And she didn’t make a sound.
“You are so beautiful,” he whispered into her hair. “So perfect.” He planted kisses down her body while his chest rose and fell against hers, damp with sweat.
Jorrin’s hands were gentle, tracing lazy shapes across her spine, smoothing down her sides. She let them. He curled his arms around her, pulling her close, as though she might slip through him otherwise. His fingers threaded into her hair.
She let him hold her. Let him speak.
Let him love her like she hadn’t buried men with her hands.
By the moon’s late hours she slipped to the kitchen and found a butcher’s knife sunk into half a wheel of salted cheese. Ilys helped herself to both. She tore bread from the crusted edge of a morning loaf, wedged a bruised pear into the crook of her elbow, and stole a pat of honey-wrapped butter. Past the painted corridors, down the half-forgotten stairwell where the plaster peeled like sunburned skin, she found the rear cloister doors stillcracked for the washmaids to hang linens. She stepped through them quietly, the stone flagging slick beneath her boots.
Outside, the garden waited. Winter had quieted it. The hedges were skeletal, their spines bent in on themselves. Frost clung to the brittle leaves. Grass folded low to the earth. A false spring sun hung in a dull sky, warming the stone walls.
She picked her way past the broken path, boots sinking into the thawing dirt. The altar peeked beneath the ash tree, hunched and overgrown, its surface slick with lichen. She sat cross-legged on it, dropped the food beside her, and bit into the pear. Juice ran down her wrist. She didn’t bother to wipe it.
The old ache in her ribs hummed beneath the surface, a ghost of the boots and fists and rage. She ignored it.
A sparrow hopped near, beady eyes fixed on her crust of bread.
“Greedy creature,” she said to it dryly, tossing a corner its way.
It dove. She watched it tear the crust.
Only when the sun had dipped lower, painting the dead hedgerows in a rusted sort of gold, did she stir. She stood gingerly, her knees protesting the cold, the bruises. She dusted her hands and turned toward the path home.
A shape darted from the brush—something small, silent, low to the ground.
A rabbit.
It paused near the altar, nose twitching, ears flicking. Soft gray-brown fur caught the light, the left hind leg tipped in white just like the hare from that winter morning when she was nine and hadn’t yet killed a man. The one she’d pinned with a trembling hand while Grim’s voice droned instructions she barely heard.
It sniffed the air.
The sparrow’s crust lay torn near her footprint. The rabbit edged closer and began to nibble.
She watched it long and hard.
The light had shifted. Everything looked a little unreal, caught between seasons, caught between past and present. The rabbit didn’t startle, didn’t run. It simply ate, soft jaws moving, body still.
Her throat tightened.
“I’m sorry,” she offered quietly.
The rabbit’s ears twitched. It didn’t lift its head.
She lowered herself back onto the altar stone, resting her weight on her heels.
“I am what I was made to be,” she defended.
The rabbit finished its crust. It gave no judgment. It simply turned and disappeared into the dry grass, vanishing the way small things do. without sound nor fuss.
Ilys stared after it a while longer until the sun set overhead.
Then she rose again, slower this time.
And walked toward the garden gate, where a polished carriage waited like a closed hand.
Chapter 9
