As a kid, Mira was trained to fight.

It wasn’t originally her idea; she’d only gotten the idea when her father let it slip one day that, when he was younger and stupid and far more impulsive than he was in his adulthood (which Mira mostly doubted considering how poorly he’d been at restraining his impulse around liquor bottles until more recently), that he used to train in some form of martial arts. It didn’t have a name, didn’t have a style, didn’t even have an “official” manner of passing down skills from one person to the next. Benji just simply referred to it as “street smarts.”

Despite her doubts or, perhaps, because of them, the knowledge fascinated her.

And, every day, Mira would ask if he could teach her. Every day Benji denied her.

When you need it, he told her one day, then I’ll teach you.

At the time, it was enough of an answer for her. She didn’t want to push a boundary and risk it not happening, so she stopped asking.

Then, a few years later, when she got into Grade Six and was relentlessly bullied for a myriad of things beyond her control—her father’s liquor problem, her weaker bones—and within it—her loud mouth, her stubborn defiance—her father finally caved.

Benji taught her hooks, kicks, pressure points to force a hand open. Where to punch or kick to knock someone out. Where to strike to incapacitate her enemies to give her space to run.

And Mira, eleven years old and eager to learn, caught on with frightening proficiency.

She’d always been a quick study, quick enough to learn the basics and improvise what she could to make it her own. She’d done it when she learned the ins and outs of the bakery. Done it again when Magic had taught her to look for the hang of coats, the way people looked when they were nervous and could be easily drawn into a conversation to soothe those nerves.

Learning things was easy.

Committing them to memory, building upon them and growing the craft, was harder, but the pay-off was wonderful.

Mira didn’t know when she would need to remember the way a coat fell off a woman’s shoulder or the way a man looked when he was desperate to flee.

But she’d always known she would need her fists, so she brushed up on those skills whenever possible.

Now, with fingers digging into her muscles, Mira did the one thing she could’ve thought to do. She fought. Hard.

Her attackers, invisible in the shadows cast by the lanterns, had the advantage of taking her by surprise. They’d lost that head start when they forced her to her feet. Mira allowed the stranger to shove her forward before lifting up a leg to strike between those of her attacker. A groan sounded from behind her, deep and halfway to a growl when the hold on his shoulders loosened. Mira jabbed an elbow back; it found its home in the stranger’s chest, the quick snap of the connection all she needed to force distance between them.

Well, as much distance as she could considering the tiny space between the bed and the wall closest to the window.

The stranger, half on the bed and half off it, barred her path with a leg before snagging her by the shirt. Mira moved for a punch but her target wrapped a large, strong hand around her wrist, deflecting her arm each time she struggled for freedom. “Don’t think so,” snarled the man. “We’ve gone through the wringer to get you.”

Something about his tone sounded familiar. Like she’d heard him from somewhere.

From beyond the wall partition was the sound of two bodies thrashing, the clatter and angry stomps of shoes against the wood paneling. A whisper was coming from somewhere, a low, sweet sounding cadence that sounded nothing like her brother.

Which meant that the stomping and the muffled noise of struggle wasn’t coming from the owner of the voice.

It was coming from Magic.

No, they couldn’t do that. Shouldn’t.

Not like the criminals cared much about what would happen if they did, though, and Mira’s nerves buzzed with the urge to act. Run. Jump over the man’s leg and scramble to get her brother. Doing that, though, would give this stranger far more reasons to knock her around.

The man lowered her arm without a struggle. Mira forced herself calm, trying to tune herself to her own positioning in comparison to her attacker. Size him up in comparison to her. What she could settle for at the moment wasn’t a reliance on brute force—which she would’ve otherwise settled for if she were in a more forgiving area. She needed the street smarts. Strategy.

“Fuck off,” Mira spat.

“It’s not becoming of a lady to be so brash.”

“Like it’s so chivalrous to abduct a woman at night.”

