“I didn’t think we’d meet again so soon.” There was the slightest hint of amusement to his words.
Linn bristled. He was insulting her, even before he began whatever cruel methods of interrogation he had planned.
Keep silent,she thought, eyeing him warily.Find out why he’s here.
But she couldn’t stop herself from quipping back, “You would think I gave a strong hint, after I threw myself from that tower to get away from you.”
“And, now, here you are. It seems they’ve clipped your wings, little bird.”
Her breath caught.Little bird. A wingless bird.
She kept her face as placid as his, but his words had set off a drumroll of a heartbeat inside her chest. It was the same thought he’d triggered in her that night atop the Salskoff watchtower, before she’d jumped.
He knows,she remembered in a sudden, wild bout of panic. The yaeger was the only person who had seen her in close proximity that night at the Palace. The only person who knew of her alliance with Ana.
What do you want?Linn thought again. His eyes bore into hers, and she had the strangest feeling that he could see into her past, her very soul.
“I’m surprised you haven’t tried to break out yet,” he said instead. “The guards reported you as unruly and combative in the first few days—and now, docile, submissive, andweak.” He paused, as though waiting for her to speak.
Linn kept her lips sealed. She could feel his eyes roaming over her, taking in the slight lean to her stance, favoring the ankle that wasn’t twisted, and the way her shoulders hunched and her head bowed. She must look pitiful, her hair disheveled, her clothes torn, covered in dirt and grime and excrement from the past two weeks.
Good,she thought, dipping her head even more.Let him think that.
The yaeger continued, “That sounds nothing like the warrior I met in Salskoff. Which means…” He stopped pacing suddenly and turned to her, his eyes pinning her like two daggers. “You’re planning something.”
Linn fought to keep her expression blank, but high-pitched bells pealed in her head with increasing desperation.Say something,she thought, and at the same time:Keep silent.
“Help me,” she said instead, and the break in her voice was half-real. It was against Kemeiran honor to lie and to beg, but years of forced servitude had taught Linn that to survive was equally important. And it didn’t matter how others perceived her, so long assheknew that at her heart, she was still as strong and as proud as the young Kemeiran windsailer who had stood at the edge of cliffs and flown.
But am I?a small voice whispered inside her.
“Look at me.”
She could sense that he’d stopped pacing, and when she finally raised her eyes to meet his, he stood outlined against the brightness of the only window in the room, his face swathed in shadow.
His voice was a low breath. “I need your help, too.”
His eyes were the mesmerizing, inscrutable blue of glaciers in the north of Cyrilia, the ones she’d seen from between the cracks of the hull of her trader’s ship. And Linn felt a cold sensation in her chest as well, as though the ice of his gaze were creeping up the fissures of her heart and twisting its grip around her, seeing exactly what she was thinking and who she was.
She looked away. “I do not know what you mean.”
“You’re not a very good liar.”
She hated the way he watched her—as though she were clear as glass, and he could break her with just a tap.
Be brave,she thought, but without her winds at her back, she could not hear the voice that had guided her through her darkest moments.
The yaeger’s expression flickered like the tip of a snake’s tongue: a shift so subtle that it raised Linn’s guard. “I was a soldier in the new Empress’s army,” he said quietly. “For the past moon, I rode with her throughout the Empire, following her as she established her reign.
“She’smurderingpeople, Kemeiran. That may not mean much to you, but I came to Cyrilia as a child and a part of me is bound to this empire, no matter what. And I cannot stand by watching as the new Empress burns down this world.” His words crackled in the air, lightning before a storm. “I resisted, and she had me sent here. I am as much a prisoner as you are. Stripped of my honor and my ranking.” His hand flicked slightly by his side, almost as though he were brushing the ghost of a cape that was no longer there.
“You say you are a prisoner, yet I do not see you in chains and a locked cell,” Linn said. “I do not know what you want with me, but if it is to beat your anger into me, then go ahead.” She bowed her head, quelling the tremor that threatened to start inside her when she thought of the whip and the slashes of pain that seared like fire across her back.
A few seconds passed in utter stillness. And then she heard theschickof his dagger. Linn closed her eyes, burrowing herself into the darkness and spinning a cocoon of her own flesh around her consciousness. She would do this back in the days when the traffickers had beat her, because that was the only way she made life bearable: by telling herself that flesh wounds healed, and that it was the strength of her heart and spirit that she needed to protect.
But the touch of his thumb, warm and coarse on her chin, jerked her back out. Her eyes sprang open. Even in the silence, he had closed the gap between them without so much as a stir in the air.
Who was this man? This silent warrior who stood before her, inscrutable and cold as ice, fierce as fire?
