the warm embrace of sleep meant the end of her pain.

She drifted away.

When she awoke, she found herself being carried, but the arms holding her did not belong to someone she knew. The man was wide and tall, and a moment later, she realized it was one of the lawmen that patrolled the city streets. She shrank away from him, but as soon as she did, another coughing fit broke loose, and she was too distracted to care who it was. All she wanted was her warm bed by the fire.

She shouldn’t have tricked the boy.

It didn’t take long for the man to carry her to her family’s house close to the entrance to the castle. Here, the lawmen were noticeably nicer, gentler, with the public; one never knew whom she might run into in the street.

The man approached her front door and rapped loudly on the wood. She heard the scuffling of her mother inside, and Oriana’s heart sank. She wasn’t supposed to be out on her own, especially at this time of year, the coldest. She knew she had a hard slap coming.

She looked up at the lawman. “Put me down.”

He ignored her.

“I said, put me—”

The door creaked open, and Oriana finally got her wish; the man released her, and he was so tall that she was lucky to land on her feet instead of in a heap.

“Where have you been?” her mother asked angrily. “I’ve been looking for you for an hour!”

Oriana might’ve lowered her head in mock-shame, but instead she dissolved into another coughing fit, and she was just lucky enough to land in her mother’s arms as she lost herself within it. This time, when she pulled away, she saw droplets of blood staining her mother’s dress, alarming her.

Her mother saw the blood, too, and stared at Oriana. Her face first looked awed, then concerned, and then, finally, deadly, etched with knowing and resolve.

She looked up at the lawman.

“Thank you, sir,” she said quietly.

And she backed up, Oriana in her arms, and shut the door.

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