Owed in Blood
A debt written in ink. A price paid in breath. And a girl who was never supposed to know how to break it. In a damp canal city where every bargain....
A debt written in ink. A price paid in breath. And a girl who was never supposed to know how to break it. In a damp canal city where every bargain is sealed with a contract that burns itself into your skin, Mara Venn has spent her life staying invisible — until House Brass comes to collect her younger brother's debt in breath itself. When the bailiffs' masked collectors show up at her door, Mara does the one thing she was never licensed to do: she reads the contract. Buried knowledge she was taught in secret years ago tells her every debt hides three parts — the principal, the witness, and the consequence — and someone is always profiting from what was never written down. Now Mara is a fugitive from the most powerful creditor house in the city, racing to save her brother's life before his last breath is collected. But the deeper she digs into House Brass's ledgers, the more she uncovers a conspiracy that reaches far beyond one boy's debt. Will Mara unravel the truth in time — or will the city's oldest law finally collect what it's owed?