The notion of taking those freckles made her think of Nadir and how he'd counted them the night of the banquet as he hugged her from behind.
Everything they pointed out 'wrong' with her was marks of a proud past that once was— a Princess training to be a Queen. To be as fierce and fearless as her sister. To live without restraint and laugh until her face hurt.
To love herself as she was and not what anyone else wanted her to be.
Memories of such a time were one of the things that helped her close her tired and swollen eyes at night.
Her mark, the surgeons had determined unable to remove. Her stomach had knotted the entire time they'd poured over it. Finally, it was decided to leave such a mark untouched—that the Prince would want a reminder of how he'd conquered their world while he was taking her from behind.
She'd hardly been able to keep her composure during that conversation. But she promised herself she would set the entire camp aflame, take herself down with it, before such a thing happened to her.
The air was thick with the stench of manure from an animal she'd only ever seen at the villages. Pigs, she remembered. She'd never smelled such a stench, and the heaviness of it burned her nostrils at night as the place they were keeping her in was just beside the stalls. It was a small room, cold wooden slats on the ground that did not always meet at the seams. Every morning, a Porter came to fetch her, and every morning she did not move, forcing them to pick her up as dead weight and take her to her next inspection.
Every night, for a few moments when she was thrown back into the cell, she would try to remove herself from her consciousness, and every day she was able to connect a fraction of a second longer to her eagle again.
This was what she looked forward to at the end of every day. And it was this connection that kept her head on straight.
Endure.
Her shoulders ached that morning with the burns, the wool on the wrapped wounds felt so uncomfortable she could hardly move her arms.
—Water was thrown on her face.
This was not the regular wake-up call. She hadn't even been asleep. She’d just been staring at the ceiling, counting the slats in the roof and her breaths.
She wondered what they would want to take from her now.
She was picked up again, not given a towel to dry herself with but rather taken wet into the bathing room where the three women were waiting on her. Her burns were nearly healed on her shoulders, the skin pink and discolored from the rest of her. She was placed in the tub as usual, and the women began to scrub. She listened to them talk, apparent by now that they thought she was dumb or perhaps couldn't speak.
Nyssa sat limp and heavy, staring at the filthy water. Her stomach grumbled as she wavered on her seat. What she would have given for actual food and water and not just scraps. She'd tried not to pay much attention to her changing body, knowing if she did, she would send herself into more of a spiral than she already was.
The women were talking about the ocean, how that day seemed more active than others. They spoke of a great storm on the horizon, and Nyssa immediately wondered if she would be put in better quarters. She was sure if she was left in the room they had her in that she might drown.
She decided to bring it up to the Noble.
There was a stark difference in the way the wife treated her and the Noble. She'd noted the soft looks the Noble gave her in comparison to Shae.
The wife seemed wary of her. The Noble seemed to think her stupid. So stupid that he didn't guard what he talked about when she was around.
He had shown her off to the captains and generals of their army. Shae had gone out to market with her maidens to oversee the goods being produced and quality—whether they were in line with what they were accustomed to across the seas.
More and more ships seemed to be sailing in. Nyssa could see the ocean from the slats in the walls, and she'd counted two arriving every other day. Though sometimes, they did not bring their rowboats to this settlement. Sometimes they would go further east.
She didn't have to wonder why the boats were heading east, though. Because the Noble liked to talk.
The day he showed her off in their meeting, he'd had her stand on the table and strung her arms up in chains above her head to the board at the top of the tent that kept it from collapsing.
Nyssa had kicked one of them when he tried to touch her, and she'd received one lashing in response. For the remainder of that meeting, she stayed steady. Keeping herself firmly planted and staring at their flag on the wall while they talked.
They had talked about the settlement and castle they were building for their King on the western shore. Savigndor, they were calling it. They were excavating parts of the cliffs for such a place. The captains and generals spoke of their legions across the seas and when they expected them to arrive. It seemed their plan was to use the entire peninsula coast as their base. The Noble's settlement would be the home ground and their livestock feed. One of the generals told Bechmen he would need to quadruple his farms to feed the number of soldiers coming in within the next two cycles.
Things were moving a lot faster than Nyssa had anticipated.
There were two other estates lining the coast east between this one and Savigndor. Each place they were starting for specific goods. One thing they hadn't been able to do well was grow fresh vegetables or foods. One man had been dispatched to try and trade with an Haerland settlement. But they didn't say what had come of it, and Nyssa's heart was left broken.
One captain brought up a fire they had seen further up the western coast a few weeks back. The mention of it made Nyssa's ears perk. She knew he meant Magnice.
But the Noble had said the information he'd been given was that it was an Haerlandian squabble that resulted in the destruction of one of their monarchies and that that was one less race for them to have to worry with.