The candles in the lanterns flickered, revealing parts of the man’s face, casting the other part in shadow. But what she could see—a pale, murky blue eye, stubble on his chin that crept up to just beneath his ear, what looked like a burn scar slicing through his cheek—Mira could have sworn she’d seen him before.

And when he smiled, the cold, toothy grin of a predator, it sent a shiver down her spine.

“You’ve grown bold, street rat,” said the man. She didn’t like the tone with which he said it, though, a condescending, patronizing way that made Mira see red. “And it seems the vermin has rubbed off on you. But your fight ends here. And your white-eyed knight isn’t around anymore to save you.”

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White-eyed knight.

Spiros.

He was the same man who cornered her and Spiros in the alley. The one who held the two of them at gunpoint. The one she left Spiros to face on his own after he urged her to flee.

The Cardinal who demanded the two of them hand over their lives. And Mensch must have read it on her face because he laughed, loud, brash, enough to drown out the struggle from beyond the partition. “What?” he sneered. “You thought Jax would let dogs like the two of you out of his sight?”

“My brother hasn’t done anything,” Mira said quickly, feigning a calm and confidence she certainly didn’t feel in the moment, but if she was going to get anywhere with Mensch, she may as well make him feel like he’d won before she made any permanent, long-lasting damage. Not only was it easier to strike an unsuspecting target, but it was far more entertaining that way for her. Mira couldn’t lie to herself; she loved that part of a fight.

Mensch slid up off the bed now, standing in front of her. His shoulder was dangerously close to one of the hanging lanterns and, quickly, Mira’s eyes caught the way the chain jangled a little from the pressure the Cardinal was applying against the wall. “And, up until now, doing nothing was the worst he could’ve done. Don’t worry. They’ll have a mighty fine time figuring out your uses.”

She recalled the innkeeper’s arms. The track marks, puncture wounds. The frailty in her figure that looked out of place, even for a woman her age.

There was no way in hell Mira was going to spend the rest of her life as a lab rat.

Rolling her bound wrist around, brushing her skin against the part of Mensch’s hand, she searched for the part where his fingers met his thumb, the weakest part of the grip.

The space, she remembered her father saying, is where you want to tug at, but not towards you. Up. And then, when they least expect it—he’d popped his first towards Mira with enough space between them not to strike, but enough to make her flinch—knock ‘em out.

Mira took a steadying breath. In the time it took for her to exhale in a long, even stream of breath, she popped her wrists up, shattering the hold Mensch had on her wrist and, without warning, jabbed him in the nose. Her knuckles made a satisfying crack as bone collided against bone. The Cardinal staggered back, knocking the side of his head into the iron lantern mounted on the wall.

The chain shuddered and jangled against the wall, clinking dangerously.

There was no time to wait, to give him a chance to strike back.

Mira aimed a shot at his groin; it was a little high and sent him backwards into one of the dresser drawers but enough to cause the wall to shake. Something crashed and shattered as Mensch fell to the ground, but Mira couldn’t see well enough to figure out what broke. And she didn’t quite care to know what it was at the moment.

There was one thing she needed her attention on.

And as she crossed to the other side of the partition to the woman holding her brother hostage, Mira pulled her arm back and cracked the Cardinal in the face. She’d specifically avoided the temple if only to shock the woman into releasing Magic, who she’d been keeping in a headlock standing at the foot of the bed.

Her brother sought the mattress for a landing pad while the Cardinal staggered back. Unlike Mensch, she came prepared for this particular fight because after the briefest moment of silence, the scrape of metal dragged from a holster filled the little room. Mira didn’t see her brother roll off the bed, but he landed on the ground with a thump as the woman fired. Mira pressed herself against the wall as the bullet wooshed past her, nailing itself in the wall.

Another shot fired, closer this time and Mira had the good sense to duck, or at the very least crouch into the shadows to better hide herself, settling for one of the dressers against the separating wall, which was warm against the parts of her skin untouched by the fabrics of her clothes. Her nerves buzzed and her hands trembled.

