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When we reach Marian’s cottage, Angie is sitting near the window with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, her hair loose around her face and more color in her cheeks than I have ever seen there, and the sight of her breathing easily makes something inside me fold and ache all at once.

“You look better,” I say as I step inside.

Angie smiles, small and shy, her fingers curling into the blanket. “I helped Mom carry water from the wells today, but nobody lets me do anything.”

Marian makes a sound from the hearth. “Because they are scared you’ll get sick again.”

Angie rolls her eyes, but her smile wobbles when she looks at me. “I didn’t know if you would come today. We heard you were back with the king.”

“I wanted to see you before Eagan bought half the town for Claudia.”

“Are you staying long?”

“I’m not sure yet, but we plan on staying long enough to help clean up the island.”

“That last storm was the biggest we’ve had.”

I nod, though my throat tightens slightly.

Eagan clears his throat from the door. “We should go before the king hunts me down for allowing you in town without him.”

I peer over at Eagan and sigh.

***

The rest of town smells of damp stone, fish brine, smoke, and old market straw as Eagan moves through Claudia’s list.

By the time the cart is loaded with flour sacks, salt, soap, medicine, nails, lamp oil, spare cloth, dried beans, and two bundles of herbs, the sun has begun to sink behind a smear of cloud, and the streets have thinned as people hurry to finish their business before the evening cold rolls in from the water.

After sending the cart and supplies to the farm with two guards, Eagan and I decide to walk back to the castle. We take the road that cuts past the old market quarter, because the lower street is still half-flooded from the last storm, and I do not realize where we are until the iron gates rise ahead of us.

The flesh markets.

My steps slow, and Eagan slows with me.

The gates are taller than I remember, black iron spearing upward into the gray sky, their hinges thick with rust, their bars wound with old chains, and beyond them, the yard stretches wide beneath a patched tin roof where rows of cells sit.

A ship is docking at the far end of the market yard, and for one sharp moment my stomach clenches, because every ship that comes here carries the chance of someone being bought, taken, moved, or lost.

Then I see the markings on the crates being unloaded and realize it is a supply ship wanting to trade.

“We can go around,” Eagan says quietly.

I should agree. Instead, I step closer to the gates.

At first, I only mean to look for a moment, to prove to myself that this place no longer has power over me, but then I see an old man sitting on a crate inside the nearest cage and my feet grow roots. His shoulders fold inward, his white hair thin beneath a worn cap, and his hands shake where they rest on his knees. He looks so frail that the idea of anyone bidding on him for hard labor feels cruel enough to turn my stomach.

Once I see him, I see all of them.

A woman holding a child against her chest.

Two boys sitting shoulder to shoulder near the back wall.

A man with a bandaged leg propped on a broken bucket.

A girl, no older than Sable was when we first came to Crawly’s, with her eyes fixed on the floor.

My chest tightens so hard I have to breathe through my nose.