Lan glanced back.
The Hin courtdog stood rooted to the floor, watching her. Their eyes met, and she felt something stretch taut betweenthem. His brows furrowed, his lips parted, the space between them widening with what he might have said.
Then he turned away.
Lan kept silent as she turned back. She couldn’t make a scene, not in front of these Elantians, who might decide she’d ruined their night of celebration and have her killed for treason against the Elantian Empire. She let the Madam take her all the way up the flight of stairs to the second-floor landing.
Here it was quiet, empty.
She waited until they had turned down a corridor and then wrenched herself from the Madam’s grip. The items on her tray clattered, sliding unsteadily.
Lan lifted her gaze to the Madam’s and drew a breath. “I’m not going.”
The Madam was no longer smiling. “Excuse me?” Her voice was the softest Lan had ever heard it.
“I said I’m not—”
CRACK.
The world blanked for a moment in a searing streak of heat across her cheek. Lan reeled, just managing to keep her balance. Her face tingled; she felt a trickle of warmth dribble down her chin, tasted copper in her mouth.
The Madam’s fingers wrapped around her chin so tightly that it hurt. “You think you have a gods-damnedchoice?” she hissed, the cloying scent of her rose perfume choking down Lan’s throat. “The Angel bought your contract for the night. You belong to him now. If he says kneel, you kneel. If he says crawl, you crawl.Got it?”
Lan was vaguely aware of the Madam sliding open a pair of wooden doors and pushing her into a room. Of the Madam whipping out a silken handkerchief and wiping the blood from Lan’s chin.
“There,” she murmured, straightening and trailing a cold finger down Lan’s chin. “Can’t have you looking like a broken doll. Now you’ll wait here while I go fetch him. And if you try anything…well.” A cold smirk. “I shall leave it to the Angel to decide what to do.”
She plucked the tray from Lan’s hands, set it on the small tea table by the wall, and exited. The wooden doors slid shut with a finalthump,trapping Lan inside.
In her many cycles at the Teahouse, she had never entered the rooms upstairs except to clean. She remembered every detail of the smooth sandalwood floors, the sleek lacquered panels on the walls featuring paintings of blossom trees. The pink petals sprinkled like rain over a pair of lovers crouched by a lake.
She’d hated scrubbing those panels, digging into the grooves and etchings of every one of those accursed petals.
A glint of light near the doors caught her eye. It came from the tray the Madam had deposited on the little round tea table. The tea had gone cold now, but Lan was looking at something else.
At the edge of the tray, near the plate of scones, was the glass butterknife she’d nearly cut her hand on. The one Ying had picked up and put back on the tray. It winked at her from beneath the low-burning alchemical lantern.
Footsteps sounded down the hall: slow and heavy, with thethud-thud-thudthat was the trademark of the thick leather boots of Elantian make.
She’d crossed the room before she could think. The knife was cold and sleek in her hand, made to cut only butter and other soft things, but it didn’t matter. Better than nothing.
Her gaze darted around the room, assessing every nook and cranny—the scarlet loveseat, the altar table, the locked glass windows overlooking a black, sightless night.
In the end, she positioned herself in the center of the room, knife hidden in her sleeve. Whatever came, she would face it head-on.
The footsteps paused right outside the wooden doors, and then they slid open. The soldier stood grinning at her. He’d shed his bulky metal armor from earlier in the day and now wore a silver doublet hemmed with fine blue stitching that culminated in the emblem of crown and wings on his front and back.
The angels in the Elantian churches and places of worship were all depicted as pure, as kind; according to the stories peddled by Elantian preachers, the angels were meant to have saved the poor and vanquished evil. Lan tried to imagine the distant Elantian Empire, across the Sea of Heavenly Radiance. If the angels truly existed, Lan thought, would they be horrified that a man who wore one of their faces could distort it so much, turn their beauty into something so cruel and so corrupt? Or had their beauty been born of cruelty in the first place?
“Well, my love,” Donnaron said, the Elantian language rolling oleaginously from his tongue, “I did promise you I’d find you again, didn’t I?”
Lan’s heart was a bird trapped in a cage. Sweat slicked the handle of her butter knife.
“Donnaron J. Tarley,” the soldier continued with a mock bow.“GeneralDonnaron J. Tarley. I must say, I do appreciate the hunt you took me on. I don’t like women who make it too easy.”
“Bet you don’t like it when women say no either.” The words somehow slipped out of Lan’s mouth, smooth and sharp, if not accented. This was it, this was one of the moments that would come to define her life, and she would no longer beg or cower.
The Angel barked a delighted laugh. “Oh, but that makes it so much moreexciting,”he said, and lunged for her.