Off to the side of the wall partition, Mensch started screaming, but the woman didn’t seem concerned as if this was just another average Tuesday. “Jax wanted you alive,” she crooned, “but he never said you couldn’t be roughed up a little.”

Mira groped around the floor hoping to find something of use to get rid of the gun. That was the biggest issue; a firearm could do so much more damage than anything else. Slowly, her fingers found a vase, a full one holding a few flowers—which ones she couldn’t be bothered to remember, only that they smelled nice. Careful not to make noise as the woman shifted her weight, the wood crackling beneath every motion, Mira displaced the flowers, leaned forward, and hurled it at the woman illuminated in harsh firelight from the right.

This time, her aim landed true; the Cardinal curled herself inwards, arms drawn in to protect herself or catch the flying porcelain. The motion sent the gun flying off to the side and, catching the woman unawares, Mira got to her feet, alongside the scattering feet of another.

With a few quick steps, the distance between her and the Cardinal closed and she wound a punch to the woman’s face. When the woman staggered back, parts of her face caught the lantern light, harsh yellow and orange to reveal one pale eye, not too dissimilar from Mira’s own. Her heart stopped, skipping a beat.

One second too long.

The woman, with a wrathful howl and a running start, lunged. Mira couldn’t count the spaces in time before she was pinned to the mattress edge, the lower half of her body sprawled out. She couldn’t even risk the kick, less she lose her balance or put herself more at a disadvantage than she already was.

“I’m going to enjoy watching the Alchemists take you out of those cages,” snarled the Cardinal. At that moment, Mira thought the Cardinals were less birds and more wolves. Dangerous predators. Not simple songbirds carrying messages. “And I’m going to enjoy watching them rid this earth of you.”

Mira struggled to wrench free but the woman’s weight on her body was oppressive. She was strong. Trained. Of course she was. She’d been trained her whole life to hunt down people who could control the stars at their fingertips. What use would she be to Jax or the others as a whole if she couldn’t hold her own in battle?

“They’re going to tear you apart,” she went on, “until they can cleanse the stardust in those veins of yours.”

Now it was Mira’s turn to smile, just enough to hide her gritted teeth. “I would love to see them try.”

The woman opened her mouth to say something else when something hot and wet splattered across Mira’s face, followed by the sharp ringing of metal, jolting her out of the fight. It was like being sprayed with water from a hose except the parts of it that went into her mouth were warm and thick. Metallic. Blood, she realized.

The Cardinal rolled over to the side, landing in a heap on the ground. And in front of Mira, at the foot of the bed, was her brother, a candlestick gripped in his hands as if it were a bat or a hammer. Mira could see his face now, illuminated in flames, the shock on his face, the fear in his eyes as he looked between her and the Cardinal—well, the corpse—on the floor. He could barely bring himself to meet her eyes when he said, “You okay?”

“Are you?” she asked.

Magic only shrugged, his skin pale, arms shaking. He stepped backwards until he stopped at one of the dressers, looked off to the side and looked like he was going to be sick. Mira couldn’t blame him. Her brother had gotten into his fair share of fights before (so had she) all of them with some kind of knife or shard of glass at his disposal. She’d even helped him in some of those fights, but the brawls they got into never ended with more than cuts and minor puncture wounds or broken bones.

They’d definitely never ended with murder.

And Mira was certain that killing a Cardinal—or two, seeing as Mensch’s screams had paused—was not something that would put them in Jax’s good graces.

“That’s good enough,” she said, shakily pushing to her feet. “We have to get going, it isn’t—”

“Mira …” murmured her brother, his eyes somehow brighter than they were a few minutes ago. His breaths were coming out like gasps, attention focused beyond the wall partition. “It’s …”

Mira cautiously stepped over the corpse at the side of the bed, stood beside her brother and froze. Before she had the chance to act, to register the fact that tiny, hungry flames were crawling up the walls, towards the pipes that carried oil for the heat, she had just enough time to realize that they were trapped.

And before she could even attempt to tug her brother one way or another, the metal exploded and engulfed the other half of the room in wild, angry flames.