Hasan snorted. “Voluntarily. That’s a good one.”
“Had me fooled,” Poppy said. “But no more.”
• • •
The next morning, Poppy sacrificed her breakfast again, and got in three more practice rounds before her daivyakhi sputtered out. She still hadn’t been able to fill the bucket with water.
Hasan sighed. “We’ll have to sacrifice again.”
“I don’t have anything else to sacrifice,” she said. “I already gave up breakfast.” As if to prove her point, her stomach grumbled.
“Cut off a lock of your hair. That might get us a couple more attempts. Or give a little bit of your blood. Blood always gets me a long way.” He offered her his blade.
“Are you mad?” Poppy cradled her long, shiny braid protectively. “I’m not hacking off my hair. Nor am I going to resort tobloodletting.”
“Thenyouthink of something else to sacrifice! You can’t fulfil your end of the bargain if you can’t even fill a single bucket of water. I don’t have much more time to teach you, and if you can’t even practice...” He ran a hand through his hair, eyes distant.
“I could make more sacrifices if I had access to more of my things,” she said, thinking back to her possessions at home. “I have a lot of money.”
“Unless it pains you to part with that money, then it doesn’t count as a sacrifice.” Hasan put his knife away, exasperated. “If a rich man gave ten crowns to the gods, but a widow with a single crown to her name sacrificed that lone coin, then the gods would favor the widow.”
“Okay, but I can’t start giving up things Ineed.”
Hasan rubbed his temples. “Miss Sutherland, I don’t think you know what it means to sacrifice something. Have you ever had to go without in your life? Before I kidnapped you, was thereanythingyou wanted that you didn’t get?”
Poppy balled her fingers into fists. How dare he pretend that he knew her? She had been separated from her home and family for seven years, consistently reminded of her deficiencies. She hadn’t been enough for the nobility, and now even in the eyes of criminals, she was falling short. She hadn’t forgotten Hasan’s lecture over the cutlery.
She tilted her chin up, refusing to let him see the depth of her frustration. “You have no right to reprimand me when you don’t even know the first thing about me.”
“I have every right.” He stepped closer, eyes flashing. “Youmade a deal withme. You promised me water for my people and an open door once you became vicereine. But now that it’s time to make sacrifices, you’ve gotten cold feet.”
“I didn’t realize the price for this would be my blood!”
“The cost of revolution is always blood.” He spread his arms. “Did you really think you wouldn’t have to give anything up to win? Or were you expecting me and my family to make all the sacrifices?”
What Hasan didn’t seem to understand?—and what Poppy would never confess?—was that she couldn’t make sacrifices because the few things she had were tainted by loss. She had been adopted into a rich family at the cost of losing her birth parents. She had gained an education but had lost her Virian roots and would forever be barred from Welkish culture. Poppy could claim neither flag. No matter how hard she tried, she’d always be an imposter in both camps. In the end, she was a nobody with nothing. A lump formed in her throat, but she swallowed hard. She would not cry in front of Hasan.
“What do I have to sacrifice?” she demanded. “You think just because my family has money and status, my life has been easy?”
“It certainly couldn’t have made lifehard.”
“But my lifewashard,” Poppy insisted. “You have no clue how challenging things were for me, because you insist on thinking of me as a pompous princess. When I asked if it was rude to eat with my hands, I wasn’t disparaging you. I spent years in Welkland literally having the habit beaten out of me.”
She held her hands up to his face, the faint scars visible in the full sun of the morning.
“They hurt you?” Hasan asked, his voice low. A shadow fell across his face, one that looked less like a man and more like the canine his moniker evoked.
Poppy shivered, pulling her hands back. “It’s in the past now,” she said. “But I have a hundred more scars, most of them invisible, which couldn’t have been prevented by all the money or status in the world.”
He pressed his lips together, visibly struggling to formulate a response. “Perhaps your life was not so idyllic as one would think,” he allowed, choosing his words carefully. “I won’t take your struggles from you. I haven’t forgotten what those women said at your engagement party. I can’t imagine the other, insidious ways the nobility’s disdain for you and your race must have played out in your childhood. But just because you didn’t have it easy doesn’t mean that you didn’t have iteasierthan the vast majority.”
Poppy stared at her feet, humiliated and enraged all over again at the reminder of that accursed engagement party. She didn’t want his judgment, but she didn’t want his pity, either. Neither acknowledged her for who she was: someone who worked hard, constantly fighting against odds, and always came out on top.
Hasan raked a hand through his hair, the dark circles under his eyes more pronounced than before. “We should stop for today,” he said finally. “We won’t get any further without another sacrifice. Go in and help the other women.”
Poppy balked. Quitting went against her nature, and ending the lesson early felt like giving up. But Hasan was right: Without another sacrifice, this would go nowhere. And she had nothing left to sacrifice.
“Fine.” She set her jaw. “As you wish.”
