I keep my tone casual. Gentle. “Yesterday, you said that it would be better forbothof us if I listened. Which tells me you’re not here by choice.”
For a moment, I think she won’t answer.
Then, softly, she says, “My husband and son serve the tsar. But they serve him under threat.” She turns her head, just enough for me to see her profile. “If I disobey any orders… if I help anyone defy him… he said he will turn them into beasts.”
I freeze. He’ll turn them into carnoraxis if she dares step out of line. A bitter weight settles in my stomach.
“I’m sorry,” I say, and I mean it. “I didn’t realize—”
“No one does. No one realizes the extremes he’s taken to force others into obedience. That’s how he keeps control.”
I take in the tension in her shoulders, the faint tremble of her hands.
“How long have you been here?”
Her gaze is fixed on the fire. “Longer than I ever meant to be.”
“You were taken?”
“No,” she says. “Not taken. Trapped.”
She draws in a slow breath and exhales it just as quietly.
“I used to live in Bastos,” she adds, almost wistfully. “It was always warm there. The heat soaked into your bones, stayed with you. The food was better. The people laughed more. I miss it… Not just the freedom, but the heat. The cold here never leaves you.”
My eyes widen. “Bastos?”
She nods again. “My husband and I had a market stall in the old capital. Spices, mostly. That was before.”
“Before what?”
Her lips press together. “Before the tsar’s men came. They were in Bastos to have an audience with the queens. But some of them were making the rounds, growing their army. They took us, promising my husband and son ‘positions of value.’ But things changed when we got here, and I became the tsar’s servant, whether I wanted to or not.”
There’s bitterness in her voice now. Quiet, but real.
“Wait.” I shake my head. “If you’re from Bastos, why can’t you speak the common language?”
“We are forbidden.” She swallows hard. “The seer… She is a siren, and she used her magic to make our tongues forget. We can’t physically form the words.”
“But why?”
“Just another way of controlling us.”
I blink, my gaze dropping to the floor as I try to wrap my head around this. Was this so the people trapped here couldn’t get word out to their families outside of Dulcamar? “You were here when she arrived?”
“She came with him,” Staja says, glancing at the door before lowering her voice further. “When the Shadow Tsar took the throne from the old ruler, the seer was already at his side. They arrived in Dulcamar together.”
The words land oddly in my chest. My father… and a siren? It’s a pairing that shouldn’t exist. He never trusted sirens, so why bring one here? Why keep her close?
The thought turns over in my mind like a jagged stone. Could she be controlling him? Steering his war, his hunger for power, his… interest in me?
I can almost hear her voice from the chamber where we first met—low, certain, brimming with confidence.“We’ve been expecting you.”
A chill runs over my arms that has nothing to do with the cold.
“Do you think theprophecy is true?” I ask.
Staja exhales slowly. “Prophecies tend to hold truth, yes. But often, there is a chance for someone special to change them. But she believes it, and she’s convinced the tsar it’s true. She’s why he believes he’s destined to rule everything. Why he’s doing all this. The war. The blood. You.”
