He stays silent, his jaw so tense I can see the cut of muscle when I glance back at him.
“If you don’t behave, I’ll have no choice but to command you,” I warn.
“If you don’t command me, I’ll behave,” he retorts.
I grit my teeth and force myself to take a slow breath as my muscles quiver with rage.
“Would you mindfilling the bucket again, and placing it on the counter carefully, right-side up, without spilling anything, so that we can use the water to wash the dishes?” I growl. “I’d prefer not to be up past midnight, ifyour majestycould be troubled to keep working.”
He listens this time. Standing over the washbasin, I twist crumbled dry soap into a washrag, wet the bundle, and use it to scrub the plate.
“What next?” The angry look on his face is no softer than before, but he’s waiting for my next direction.
“Scraping the rest of those plates off.” I nod to the ones I brought in from the table. It doesn’t take him long. Next I suggest he should help wash the plates. He joins me at the counter without complaint.
I get through two more plates and a serving platter, my enemy beside me. The clean dishes go on the racks beside the wash-bin. The metal fingers of my armor are better at clenching around the scrub-rag than the plates, which are slippery and smooth.
“You used enchantment when we fought,” he says abruptly. I drop the plate I’m holding and fumble to catch it. It thuds against the edge of the wash-bin, tilts, and crashes onto the floor, snapping into five separate pieces.
“Fuck,” I mutter. I throw the wash rag on the counter and go to get the broom.
“Your mind changed about it after that,” he guesses as I sweep up the broken plate.
“No.”
“I’m your captive. I can't even try to run away. You could tell me to jump out the window, and I’d have no choice.”
He’s looking down, scrubbing the platter with sharpmovements like he’s trying to rub the glaze off the ceramic, his hand clenched tight around the scrub rag.
“I was ordered to keep you alive.”
“But why do you care if you force me, when you so willingly use enchantment to fight?”
“There’s no other way to win against your people,” I tell him, keeping my voice bland as I move to the next cooking dish. “Unlike awitch, I don’t believe in using magic for everything. And if I weren’t worried what the War-Father would say, I’d rather pull some of the marks from you and put the shackles back on. I’d rather beat you without magic.”
He freezes.
“You know how to pull enchantment?” he asks hoarsely.
“It’s intuitive. I’m not freeing you.”
“You’ve done it before?”
My blood runs cold. I shouldn’t have said anything at all.
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Three years ago. A woman made her way to one of our isles. She had enchantment marks on her, but also scars where some of them had been removed. She spoke of a lady knight, who’d—”
“Stop,” I snap, wrenching my gaze up to his. The Witch King stares at me as I pant for breath, my heart pounding and my exhausted body suddenly wide awake. “Youwill notspeak of that again.”
“A command.”
“Yes,” I growl. Gods save me. I want, so desperately, to know which one of them he’s talking about; which one of them made it, and whether the witches have treated her with any decency at all, because Itoldthem all to head for the outer reaches, not the damned fucking Wild Seas. But if anybody hears him talking about this, there is no chance I will ever be pardoned.
Freeing the Enchanted is treason. Pure and simple. And unlike witchcraft, Iamguilty of that one.
His eyes narrow. Not in anger, this time, but like he’s trying to figure something out.
