I don’t understand the obvious hostility, but sparks of it crackle through the air between them. Fascinating as this rivalry may be, it has nothing to do with me. I realize I need to try again to enter the fray, despite my fear of being caught in the crossfire.
“Begging your pardon, Your … Majesties. But how could I possibly be the person you need?”
The king shoves a hand through his hair and scowls. “Because, if Elianna is right, what weneedis a nobody.”
It makes no sense, but if they need me, then … I can’t help the words that burst out of me. “You’re not going to kill me?”
The pity I see on the sorcerer’s face is every bit as terrifying as the king’s sneer.
“Iwon’t kill you,” the king of all Pyrrh tells me. “But you might prefer it if I did.”
Nobody may touch the Amulet of Artemisen and live.
—Recorded Conversations of the Oracles: Fifth, Fifteenth, and Twenty-Fifth Cycles
CHAPTER THREE
Over-Lieutenant Rackness takes my arm in a firm grip, guides me to a small door behind the throne, and escorts me inside. “Someone will bring you wash water.” Her gaze whips over me, and I feel another dull rush of shame. “And a clean dress. You can’t meet the goddess like that.”
“What?” I all but shriek the word. “Meet who?”
But she shakes her head and departs, leaving me alone in a tiny, bare, windowless room. Two sconces allow me to see that there’s another door opposite the one I entered through, but that one is barred and locked with a heavy chain.
Only a few minutes pass of me frantically trying to interpret what “meet the goddess” could mean before two servants bring in a small table, a basin of water, cloths for washing, and a green dress. “Best hurry, lass,” the man murmurs, but the woman with him just clucks her tongue and rushes back out of the room.
They close the door behind them, and I’m alone, so I take a deep breath and do as I was told. I quickly exchange my filthy dress for the green one, which is plain but well-made and easily the finest dress I’ve ever worn. Then I scrub dirt off my hands, arms, and face. I even use a clean corner of one towel to wipe dirt off my hair as best I can. Then I unbraid my hair but for the single plait next to my face, clench my hands together, and try to remember if I’ve ever read a book where a prisoner uses a towel to escape a locked room.
This futile train of thought doesn’t distract me for more than a minute or two, and then the door opens again. A snarling guard pushes a girl into the room and shoves her so hard she falls to her knees.
Then he pulls the door partially shut behind him and points at me. “I’m a friend of Flack’s. He asked me to give you a little thank-you.”
Before I can fumble through an answer, he strides across the room and backhands me so hard I smash into the wall behind me.
“Here’s hoping we get to see a bonfire,” he says, sneering. Then he studies both of us for a moment before walking out of the room.
Laughing.
My mouth is on fire. He split my lip; I can feel the blood running down my face and know my mouth will swell up in minutes. The bruising will be bad, too. With my fair skin, I always bruise when they hit me in the face.
I sigh, grimly resigned, and grab one of the cloths to wipe my face again. I’m gentle, but still wince at the pressure. Out of habit, I start to wash the blood out of the towel in the basin but then defiantly throw it on the floor. I’m not going to clean up after they beat me this time.
Not here.
The girl is still on the floor, and she’s crying, despite not being hurt much. When I glance at her tear-stained face, though, I immediately lose any impatience.
She can’t be more than ten and six.
She’s clean and looks well-fed, unlike me. I don’t see any scars or old bruises on the skin that’s showing, though I know that can be deceiving.
Some abusers are expert at only leaving marks where they won’t be seen.
“Are you okay? Here, let’s get you up off the floor.”
“Why would he do that to us?” She lets me help her up, then wraps her arms around herself and whimpers. “Why are we here? What’s happening? Do you know?”
“I don’t actually know,” I have to admit, the wordsmeet thegoddessstill reverberating in my mind. “I’m Soli.” This unleashes a wild storm of sobbing and a jumbled explanation of who she is. I can’t understand much beyond her name, Lil.
I retrieve the only clean cloth left and hand it to her to wipe her face, which calms her down somewhat. “I was giving the pigs their tea-time mash—they don’t get tea, of course, but we call it that because we feed them that meal just before our tea—and two guards came to get me. Two guards!” She sits back and scrubs her face with her hands. “My da said I must have done something terrible for them to send guards, but I didn’t! Not ever! I mean, I kissed a boy I wasn’t betrothed to yet at Harvest Fest. But we’re close! He’s saving for our very own cottage. Anyway, they don’t send the king’s guards for that, do they?”
