Yang confronted her without delay.

He marched to her chamber and threw the door open. “Yang –” she started, but he’d already leaned over into her wash basin and began to vomit.

She stared at him in horror, clad in only a purple nightgown, her beautiful black hair hanging loosely down her back. “You know,” she said, and she sounded terrified.

Yang cast her a dark look. She handed him a glass of water from an uncollected supper tray. “Drink,” she told him, and as much as he wanted to doubt her, he couldn’t. He downed it, and despite the lukewarm temperature, it was comforting to him.

“What,” he said. “Is going on here?”

Maya sat down on her pink velvet boudoir chair, and buried her face into her hands. “I don’t know,” she cried. “I honestly don’t know.”

A string around Yang’s heart tugged. He walked over, his footfalls silent on the carpeted floor, and crouched down. “Maya, please.”

“He’s a monster,” she said, lifting her face. His eyes met hers; her cheeks were tinged pink and her eyes glistened in the firelight. “I don’t know what he is except that.”

Yang struggled to remain level-headed, he felt sick. This country made him sick. “How long has this been going on?” his voice sounded strangled to both their ears. He wanted to rage, and shout, but he kept his voice down and his thoughts rational.

“It’s always been,” Maya said, her ringing with a faint hoarse quality. “My father taught him what he knows. They…they did that to my mother. Carved me from her dead body, surprised I’d survived after she’d been dying for so long.”

Yang swallowed. What was this place? His thoughts flickered back to Carlisle – and for a moment, however short, he wondered if he made the right decision leaving Carlisle…Carlisle didn’t cut people up. Yang hesitated, up until a few minutes ago, he didn’t think Isaiah did either. “Are you truly your father’s daughter?”

White moonlight streamed in through the window beside her dressing table, illuming her face. Maya turned away in shame. “Yes,” she said, her voice cracking. “I don’t know how I came to be. I…suspect, as we both do, and the suspicion is not pleasant.”

Yang supposed it were not.

“Do you know for certain?” he pressed. His hand found hers. Their fingers intertwined.

“Yes,” she said, once more. “Do not insist. I don’t wish to revisit it. Please.”

He frowned. They sat in silence for a long moment, listening to the fire blaze in the hearth opposite them. It was the first time he had been present in her bedroom – always waiting outside in her receiving room. The room was decorated in lovely floral shades of pink, with a canopy bed on the wall opposite the door with hundreds of pillows gracing its surface.

“What do they do?” he asked, the silence too heavy on his shoulders.

“They’re scientists,” she said. “Do not ask me to explain, for I cannot. They have tried to engage me in the art but I – I have no stomach for it. They called me weak. They belong to a society of surgeons. The Colingtons’ are secret benefactors. They…study humans.”

Yang’s throat was dry. “By cutting them open?”

Maya nodded. “At first it was just the dead. They all do it. London is aware on some scale – of the grave robbers. On the surface, they’re disgusted. Beneath, it’s a pretty penny and it does further medicine. They let it go.”

Maya’s eyes brimmed with tears. One slipped down her cheek and a sense of alarm jolted through Yang. “Maya, what’s wrong?”

“They – they eat them, Yang!” she exclaimed1. Yang visibly gulped. Maya’s hands released his and twisted in the folds of her gown. “Not my brother,” she said. “But others in London. They think it may save them from disease – to eat flesh.”

Yang felt sick to his stomach. “Your brother…he cuts people, studies them and sells them as medicine?”

Maya looked everywhere but his eyes.

“Don’t – don’t people know about this? That he does this? He’s not a surgeon – he’s an earl! I can’t imagine that –”

“They don’t know,” Maya interrupted. “Well…”

“Well?”

“There’s something I haven’t told you. Something I’ve kept from you,” the pink tinge to her cheeks intensified into a deep red and her eyes watered once more.

Yang ignored the twist of betrayal in his stomach. “What is it?”

Maya bit her lip. “Someone does know,” she said slowly, enunciating each syllable. Candlelight flickered. “They’ve threatened to expose him several times. They work for a scandal sheet.”

A coldness settled over Yang. His hand grasped for hers and their fingers locked once more. “What happens if London finds out?” he asked.

“I don’t know – it’s London! They’re awfully hypocritical about matters like these. If you do it in the dark, no one pays you any mind, but one ray of sunlight and you’re ruined,” Maya said. “But…back on topic. They promised they wouldn’t publicise the story…” she looked away, “if I brought them better material every week.”

“You sell them stories?”

“Secrets,” Maya said. Inhaled. Exhaled. Met his eyes. “Yang, you were a secret. I sold your secret and I’m so ashamed of it! I made it out so it looked as though I were altruistic and I cared – and Yang, I do, so much and I did then too and I thought it was for the best but it doesn’t change that I sold you to them and I’m so unbelievably sorry. I am so…horrified with myself, I couldn’t bear to tell you – I didn’t know where you’d go if you were angry with me and I didn’t think I could face how you would look at me once you knew what I did!”

Yang’s hands tightened in hers – he willed himself away from the ache somewhere in his chest. “It doesn’t change what you did,” he said firmly after a moment. “You got me away from him. You could have sold them another story but you didn’t.”

Maya bit her lip. “I care for you, Yang,” she admitted, her voice above a whisper.

Silence. Long, heavy, suffocating silence. “And I you,” he said.

“Sometimes,” Maya said. “Sometimes I wonder if you boarding that ship to China wasn’t such an awful thing. Sometimes I wonder if maybe I should have left with you.”

Yang looked up, his eyes searching eyes, their dark eyes meeting. “Why don’t we?” he said, breathlessly.

“Don’t we what?” she said, her breath hitching, her question rhetorical.

“Why don’t take a ship to China? Even if we can’t go straight to China – we might be able to find a home in India – your home.”

Her eyes searched his for honesty. “Are you sincere?” she asked, her voice begging.

“I am,” he said. He pulled her to him, and she collapsed into his arms.

“I’m worried,” she confessed into his shoulder.

“Why?” he said, watching the fire wither.

“I’m happy.”

He glanced down at her. “Is that truly a reason to be anxious?”

Maya waited a moment before responding. “Yes. If things are too good to be true, they probably aren’t,” she said, leaning into his embrace. Yang’s mind flashed back to the armless, fingerless man grasping hopelessly at the bars – where things truly good? The words weighed on his tongue and slipped back down his throat. He closed his eyes, tightened his embrace and they held each other before the dying embers of fire, until the dawn kissed the sky and a new day was born.

1.  Medicinal Cannibalism or ‘corpse medicine’ was a common European practise until the 18th century when it began to die down. This train of thought, while less prominent, is still practised today in many countries, under many different belief systems.