Arin heard the door to the barracks creak. The sound brought him immediately to his feet, for only one person would come to his cell this late at night. Then he heard the first heavy footfall, and his hands slackened around the metal bars. The footsteps coming were not hers. They belonged to someone big. Solid, slow. Probably a man.
Torchlight pulsed toward Arin’s cell. When he saw who carried it, he pulled away from the bars. He saw a child’s nightmare come to life.
The general set the torch in a sconce. He stared, taking in Arin’s fresh bruises, his height, his features. The general’s frown deepened.
This man didn’t look like Kestrel. He was all mass and muscle. But Arin found her in the way her father lifted his chin, and his eyes held the same dangerous intelligence.
“Is she all right?” Arin said. When he received no response, he asked again in Valorian. And because he had already damned himself with a question he couldn’t bear not to ask, Arin said something he had sworn he would never say. “Sir.”
“She’s fine.”
A feeling flowed into Arin, something like sleep or the sudden absence of pain.
“If I had my choice, I would kill you,” said the general, “but that would cause more talk. You’ll be sold. Not right away, because I don’t want to be seen reacting to a scandal. But soon.
“I’ll be spending some time at home, and I will be watching you. If you come near my daughter, I will forget my better judgment. I will have you torn limb from limb. Do you understand?”
23
Letters came. During the first days after the duel, Kestrel ripped into them, eager for anything to distract her from being confined to her bed, desperate to learn what society thought of her now. Surely she had gained some respect by beating the city’s finest fighter?
But the letters were mostly from Jess and Ronan and filled with false cheer. And then came the note.
Small, folded into a thick square. Stamped with a blank seal. Written in a woman’s hand. Unsigned.
Do you think you are the first? it read. The only Valorian to take a slave to her bed? Poor fool!
Let me tell you the rules.
Do not be so obvious. Why do you think society allows a senator to call a pretty housegirl to his rooms at a late hour? Or for the general’s daughter to take long carriage rides with such an exquisite “escort”?
It is not because secret liaisons are impossible. It is because pretending they are impossible lets everyone turn a blind eye to the fact that we can use our slaves exactly as we please.
Kestrel felt her face burn. Then it crumpled, just like the paper in her fist.
She would throw the letter in the fire. She would forget it, forget everything.
But when she shifted her right leg out from underneath the blankets, her knee screamed in protest. She sat at the edge of the bed, looking at the fire, then at her bare feet flat against the floor. She trembled, and told herself it was because of the ache in her bandaged knee. Because her legs couldn’t bear her own weight. Because she couldn’t do something so simple as get out of bed and walk across the room.
She tore the letter into a snowfall of paper.
That first night after the duel, Kestrel had woken to find her father gone. A slave was sleeping in the chair drawn close to the bed. Kestrel had seen the lines under the woman’s eyes, the awkward crook of her neck, and how her head bobbed back and forth in the way of someone who needed sleep. But Kestrel shook her.
“You have to do something,” Kestrel had said.
The woman blinked, bleary-eyed.
“Go tell the guards to let Smith out. He’s imprisoned in the barracks. He—”
“I know,” the woman had said. “He’s been released.”
“He has? By whom?”
The slave looked away. “It was Rax’s decision. He said you could complain to him if you didn’t like it.”
Those last words sounded like a lie. They didn’t even make sense. But the woman patted her hand and said, “I saw Smith myself, in the slaves’ quarters. He’s not too worse for wear. Don’t worry, my lady.” The face of the woman, whose name Kestrel had forgotten, filled with such sympathy that she had told her to leave.
Kestrel remembered the woman’s expression. She looked at the shredded letter and saw again its written words—so snide, so understanding.
They didn’t understand. No one did. They were wrong.
Kestrel slipped back under the blankets.
Some hours later, she called for a slave and asked her to open a window. Cold air poured in, and Kestrel shivered until she heard a distant ringing, the sound of hammer against anvil. Arin must know that she couldn’t come to him. Why didn’t he come to her?