The protective curtain I had drawn around myself was torn away, and sickening heat crawled over my skin. I smelled the sweat of their bodies. Pieces of bodies. I had gathered them all so nothing was left for the animals, then dropped to my knees thirty-three times to pray. My words spilled loose, bleeding from somewhere inside, thirty-three cries for mercy, thirty-three good-byes. And then the earth, soaked with their blood, swallowed them up, practiced, and they were gone. This was not the first time. It wouldn’t be the last.
“Lia?”
I looked at Rafe. Tall and strong like my brother. Confident like my brother. He had only four coming. How much more could I face losing?
“Yes,” I answered. “I buried them all.”
He reached out and pulled me to his side. I sat on the straw next to him. “We can do this,” he said. “We just have to buy time until my men get here.”
“How long before your soldiers come?” I asked.
“A few days. Maybe more. It depends how far south they have to ride in order to cross the river. But I know they’ll be here as soon as they can. They’re the best, Lia. The best of Dalbreck soldiers. Two of them speak the language fluently. They’ll find their way in.”
I wanted to say that getting in wasn’t the problem. We had found our way in. The problem was getting out again. But I held my tongue and nodded, trying to appear encouraged. If his plan didn’t work, mine would. I had killed a horse this morning. Maybe by tonight I would kill another beast.
“There might be another way,” I said. “They have weapons in the Sanctum. They’d never miss one. I might be able to slip a knife beneath my skirt.”
“No,” he said firmly. “It’s too dangerous. If they—”
“Rafe, their leader is responsible for killing my brother, his wife, and a whole company of men. It’s only a matter of time before he goes back for more. He has to be—”
“His soldiers killed them, Lia. What good would killing one man do? You can’t take on a whole army with a single knife, especially in our positions. Right now our only goal is to get out of here alive.”
We were at odds. In my head, I knew he was right, but a deeper, darker part of me still hungered for more than escape.
He grabbed my arm, demanding an answer. “Do you hear me? You can’t do anyone any good if you’re dead. Be patient. My soldiers will come and then we’ll get out of this together.”
Me, patient, four soldiers. The words together were lunacy. But I conceded, because even without the four, Rafe and I needed each other, and that was what mattered right now. We sat on the mattress of straw and made our plans, what we would tell them, what we wouldn’t, and the deceptions we would have to construct until help arrived. An alliance at last—the one our fathers had tried to procure all along. I told him everything I already knew of the Komizar, the Sanctum, and the halls they had dragged me through. Every detail could be important.
“Be careful. Watch your words,” I said. “Even your movements. He misses nothing. He’s sharp-eyed even when he appears otherwise.”
There were some things I held back. Rafe’s plans were metal and flesh, floor and fist, all things solid. Mine were things unseen, fever and chill, blood and justice, the things that crouched low in my gut.
In the middle of whispering our plans, he paused suddenly and reached out, his thumb gently tracing a line across the crest of my cheek. “I was afraid—” He swallowed and looked down, clearing his throat. His jaw twitched, and I thought I would break watching him. When he looked back at me, his eyes crackled with anger. “I know what burns in you, Lia. They’ll pay for this. All of it. I promise. One day they’ll pay.”
But I knew what he meant. That Kaden would pay.
We heard footsteps approaching and quickly moved apart. He looked at me, the deep blue ice of his eyes cutting through the shadows. “Lia, I know your feelings about me may have changed. I deceived you. I’m not the farmer I claimed to be, but I hope I can make you fall in love with me again, this time as a prince, one day at a time. We’ve had a terrible start—it doesn’t mean we can’t have a better ending.”
I stared at him, his gaze swallowing me whole, and I opened my mouth to speak, but every word still swam in my head. Fall in love with me again … this time as a prince.
The door banged open, and two guards came in. “You,” they said, pointing to me, and I barely had time to get to my feet before they dragged me away.
CHAPTER FIVE
“Down you go, girl.”
I was dunked into a tub of ice-cold water, my head held below the surface as forceful hands scrubbed my scalp. I came up sputtering for a breath, choking on soapy water. Apparently the Komizar had found my appearance disgusting and especially offensive to his delicate nose, and ordered a quick cleanup. I was hauled out of the tub and ordered to dry myself with a piece of cloth no bigger than a handkerchief. A young woman whom the others called Calantha supervised my humiliating bath. She threw something at me. “Put this on.”
I looked at the heap of cloth at my feet. It was a rough, shapeless sack that appeared more suited to stuffing with straw than a body. “I will not.”
“You will if you want to live.”
There was no hint of anger in her tone. Only fact. Her gaze was unnerving. She wore a patch over one eye. The black ribbon holding it in place contrasted with her strange, colorless dead white hair. The patch itself was startling, almost impossible to look away from. It was sewn with tiny polished beads to give the appearance of a bright blue eye staring straight ahead. Decorative tattooed lines swirled out from beneath the patch, making one side of her face a piece of artwork. I wondered why she drew attention to what others might see as a weakness.
“Now,” she said.
I tore my gaze from her unsettling stare and snatched the rough cloth from the floor, holding it up for a better view. “He wants me to wear this?”
“This isn’t Morrighan.”
“Nor am I a sack of potatoes.”
Her single eye narrowed, and she laughed. “You’d be far more valuable if you were.”
If the Komizar thought this would demean me, he was wrong. I was well beyond nursing any kind of pride now. I threw the cloth over my head. It was loose and difficult to keep on my shoulders, and I had to hold up the excess length to keep from tripping. The coarse fabric scratched my skin. Calantha threw a length of rope at me. “This might help keep things in place.”
“Lovely,” I said, returning her smirk, and proceeded to tuck and fold the loose fabric as best I could, then secure it with the rope around my waist.
My bare feet were freezing on the stone floor, but my boots had been taken away, and I didn’t expect to see them again. I tried to suppress a shiver and nodded to indicate I was ready.
“Be grateful, Princess,” she said, eerily tracing a finger over her sightless jeweled eye. “I’ve seen him do far worse to those who defy him.”
CHAPTER SIX
PAULINE
The last leg of the trip to Civica had been grueling. A driving rain had overtaken us near Derryvale, and we were forced to take shelter in an abandoned barn for three days, sharing our quarters with an owl and a feral cat. Between the two of them, there were at least no rodents. Every day that passed idle made my anxiety grow. Lia was surely in Venda by now if that was where Kaden was taking her. I tried not to dwell on the other possibility—that she was already dead.