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The door behind me is open, and Royad is at least twenty paces down. If I bolt and slam the door shut behind me, I might make it to the window… And then? Even if no guards are watching, Royad knows the only possible route that would take me to freedom.
Perhaps he can see the wheels turning in my head because he takes a step toward the stairs, then another, slowly approaching. “Please, Ayna, come down here and take a bath. I will wait outside.” He means it; I can tell by the way he strides past me, halting on the threshold to check if I am following his request.
A request, not an order. Unlike King Myron, Royad has actually used the wordplease, and I couldn’t be more shocked.
“Why?” I mean,whydoesn’t he just shove me underwater to make sure I bathe, but he gives me a half smile and takes a step back from the threshold so he is standing outside the underground spa.
“Because Ret Relah is tomorrow, and Myron won’t be pleased if his bride smells.”
Before I can retort that, A, I don’t smell, and B, if he wants a bride who gives a shit, he might want to find someone who is willing to marry that bastard, Royad closes the door with a wave of his hand, and I am alone in the most luxurious, if ancient, bathing room I’ve ever seen. The pool is so large I’ll actually need to swim to get to the other end.
For a long time, I stand at the head of the stairs, cursing myself for not grabbing the opportunity and run when there was nothing between me and the open window. Then, I remember how easily Royad caught me on the journey from Fort Perenis, and that had been on land he doesn’t know like the back of his hand. This palace is his home, and even if I managed to hide in a dark corner, I’m convinced he’d find me. And if not him, then the Crow King’s many guards who keep watching my every move like bloodhounds when I meander through the hallways with my bodyguard.
Ret Relah is tomorrow. The ice in my chest is enough to freeze the blood in my entire body, and perhaps this is the last moment I’ll get to myself before the wedding ceremony. I don’t know what it entails—neither Royad nor Myron have deigned to respond whenever I asked. All I know is that, once a Crow bride, there is no way back. My fate was sealed the moment the Tavrasian general handed me over. Perhaps even before that.
The Crows know my name. My real name. I’m Wolayna Milevishja, daughter of Ivan Milevishja and Elenja Milevishja. My father used to do trade for the Tavrasian Crown. I spent my days as a child in his office and warehouses, surveying the incoming and outgoing goods and riches. That’s how I know a good loot from an unworthy one. I saw him handle the gemstone shipments of King Erina’s father long before Erina ever got crowned. I’d even seen Erina around the warehouse when the late king graced us with a visit.
Then, one day, it wasn’t the king who appraised the jewels, but he sent different men. Ones who took my father to the palace where he was put in the dungeons for treason.
Dark clouds form around my heart at the thought of the months that followed, the interrogations.
“Your name is Wolayna Milevishja?”
I nod at the man leaning over me as I shrink back in my chair. The manacles holding down my hands don’t allow for me to shove him away as his face comes so close I can smell his onion breath.
“Answer!” Spittle flies at my cheek.
I nod. It’s all I can do, eyes darting to my mother, who is held back by a soldier in blue and black. Her pleas to let me go aren’t heard.
“You saw your father load these chests into a carriage.” It’s not a question because they want me to confirm.
Even if I hadn’t seen him, I would be tempted to just nod so they’d leave me alone.
“She’s just a child,” my mother cries. “Let her go.”
The men don’t care I’m only ten years old … or that I have no idea why those chests are so important. But if I have learned one thing from my mother, it is to always tell the truth. So, I close my eyes so I don’t see the line of anger on the man’s young face and nod.
When I open my eyes again, he is smiling down at me, one hand twirling his mustache. “Good girl.”
He steps away, and so do the men holding back my mother. Someone opens the bonds on my wrists, and a moment later, my mother flings her arms around me, pulling me into her shoulder as I cry, cry, cry.
A day later, they make us watch my father’s execution.
I blink, and I’m back in the present, steam coiling into my nose as I descend the stairs to the pool.
The general?—
The memory of the man interrogating me is blurry, but there is no doubt that horrible man and the general selling me to the Crows are one and the same. He knows who I am. Knew the moment he saw me on the ship, because he wasn’t the one petrified by fear that day when I sentenced my father to death with a simple nod. He remembered. Ten years later, andI’m the traitor. And in Tavras, traitors pay with their lives.
The ice doesn’t leave my body until I slide out of my clothes and wade down the stairs into the water, and it embraces me the way the ocean used to embrace the Wild Ray. I haven’t taken a real bath in over a year, and the half-hearted scrub-downs in prison don’t count. Yes, I’m clean because I use the washcloth and water in my room at the palace, but it isn’t the same as when the water washes over my body, soaking through the paralyzing fear and despair that have been my constant companions since the day the cell door was locked after me in the dungeons of Fort Perenis.
The water is warm as I sink into it up to my shoulders, its scent reminding me of pending summer. I spot flower petals floating in the back of the pool, their colors all blurring into shades of orange and brown in the firelight, but they are crisp and fresh like someone plucked them recently and strew them on the water just before I entered.
The thought makes my gaze dart around the room, checking the shadowy corners for a potential intruder.
There’s no one—just the water, the fire, and me. So, I lower myself under the surface, diving the length of the pool. When I come up, my feet barely reach the ground, and I have flower petals all over my hair. It’s the first time in ages I feel alive.
I scrub at my scalp, rinsing the petals out of my tresses and watching them float away on a current I didn’t notice before. The warm, humid air is glorious to breathe, cleaning my lungs from the lingering ache of my time in prison. This is nothing like the palace of monsters above. This is a sanctuary, and I want time to stop so the sun won’t rise tomorrow to announce the end of my life.
