“But the king has taken an oath of celibacy. All Chosens have. If you wish to overthrow him, all you have to do is expose him while he’s here. Does Kole know about this?” I demanded.
The matron tossed her head back and smiled. “My, how right Kole was about you. So long as you never reveal what you know, we’ll let you live in peace.”
“How do you know I won’t warn the king what you’re planning?” I challenged, likely provoking them more.
“It seems you don’t value your life enough. Perhaps a little incentive will help with that.” The matron’s attention caught behind me. I turned in time to find the man had returned with a long rod in his hands. I fixated on the burning tip.
A branding iron.
Too horrified to recognize the shape of it, I backed away instinctively—right into the matron.
“No!” I yelled, thrashing against her grip. She knocked me to the ground and pinned herself on top of me. Her hand sealed over my mouth. I kicked as the man took hold of my right foot, angling the ball of it, and a second later, the hot end scalded against my sensitive flesh. Pain unlike anything I’d experienced sliced through my body from the underside of my foot to the point my vision blackened. Tears spilled down my cheeks.
“Congratulations,” the matron crooned. “Our precious Black Rose. You are one of us now. An apostate, as you all like to say.” She squeezed my cheeks.
I squirmed against her hold, my foot still burning.
“If this isn’t enough incentive to keep your mouth shut,” she hissed close to my face, “then hopefully you value the life of your brother more than your own.”
They released me. The man slipped out an all-too-familiar golden pocket watch and tossed it onto the floor beside my sobbing face. “Proof that your brother lives. For now.”
My tremulous fingers roamed over the grooves of my family’s pocket watch, etched with the symbols of each of the twelve signs in a circle.
Theyhad him.
They’d taken my brother hostage.
In the darkness of the shop, I contemplated the plan laid out for me tomorrow—or rather tonight, given it was nearly dawn. For the sake of my family, forBasil, I had to follow through.
I retched again into the bucket beside me.
If I didn’t do what they asked, I would end up like Yarah, and so would Basil and my grandparents: indisposed. If I did as commanded, there was a high probability that the king would kill me on the spot.
The only way out of this meant seducing the king well enough to steal his talisman and replace it with a fake. Something I fathomed no one had ever accomplished, or at least lived to tell the tale.
Either way, I was now branded an apostate. A torrent of rage emerged at the thought of anyone daring to lay a hand on the people I loved. I may have been helpless against the apostai, but the burning inferno inside me affirmed I would do anything for my family.
Including committing treason.
“Where have you been?” Nahn asked, startling me. She carried a candlestick to light her path down the staircase.
I was grateful for the cover of darkness; she couldn’t know any of the torment and shame I carried, nor the threat I’d foolishly brought upon us all. “I… ran into some friends in the city and lost track of time. Mel was there, too.”
“Mel’s asleep upstairs.”
Shit. I hadn’t seen Mel—or Kole—in what felt like weeks. “I have other friends.”
“And these friends are more important than your responsibilities here?” Nahn descended the last few steps carefully. “Mel’s beenmosthelpful in your absence. She’s efficient, dutiful, and?—”
“Everything you’d ever want in a granddaughter, I know.”
Nahn muttered something under her breath and set the candle down on the ledge above the hearth. The fire had gone out, and I hadn’t bothered to rekindle it. “I know you’re hiding something. You scarcely look at me before running out the door at the crack of dawn. Where are you really going?”
“Deliveries,” I insisted, even as I kept my gaze averted. “I told you, I get sidetracked when I see friends. You know how much I love the city.” I hated lying to her, but these weeks I’d managed to avoid a betrothal conversation and I didn’t want to spark one now.
“A messenger from the baroness stopped by earlier,” Nahn said. “Apparently, there was an issue with her order yesterday.”
The edge in Nahn’s voice had me straightening. “What kind of issue?”
