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But he doesn’t seem to hear me. “You won’t eat a single bite of food until it’s done.”
“I said okay,” I snap, resentment welling at how precarious my existence is. “In fact,” I buck in his arms, “put me down.”
“Settle,” he gripes, trying to keep a hold of me, but in the end I force him to release me. We glare at each other.
“You,” I say too loudly, making the word echo off the stone around us. “Are an ass. Do you know that?”
I turn my back on him and limp for the last flight of stairs.
“Rina.”
“Don’t you have food to withhold?”
“Rina.” His tone harshens, but I don’t care.
“Or a ring to find?” I taunt, reminding him that he hasn’t found my mother’s missing ring. Five stairs up and I’m already feeling winded, but I press on, using the wall to steady myself. Anything to get away from this man.
I don’t make it up another step before he grabs my arm and half spins me around. “Can you n– ahh!” He gives me a tug and presses his shoulder to my hips, hauling me up like a sack of potatoes. “What are you doing?! Put me down. Right now, put me down!”
“Quit your whining, woman. If I don’t carry you, you’ll topple over and crack your head open.” He then has the gall to smack my ass, sharpening my rage into a dangerous point.
“You bastard,” I grind out, blood rushing to my head, making it throb in time with my heartbeat. “I demand you put me down!” Pushing up on his lower back, I get a glimpse of the stunned guard at the top of the stairs before my reality goes from upside down to right side up in a rush of vertigo. My legs fold under me as soon as my feet make contact with the floor and he has to hold me up by the armpits like a toddler.
“I wasnotborn out of wedlock,” he says smugly as I blink the light-headedness away. “You’ll have to find a better insult than that.”
I poke at his granite chest with my index finger. “How about unscrupulous reprobate?”
He scoffs. “Those fancy words mean nothing to me.”
“Oh? Let me translate for you. You’re a vile brute and a manipulator.”
He pretends to consider, then leans in closer. “Better. But vile brute or not, you’re still going to help me,princess.”The last word is unmistakably meant as an insult. How original.
“Hah! You better inform the cooks not to send up any more of their pitiful rations.”
It’s then that he notices something over my shoulder. Straightening, he lets me go. I wobble but manage to stay upright as he turns on his heel and heads back down the stairs.
“Yes, you’d better hurry,” I call. “They may be sending up breakfast as we speak.”
A throat clears behind me and I turn. “A’Deve,” Elsy greets with a deferential nod and an amused quirk to her mouth.
A frustrated noise claws its way out of my chest. “Elsy, if you’d be so kind as to not use that term, I would be very obliged,” I say, mincing my way past the mangled door to sit on the edge of the bed. Exhaustion weighs like a mountain on me now.
The healer follows me in. “I hear it’s been an eventful morning,” she says with humor, then exclaims, “What isthat?”
I assume she means the bite mark, so I don’t respond. Elsy sets her woven basket down next to me and picks out a clay jar filled with some kind of ready-made healing concoction. As she smears it over the raw edges of the wound, I smell honey. “I assume your jaw isn’t broken since you’re able to bicker with the deve.”
“Yes,” I say wearily, sliding my jaw from side to side. It hurts but it’s not serious. “I got lucky, I guess.”
“Let’s see the leg.”
I pull the shirt up to show her the wound on my thigh and she sighs. “You shouldn’t have been in the baths, but it’s coming along. It’s not festering anyway.” When I can only muster enough energy to shrug, she pulls aside the top layer of the furs that have been moved back onto the bed. Probably by Yvette. “Get some sleep before you keel over.”
She tucks me in and I’m grateful. Sleep is coming on quickly when an idea pops into my head. “Elsy?” She looks back from the door, her long, gray-streaked braid swaying. “How many tutors work in the realm?”
“Tutors?” Her countenance couldn’t be more incredulous. “I don’t know about where you come from, but around here, no one has the luxury of free time to be collecting the useless knowledge provided bytutors.”
Chapter 8
