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I’d had enough. I pushed myself to stand and teetered a bit as I found my balance on the moving boat.
“If you don’t mind,” I said, feeling heavy, “I’d like to sleep for a while. Is there a spare cabin for me?”
“I can have one prepared for you and Ludvig at once,” Magnus said, standing as well.
I shook my head, glancing morosely at Ludvig’s bandaged, sleeping form. “We’re not together anymore,” I said, peeking warily at Magnus. “It wouldn’t be right. Especially not now that I’m another man’s pup.”
Magnus nodded in understanding. And I truly did feel like he understood. “I will walk to the cabins with you,” he said, resting a hand on my back and propelling me toward the back of my boat. “I need to check on my Peter and explain the situation to him and Neil anyhow.”
I nodded, then winced. “You don’t think he’ll hate me for this or think less of me, do you?”
Magnus laughed gently and patted my shoulder. “Quite the contrary. I think Peter will stand in awe of you for making this sacrifice.” We paused near the stairs down to the cabins and Magnus faced me. “We do all understand what this means for you,” he said, looking strangely older. “The moment you tell me you want out of the arrangement, regardless of the information Dmitri has, I will have him eliminated. We’ve done well enough without his information, and even though I believe it is valuable, it isn’t an absolute necessity.”
“I have a feeling Dmitri has the key to us defeating the advances of the Old Realm,” I said, remembering the actual key he had with him. “It’s not just what he knows about General Rufus’s men and the new passage over the mountains. I think he knows what King Julius is planning. He’s actually very smart. I think he knows the strengths and weakness of the Old Realm’s army and how we might defeat them.”
“I’ve no doubt,” Magnus said, smiling at me like a father. “I will give you two weeks to extract the information from him that we need. After that, Dmitri will be dead.”
A shiver passed through me. Magnus was not the sort to joke about death.
“So cheer up,” he went on, as though we were discussing plans for a festival. “You have two weeks to explore the darker side of your desires, or to see if you have any. Use Dmitri the same way I am certain he plans to use you. Trust me, you will feel wiser for it.”
I sent him a woeful, sideways look. He didn’t say I would feel better. “If you say so.”
Magnus checked the first few cabins, finding personal belongings in each of them, until he found one that was empty for me. “Think of the freedom you will have once this trial is over,” he said in a far kinder voice. “You deserve to find a truer love than Ludvig would ever have been able to give you. I care for him like a brother—he has been a brother to me, as Rurik’s brother—but I know he was not the man for you in the end. Let yourself dream of finding the man who will light up your heart and give you hope for the future.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, stepping into the cabin and feeling strangely bolstered.
“And Anton,” Magnus added as I reached to shut the cabin door. I paused, glancing to him in question. “You are not useless,” he said, resting a hand on my shoulder again. “You are as intelligent as any of the other Sons. You have your talents and your strengths, I know. Uncovering them and putting them to use will be a thrilling journey for you.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said, then nodded and started shutting the door so Magnus would get the hint that I needed to be alone.
He did, and as soon as I had my cabin door shut, I burst into tears. No one had ever spoken such kind words to me or made me feel like I wasn’t a useless mess.
No, that wasn’t true. As I dragged my sore and bruised body to the cabin’s tiny bed, I thought of Ludvig. We weren’t suited as lovers, but he had always made me feel important as well. But not in a way that helped me define my purpose in life.
I sat and pulled off my tattered shoes, then set to work shedding all my clothes. I hadn’t undressed completely in weeks, and it felt good to remove my stained and stinking clothing. I desperately needed a bath, to a point that embarrassed me, even though I was alone. But as soon as I was naked, all I could think about was flopping onto the narrow bed and closing my eyes, praying for either sleep or death, I couldn’t decide which.
I was out almost instantly. My body was so wrung out, and my heart felt so hollow that I slept dreamlessly for so long that I wasn’t certain what time it was when I woke up. It was still light, but the sounds aboard the boat were entirely different, and the light seemed to be coming in through the cabin’s small porthole at a completely different angle.
At some point while I’d slept, someone had come into the cabin and removed my old, ruined clothes and replaced them with new, clean ones. They’d brought a washbasin and pitcher of clean water and a cake of soap and washcloth as well. I was so eager to wash that I almost fell over as I climbed out of the bed.
I was quick and careless, splashing water all over the cabin floor, and some of the walls, considering how small the cabin was. The soap was fragrant, and I breathed it in eagerly. I liked sweet, flowery things sometimes. I wasn’t going to be ashamed of that. After making one quick pass of my body, I indulged in another, slower one to make sure I got all the dirt off. Part of me wanted to lather myself up and dive into the river to rinse, swimming beside the boat for a while, but the boat was moving too swiftly.
After washing, I dressed in the new clothes. I wasn’t sure whose they were, but they fit reasonably well. Once dressed, I noticed that someone had brought a mug of weak ale and some bread and cheese as well. I started feasting on that before I made my way out of the cabin and into the hall.
I nearly choked and dropped my snack when I immediately came face to face with Dmitri. He sat on the floor next to the open door of one of the smallest cabins. As soon as he saw it was me, he scrambled awkwardly to his feet, his eyes flaring with anger.
“Was this your doing?” he demanded. “I told you that I would take my information to the grave if you did not support me. You gave your word that they wouldn’t kill me.”
I had no idea what he was talking about and nearly backpedaled into the room before noticing that he held his right arm at a strange angle behind him. He pulled and strained at it, and when I leaned to the side and stared, I saw that he had some sort of shackle around his wrist.
“I haven’t done anything,” I said, inching closer to him so that I could see what was going on. “Magnus wanted to kill you immediately, but I spoke up for you. You heard me defend you.”
Dmitri calmed just a little, though his breaths came in hard, heavy pants as he glared at me.
I move close enough to him to see what was going on, but not close enough for him to reach out and grab me. He was, indeed, shackled. The other end of the shackles were attached to the cabin’s narrow bed. Dmitri had managed to dislodge the bed from where it had been anchored into the wall, but the bed’s dimensions were too large to pull it through the doorway. He was still trapped, but the fact that he had the strength to rip the bed from the floor was worrying.
Dmitri studied me for a moment, and his breathing calmed, but his face was still twisted into a sneer when he said, “Why should that ass, Magnus, listen to you? You’re nothing but a weak-minded, second-rate pup.”
