Page 21

“The body heals in sleep,” Marina said gently. “Don’t worry. Come, sit here with me. Do you agree that I can win in three moves?”

I joined her on the bench and studied the board. “Camilla, look, if you move your stone two places, you still have a chance.”

Camilla squinted at the pieces.

“I could use your advice,” I said to the group. “Valentina wants me to discourage the only bidder who has shown any real interest in me.”

Three heads turned to look at me. Vesta spun quickly from the wall. “Why? She shouldn’t have asked that of you.”

“She says she needs him as her patron.”

“I know Valentina,” Camilla said. “She’s been here for many years. It’s no wonder that she’s desperate enough to do that.”

I picked up a smooth stone and turned it over in my fingers. “I’ve done my best to try to discourage him, but he seems determined.”

Vesta looked alarmed. “By the Goddess, do you want to be sold to one of the lesser houses in the city? Not Casa Stella or Casa Aeris, but one of the places that take the girls the elite houses don’t want? My mother says they’re filled with girls who don’t have the right faces, the right height, the right figures.”

Luna flicked one of the stones to the edge of the board. “Girls who take after their father in looks, rather than their mother. My sister lives in such a house. She’s treated badly by the guests, who pay very little.”

“No chance at earning your way out of a place like that,” Vesta said.

“I would never throw away a chance at a bid to help someone else,” Camilla said fiercely. “Never. Who else is going to look after us but ourselves?”

“She’s right.” Luna reclined in her chair and tilted her face up to the sun. “Valentina would sacrifice you in a moment for a chance to settle her accounts here.”

Marina moved her stone into a favorable position on the board. “Isn’t that precisely what she’s doing?”

“This is not a place that rewards kindness or weakness,” Camilla said. “Your mother would have taught you that, if you had one.”

“Everyone has a mother,” I said.

I rose and joined Vesta at the wall. We both stared out over the city below and the woods beyond. “I wonder what’s out there, past the forest,” I said.

“What difference does it make?” She bent down and loosened a cracked corner of flagstone. After inspecting its jagged side, she raised her delicate arm and tossed it over the edge of the terrace. We watched it careen through the air, falling until it was a tiny pinpoint above the valley and then gone from sight.

“We matter so little,” she said. “We could throw ourselves over this wall, and no one would even notice. Dinner would be served downstairs as usual.”

I reached out and took her hand. “Who knows what the future might hold for each of us?”

She pulled her fingers out of my grip. “We’re no longer children telling one another stories, and I don’t have an imagination like yours. The best we can hope for is what my own mother has achieved: a wealthy patron who pays for her to live in her own house in town and gives her silk clothing to wear and a cook to tend to her. There’s nothing more.”

When I didn’t answer, she sighed in exasperation. “Stop wasting energy on dreams and start trying to survive here. Don’t throw away your chance at a bid just because another woman has failed.”

I rested my elbows on the wall and stared out at the far line of the horizon. “I think I hold onto the hope of a different life because I still wonder about my mother. Maybe she found a different path. Perhaps I can, too.”

Vesta shook her head. “Your mother abandoned you here to fend for yourself. What does that teach you? Do what you must to survive.” She turned away from the wall and went inside.

Her words rang in my ears. The wind whipped the ends of my shawl, and my fingers were cold. She was right. My mother had left me here to make my own way in the world, with nothing more than the grace of the Goddess to watch over me. As children, we might wish for other lives, other futures, but when we grow up, we must stop escaping into dreams. I wasn’t the long-lost child of a noble, a sailor, a king. I was not a scholar at the university in Arcadium or a brave adventurer. I was the daughter of a courtesan, bound to service until I could earn my freedom, and no amount of longing for what lay beyond the city would change that.

I REMEMBERED VESTA’S words as I sat beside Lord Clemens Fabius at dinner that evening, his ruby brooch pinned to my tunic. I was grateful that the party consisted only of tirae and likely bidders, so Valentina was not there to turn her angry eyes on me. As delicate plates were placed before us and removed—a bowl of edible flowers, pork-stuffed dumplings the size of my thumb, a rich soft cheese spread on still-warm bread—and our cups were filled and refilled with wine, he told me more of his tales of adventure.

“And then we survived a night in the dangerous forest. It’s only a two-day ride from here, my dear, due west, but home to creatures that would cause a delicate beauty like you to die of fright.” He swirled the wine in his cup and inhaled its aroma with his thin nose.

“I wouldn’t be afraid,” I said. “I would love to see such a place.”

He reached over and touched my fingers. “Wouldn’t that be something.”

My heart thumped against my rib cage. This man was my chance, and I would seize it. I would do what was needed to survive.