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The silence continued until she broke it. “How did it feel?”
It was a vague question, but I understood her meaning perfectly. “Haunting. She occupies my old bedroom. Now it’s full of white curtains and linens, dressers with gold trimming, crystal vases of flowers everywhere. It feels the same—but looks different. There’s still an old bloodstain in the corner from when I cut myself after training with Father, and an old slice in the wood from the edge of my sword.”
She listened, her fingers still on the rim of her glass.
“The guards move about the castle in the same way, with the same rotations, like nothing has changed. Faron occupies Father’s old study, and instead of spending time with his two children, he drowns himself in whores and wine.”
She turned toward me, watching me with her shrewd eyes. “Our people?”
I gave a slight shake of my head. “Everything looks normal on the surface, but it’s far from normal. They’re plucked left and right, their families threatened into silence, and they disappear in the night without a trace. It’s an open secret—fully known but never spoken.”
“And they do nothing?” she asked in disgust.
“What are they supposed to do, Mother?”
“Fight back,” she said quietly. “Always.”
“Not everyone is as courageous as you—”
“They should be.” She took another drink. “If you won’t fight for yourself, fight for those you love.”
In comfortable silence, we stared at the fire, watching the flames rise then fall in its unpredictable dance. “I told her what her father has done, and she doesn’t believe me. Says I’m mistaken.”
She slowly turned her head to me.
“I believe her.”
“Does he have the scars, Huntley?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’m not mistaken.” She turned back to the fire.
“I believe that she believes in his innocence. She’s a smart woman, but she’s blinded by love. Doesn’t see that her father chooses to spend his nights with women he won’t remember the next morning instead of spending time with her. Doesn’t see that he uses both her and her brother as pawns in the game he’s playing. Doesn’t see the men and women disappear in the night. And I believe she has no idea what she really is—and what I am.”
“Huntley?”
Her voice was like a hook under my jaw, and it slowly pulled my face back to hers.
“Don’t pity her.”
I stared.
“Because he didn’t pity me. He didn’t pity you or your brother. With a merciless sneer, he took everything from us—and then laughed.”
I held her gaze, remembering her limp body on the bed and the way he’d thrust into her with his breeches around his knees, the way he’d thrown her over the edge of the cliff once he was finished. I remembered it all…like it was yesterday.
“Remember when you were a boy and I told you not to get attached to the pigs?”
I held my silence.
“They ended up as bacon on Christmas morning. And the same will happen to her.”
I passed between the cabins, the cold hitting me in the bones deeper than it had just an hour ago because it had settled in the soil now. It was quiet out, everyone returned to their cabins because the show was over.
I let myself into my cabin…and knew I wasn’t alone.
The bed in the corner was occupied—by a blonde and a brunette.
Buck naked and tucked under the heavy throws on my bed, they propped themselves up on their elbows and looked at me expectantly.
I recognized them both, from different occasions. “Leave. I’m fucking tired.” I unclasped my fur cloak and tossed it over the armchair by the fireplace, which was lit with a quiet fire.
“Come on, Huntley.” The brunette, whose name I couldn’t remember because I was too tired to think in that moment, pushed the blankets down so I could get into bed with them, her tits on display.
“I said, I’m tired.”
“I’ll give you a back massage,” the blonde said. “My fingers like your strong back.”
“Besides,” the brunette said. “We’ve already been paid in full for the night. Shouldn’t let that go to waste…”
Ian. I didn’t need my brother to buy my whores, not when I could buy my own, and not when I could get laid for free.
The blonde kicked the sheets down farther. “Come on, we’re cold.”
They didn’t look cold, not the way Ivory did when she’d nearly died a couple times. Her cheeks had been pale, her lips blue. All of her blood was close to her heart, keeping her organs alive and warm. She’d looked nothing like the two of them, not even when she’d shared my bedroll on the floor of the cave. “Alright. Move over.”
It was sometime before dawn when the bells rang.
I jolted up in bed, eyes wide open, knowing exactly what that alarm meant.
I was out of bed and dressed within seconds, my swords in my belt, my shield and ax over my back. I was out the front door and into the darkness of early morning, the cold biting my skin the second I came into contact with it. My eyes swept over the wall, looking for the position of the guards.
