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She was a collection of more broken pieces than whole. There was not a single place on her that had not been destroyed in those nightmarish three minutes. Three minutes that would define my life for the rest of eternity.

Delicately, I took up the sponge and bucket of clean water and began washing her body. I had to be careful, though. Each wound, each split in her beautiful skin was precariously held together with stitches of magic and prayers. My hands were better suited to brutality, not made to gently dab sweat, blood, and filth from her body with a featherlight caress.

I labored over cleaning her, making sure every inch of her was fresh. When I was done, I took the oils I had purchased from the merchant who had come up from the surrounding villages to ply their wares to fancy courtiers. They had promised the oils made of comfrey, rose, elder, and sweet rush mixed with almond would not only soothe her skin but also bring healing to it.

I silently prayed to the gods as I massaged them into her skin that they watch over her and bring her back to me, even if she returned with fury. All I wanted was to hear her voice again. To see her turquoise eyes flashing with amusement and teasing me with that special barb she always used. I longed to save her from herself again.

At least when she was busy flashing her claws at me, I could pretend to be the gallant knight saving her from the dragons she lined up in front of herself. At least when she was up and moving around, I could hear her voice and feel the way it twisted my heart and guts into knots.

I slathered her entire body, every inch with the oil, and hoped that, one day, she would forgive me enough to allow me to touch her like this under less . . . painful situations.

Once her skin was tended to, I moved to her hair. The golden strands were a mess from every manner of befoulment, and I hesitated to acknowledge the splatter across her face and into her hairline that was just as creamy as her blood but was certainly not.

Anger boiled deep and hot in me again as I slowly unwound the braid from her hair and began cleansing it, too. I wished I could wash away the memory of what had happened to her. I wished I could wash away the violation of her body as easily as I could wash away the blood and filth. She was not meant to be abused this way. She was not meant for this at all. She should be sat atop a throne of black agate and basking in the golden rays of Dawn.

“I’m sorry, sweet girl,” I murmured down to her as I gingerly combed through her hair. “You deserved better from me. I thought the greatest danger to you would be not understanding our language. I thought if I warped your tissues into the memory of our language that it would ensure you a safe life here. I was such a fucking fool. I have disappointed you in ways you don’t even know yet. Ways that will be my eternal shame.”

I lathered a gentle soap into her tresses and rinsed them clean and clear.

“When you rise from this bed—and I know you will—I will endeavor to be better for you. You deserve that from me. I will woo you the way you deserve. With gentle smiles and soft words. I will touch you with careful hands and be the guardian you deserve. Just . . . come back to me, Sóna. Let me prove myself worthy of you.”

I sighed at her silence and finished her hair with a simple braid I tied with a leather strip from my own hair.

When I was done tending to her body, I changed the linens she was tangled in and pressed a kiss to her forehead. I didn’t care that my magic leaked out of me to fill her. Let her have what scraps I had left.

Chapter 13

The voices all faded, echoing off the stonework all around me. Each footfall was swallowed by the hungry stone and sent skittering across my shattered mind like the falling pieces of a stained-glass window in an ancient ruin.

I was left with my sacred silence, and as soon as I was, my head began to remind me that it had been abused. I shivered down into the sweltering heat of the sarcophagus wrapped around me. Each slight tug of my skin against the rough woolen blanket was a cheese grater sliding against a raw open nerve. I needed to move in the worst way, but I knew the agony awaiting that decision was not worth it. So, I laid in misery, letting it seep into me and punish me. For what I was being punished, I didn’t yet know.

I tried to remember how I had gotten here, when I had gotten here. But all I could remember was that door and soft leather brushing against me.

A gentle thunder rumbled against the tambourine of my mind and whispered words that formed small daisies in the landscape of my heart. I tried to grip onto them but could not. I could not even make out who the voice belonged to. It was the summer sky on the open Oklahoma plains.

I succumb to sleep after too long, unable to maintain my eyes being open. I tried to fight it as valiantly as I could, but with the agony of being unable to move and the aching shred of pain throughout my body, there was no real reason to stay awake.

The dreams that came to me were split images of blackness braided together with a secret I kept trying to unravel. A secret I could not riddle out.

I woke again, this time to darkness all around me and the soft red glow of a brazier that had been drawn close to me. It was too hot. I was too hot. I was melting into the tight woolen sarcophagus that held me down and snickered at my suffering. I would die in its sweltering arms.

Water, I tried to call out. All I wanted was a single ice cube. Even one would do. I just wanted to feel it melt on my tongue and let its chill subsume through me.

No sound came out.

I tried again, and this time, a small dry, hoarse rasp slid past my teeth and fell on my chest. It sat there, dancing a merry jig around the tuck of the blanket. It went no further than that, though, and even that took all the strength left in my body.

I awoke again, dawn streaming into my chamber from a window that had not been there before. The scent of warm black leather was close to me. I couldn’t open my eyes, though. I couldn’t find where it was coming from. All I could see was the dawn breaking in the field of my heart.

“Wake up, you lazy bitch,” hissed a playful child’s voice. A dull pain bloomed at my shoulder as a small hand was pressed there, and I was shaken. I groaned, the loudest sound I had made in years if you asked my throat. “That’s enough of that, you whiny baby. You’ve been on this slab for over a month. I’m tired of lugging your shit off and wiping your ass. Do you know how heavy you are?”

“Did . . . did you just call me fat?” I asked with all the spirit of a broken hammer.

“Stupid too. And lazy. And gross. Who shits themself at your age?”

The child’s voice was close, inches away from my ear. Though it was cursing me and condemning me, fear danced along the edges of it.

Fear I knew, fear I was familiar with. It had laid in this bed with me for as long as I could remember. It had held my hand through the sweltering nights, and it had mopped my brow when no one else did. Did someone actually mop my brow? Where was I? How did I . . .