No one else was ever going to make anything fair. But I could save myself. I could choose what I knew was right, and that wasn’t living as a disappointment, as a trophy of a betrayal. Maybe Khal and I would break each others’ hearts, but better broken apart where he could have people who loved him and I could have a chance at a life outside the shadow of my father’s treachery.
Better broken where he wasn’t being blamed for this.
Whatever he thought, another girl would be lucky to have him. He’d find her. Maybe a different baron’s daughter. Maybe a fairy. He was handsome enough for a fairy. I imagined for a moment a little olive-green baby, staring up with his eyes, and my whole chest hurt.
No. I couldn’t be doing this. Other people had spent my whole life trying to chain me. I wouldn’t chain myself. I walked silently to the pool, and reached in for Thea’s comb, slid it intomy waist pouch beside my stolen coin purse. I had what I needed to escape. We’d be on the road. Tomorrow. Tomorrow I could…
Khal stirred, and I tensed. “Rowena,” he mumbled.
I felt like my head was going to explode. I had to get out of here, away from him, away from this. I pulled on my shift, the dress from the peasant woman with the sorrow bleeding from her eyes. I tightened my belt. I was just going on a walk, that was all this was. I slid the latches off the door from memory, and pushed it just enough open.
Something was wrong.
There were voices yelling, coughing, concerned. Several of the other doors were open, the orcs gathering. Someone said, "—wake him up,” but I could feel in my bones the sun hadn’t risen yet. So why-
A shout rose up. I was drawn towards the one door, the center of this trouble, like a moth into a flame. Glass crashed against the floor. Vrathgar stood in the center of the room in a fire's light, over a bed of furs, shattered glass at his feet releasing a spreading red stain. "Colored water," he yelled. "They paid us in colored water."
The figure in the bed was Tyralk. My eyes adjusted, and his face was wrong, twisted in pain. The room was hot, but his teeth chattered. Someone put another blanket over the leg with the bandages, and he cried out in pain at that slight touch.
Blood-sick. He was blood-sick. The wound was killing him. Vrathgar was pulling more vials out of a satchel. Hagmar shouted “Stop, Vrathgar, some of them might be real—" and he pulled the stoppers, started running each under his nose before shattering it on the ground.
“Vrathgar, this is a resting place?—"
“Water!He gave us water!” Vrathgar’s voice rang against the walls, a twisted roar. “Four months of sleeping in ditches, of leading his men, Grezzha almost lost an arm, and he pays us inwater!” Another vial shattered against the floor. He looked up and saw me there, hate in his golden eyes. “What are you doing here, Baron's daughter? Are you here to watch the outcome of your treachery? Are you here to gloat over your father’s joke? Is this funny?”
I took a step back, almost against my will. The others were murmuring now, watching. I didn’t have anything I could say.
“He never bartered with the wizards. He never made what we bargained for. He sent us off with you and a satchel of fake potions. So that begs the question, did he pay us a fake daughter, too? Or are humans just souselessthat he didn’t care if you took the fall?”
I tried to step again, but there was someone behind me.
“Did you know?” he snarled, his teeth feral in the light. “Did youknow?”
“No,” I whispered. “No.”
He stepped forward. “In the old days if a man swindled another out of his life’s bread, his own flesh would be forfeit. What do you think of that, baron’s daughter? Should I cut his throat? Should I go back to the old ways and eat his heart in recompense?”
My feet were bare here, and I almost slipped. “I don’t care,” I croaked out.
“You don’tcare?He’s your father and you don’t care?”
“I don’t care.” My voice was shaking. The others were moving away from me, but still there wasn’t room to get away, to run. And should I? Didn’t I deserve this?
“Why? Did he give us the fake medicine with a fake bride?Why don’t you care?”
“Hesold me to orcs!” I’d screamed it. I’d screamed it, and my hands pulsed with heat, with power I’d never wanted and couldn’t use. “Hesoldme. You think people sell a daughter they love? He betrayed you? He betrayedme!” Colors rioted behind my eyes, and I squeezed them shut. I didn’t want to see his bodyheat, see the flare of white that was Tyralk, cooking from the inside. I didn’t want to see the hatred or the pity in their eyes. “Cut out his heart. Eat it like the beast you want to be; I don’tcare!”
“You argued for it,” Vrathgar said. His voice was so cold, so sure. “You’re the one that pushed, when we came to council.”
I clawed my hands into my hair. What did it matter? What did any of it matter, if they killed me, at least this would be over. They wouldn’t make the trip to give me back. I’d never go back. “I have a sister,” I said. “It was me or her.”
“The baron only had one daughter,” Vrathgar needled. “You lie.”
I wasn’t going back. Whether this orc wanted me here was immaterial. It didn’t matter. No matter what, I wasn’t going back. I let the tension roll back into my body, blocked the power building up in my hands, my head so I could open my eyes to the blackness. My voice came out in a strangled snarl. “Onelegitimatedaughter,” I spat. “You bought your fake bride with your fake potions. Kill me if you want. But don’t pretend I had more choice than the bottles did.”
A lamp flared, blinding me for a second.
“Well,” Vrathgar looked past me, cold certainty in his eyes. “That settles that, then.”
