Father’s breath rattles in his chest, the sound thin and weak. I see his shoulders tighten beneath his worn coat, the way his hand trembles where it clutches my sleeve.
No.
Cold we can endure. Hunger we can endure. But the mines… the stories… if they are true... men go in and don’t come out.
Luceran doesn’t look at the rider. He doesn’t have to. The weight of his attention stays on us.
“It is an option,” he murmurs.
My mouth moves before my fear can stitch it shut.
“You will kill him,” I say. “If you send him there. He doesn’t last half a ride without coughing blood. You want him to swing a pickaxe for twelve hours a day underground?”
Luceran’s gaze flicks to Father’s chest, as if he can see the brittle lungs inside.
“Is that true?” he asks.
Father straightens. Pride is a stupid, stubborn thing. “It’s nothing,” he says. “A little winter cough. I can work.”
Luceran’s jaw tightens once more.
“If he dies in your mines,” I say, every word an effort, “how does that help you? You lose the man and the tithe.”
His eyes return to me. They are not kind. They are not cruel.
They are calculating.
“I am not in the business of mercy, Neve Devlin.”
“That isn’t what I’m asking for,” I snap back. “I’m offering you a solution.”
Father hisses my name again, horrified. But it’s too late now. The words are already forming clearly in my mind.
Luceran’s brows lift the barest fraction. “Are you?”
My hands are shaking, but I curl them into fists so he can’t see.
“I’ll go in his place.”
The hall seems to breathe in around us. Even the wind pauses at the windows.
Father chokes. “Neve, no…”
I plow on, before courage can abandon me. “You need workers? I’ll work. There must be something in this castle that needs doing. Books to be kept. Letters to be written. Accounts to balance. I can read, write, track every grain and coin that comes through your hands better than any dull-witted steward. Put me in the kitchens, the stables, the scullery, the mines. I don’t care. I’ll earn back what we owe.”
I force myself to hold his gaze. To let him see that I mean it.
“You don’t touch him,” I finish. “You don’t send him to the Aurevault. You don’t take the farm. You take me.”
Silence.
Frost creeps a little farther along the floor, tendrils weaving toward my boots. My toes go numb.
Luceran regards me with interest. His eyes darken.
“You offer yourself,” he says slowly, “as payment for your father’s debt?”
“Yes,” I say. My voice doesn’t shake. I’m absurdly proud of that. “For as long as it takes.”
