The Heartless City Read Online Free Page B

he’d been hopelessly incapable of concealing his emotions. His eyes were a raw and mossy green, and his dirty blond hair was perpetually tousled and unkempt, as if it were a symptom of the unruliness within.
    But none of that mattered now; he had no one to impress. There were no teachers, medical boards, or employers in his future. The fear and mental anguish of the sick made it impossible to function in their presence, even if his father hadn’t refused to continue his tutelage upon learning what he’d done. Perhaps it was a blessing in disguise his mother was gone. Feeling what she’d feel if she saw him like this would be too much to bear.
    Elliot raised the flask to his lips, this time in an effort to dull his own internal pain, but before he could take a drink, it was snatched from between his fingers.
    “Started the party without me, I see.”
    Cambrian rounded the table and rested his hand against the back of a chair, placing the rim of the flask beneath his nose and taking a sniff.
    “Gin?” he exclaimed in mock horror, sliding down beside Elliot and placing his hat on the table. “Gin is not a gentlemen’s drink,” he scolded, taking a sip, but as soon as the liquor passed his lips, he coughed. “Good Lord, that’s vile.”
    He laughed and wiped his watering eyes, and Elliot forced a weak, reciprocal smile he hoped was convincing. Two weeks ago, he would have bought Cam’s spirited, carefree act, but now he could taste the cold, metallic bite of his anxiety, could feel the wary relief that flooded his heart in his own chest. Some people were better at concealing their feelings than others, and Elliot had learned Cam wasn’t good.
    He was one of the best.
    “I tell you, El.” He coughed again, screwing the cap back on. “Keep drinking swill like this, and you’ll end up in an opium den.”
    It was a joke; there were no longer opium dens in London. Perhaps the only positive effect of the quarantine was that it had cut off trade and severed access to the drug. Once a month, the Empire sent in supplies to sustain the city: coal, grains, wine, tea and other essential provisions. But other than that, no person or substance could cross the fortified border. The shipments were brought in by boat at a different hour and dock each time, with armed guards protecting the goods and preventing desperate Londoners from trying to board the ship.
    That was where Cam had been before he’d come to the music hall―overseeing and organizing the imports with his father. The Lord Mayor controlled what came in and how it was distributed, but while opium had been eradicated, the Hyde drug had not, which meant―unlike the narcotic―its ingredients were local. For a reason Elliot couldn’t fathom, people were apparently still making and taking the substance. According to speeches Cam’s father had given at meetings and in the papers, the persistent scourge was due to the sinful weak-mindedness of the poor. Elliot had believed this explanation in the past, but since his affliction, he hadn’t found the working class to be any more unsound or depraved than the rest.
    “If gin is beneath you,” he said to Cam, maintaining his smile as best he could and seizing the flask from his hand. “You don’t have to drink it.”
    “True,” Cam replied, leaning back and sliding a silver cigarette case from the pocket of his coat. “But what sort of friend would I be if I stood idly by and watched you indulge in such a filthy habit?” He grinned widely and placed a cigarette between his lips. His teeth were white and very likely the straightest in all of London, but Elliot wasn’t blinded by the brilliance of his smile. Beneath the smirk was a real concern for how much he’d been drinking.
    “You’re one to talk of filthy habits,” he said, raising an eyebrow and nodding toward the silver case.
    Cam sighed and struck a match against the side of his shoe. “Really, El,” he mumbled against the cigarette as he lit it.