CHAPTER 39 #2
Once he freed my arm, he opened the door, and Gemma rushed in. She gripped me under the opposite arm, lifting me from the chair and wrapping a cloth over the cut. She carted me upstairs before anyone else in the family could speak a word to me.
“Where’s Bale?” I asked as we climbed the stairwell.
“He’s in his rooms as well,” she whispered to me. Her boots shuffled over the rug. “He started a fight with his lordship last night, so he’s been confined.” Her voice trailed off as we rounded the corner to the hallway that led to Bale, Merria, and my rooms.
Two soldiers were stationed at the end of the hall outside of Bale’s door. I recognized one of them as Lorrick. I couldn’t see the other through the gloom.
Gemma bobbed her head in acknowledgment when both men turned toward her. “This way, milady.” She opened my door and ushered me inside. “The guards showed up yesterday. You’re lucky none are outside your doorway. Pardon me for saying, milady, but I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“I do.”
She nodded with a forced smile and straightened her apron. “Of course. Let’s get this cleaned up.”
The next day, my father switched to my other forearm, where my skin split in three different places.
He promised to move on to my back if I didn’t talk soon.
I believed him. He smoothed down his doublet, this one resplendent with Inraen red and gold trimmings, and sent me away.
The day after that, both arms were tied at once.
Between meal trays and sessions with the margrave, I sat in my room and stared out my window.
I did not cry. Pain lanced down my arms, but I endured it.
For Eldreth. With each leaf that fell from the branches outside my window, I imagined a drop of my pain fading away.
To occupy my time, my mind conjured up images of Eldreth appearing at my door, scooping me in his arms, and taking me away.
Sometimes, I imagined breaking free and fleeing to the coast, where I sprouted wings and flew home to Drakh.
Other times, I imagined setting the entire manor aflame.
One morning, after several days of abuse that all blurred together, a soft knock sounded at my door. I didn’t bother answering. I heard Gemma’s voice speaking to someone on the other side—a man. The lock to my door clicked, and the door opened.
“There you are.” Tam sighed with relief, as though he’d been searching for me. As though I could’ve been anywhere.
The lock clicked again from the outside. I did not turn to him.
His footsteps shuffled over the carpet. “Serae? Will you not speak to me?”
I didn’t respond. Outside the window, I watched two birds somersault in the air. I thought of Sprakt and how he would rip them into pieces and devour them.
“I’ve come to apologize. I was very drunk and very stupid, and I’m just glad you were smart enough to push me away.”
I concentrated on a bit of frost covering one of the windows. Autumn was nearly through, or perhaps it had already ended, and the air held a chill that reminded me of home.
Home.
Drakh was already lost to me, and I had never even seen it in winter. What right did I have to call it my home?
“Serae, look at me.”
Please that idiot boy, the margrave’s voice echoed in my mind. He was no longer a father to me. How could anyone treat their own daughter with such cruelty?
I turned and looked Tam square in the eye. My sleeves on the silk bliaut Gemma had dressed me in were down, covering the welts and cuts that riddled my forearms.
“Do you hate me so very much?” he asked, fidgeting with a velvet cap he held in his good hand. His other hand was hidden beneath a diagonally worn cape. His eyes were full of sorrow.
“No, Tam, I don’t hate you.”
He smiled.
“I think nothing of you at all.”
Tam went still as the impact of my words hit him. He looked down at his navy and silver doublet, no doubt worn as a symbol of his house. “I suppose I deserve that. I’ll make it up to you. You’ll see, once we’re married and away from this house, things will be different. We’ll be happy.”
I will never marry you. There was no point in speaking the words aloud again.
Tam backed toward the door. “I’ll come visit you tomorrow. I’ll show you every day how sorry I am until you see it.”
I turned back to the window. My face was an empty mask, a perfect mirror of my soul.
His cape rustled as he hesitated at my door. “Just give him what he wants, Serae. Whatever he wants, whatever you’re holding onto…it can’t be worth all this.”
So, he knew.
When I didn’t respond, he knocked softly at the door again. The lock clicked, and he withdrew.
That day, the margrave moved to the back of my forearms, concentrating on the protruding bones of my wrists.
The following day, my shins and ankles.
Sometime after that, I was brought to him in my robe and nightdress, which laced up at the back.
On the center of his desk sat a familiar brown journal with waterlogged pages.
My heart clenched. I had shoved it in my tunic pocket, intending to burn it, on the day I was taken. With all that happened, I’d forgotten.
“This is very enlightening,” he said. “It’s taken a long time to riddle through.” He flipped open the pages, and horror descended over me. The ink was faint and blurred in spots, but my writings and drawings were all there.
“I knew you’d uncovered something big. Do you really think I’d go through such trouble to get you home if I thought you knew nothing?
Or that we’d go through all this if I had no sense of the secrets you hold?
This journal is remarkable, but you’ve left even more out, haven’t you?
I can see it in your eyes. You’re holding onto something so great, it would bring down the Riht itself. ”
Fear lanced through my chest, and I couldn’t help the way I stiffened and sucked in a breath.
He knew. A slow smile spread over his face as he watched me fight back the urge to squirm.
There was no doubt in my mind. He might not know what I was holding back, but he knew I had secrets worth beating his own kin—his own daughter—to reveal.
“Are you ready to speak?” he asked simply.
When I shook my head, he had my nightdress undone just enough to expose my back while standing.
I clung to the thin fabric covering my chest. These lashes were harder, and I wondered as my skin split whether it was because he didn’t have to look into my face as each blow fell.
The next day, the session was even longer. The margrave replaced the reed with a leather lure, allowing him to use more strength without the reed snapping in two. How practical, I thought, as he opened new stripes across my back.
That night, I slept on my stomach. The nightdress kept snagging on my back until I ripped the whole thing off—regretting it as my fresh scabs ripped open again—and lay there naked from the waist up. I stared out the small patch of window I could see from my vantage until I fell asleep.
“SERAE…” THAT voice, his voice, was a caress on my skin. A kiss pressed to my shoulder, and his short beard tickled just beneath.
I groaned, not wanting to wake.
“We have unfinished business between us.” His voice was laced with sin.
“Mmm…” I tried to roll over, but his body pressed against my back. The skin of his bare chest grazed against mine, and it was enough to drive me mad.
“All I can think about is how fucking good you taste.” His hand snaked between my body and the mattress, searching for that perfect spot and teasing in a way only he could.
I stretched, catlike, as he circled a finger around my bud, sending lightning bolts through my core.
“You like that?” he asked.
“Fuck yes.”
This was too good to be true. My body had been aching for his touch with a desperation that threatened my sanity. It was all too much and not enough.
“As I recall, we were interrupted the last time I had you naked and writhing on my tongue.”
“Martyrs, that mouth.” I twisted, capturing his lips, kissing him with everything I had between the moans he coaxed from me.
He eased me onto my back, and the only solace I had from losing his mouth on mine was the fact that his lips were now trailing down my stomach. He parted my legs and settled between them.
A sharp stab of pain lanced across my back. I twitched, lifting off the mattress, and my wrists throbbed in response.
“Eldreth,” I cried, and my eyes flew open. The room was empty. My bed was empty except for me. I looked down at my naked torso and the stripes of bruises and cuts down my arms. I was still in Cavendaffe, trapped in my old room and very much alone.
Gingerly, I turned onto my stomach. Pain surged across my spine at every movement, no matter how slight. I buried my face in my pillow, wishing I could never wake up again. If tears came, no one was there to witness.
ELDRETH
Late Autumn, Talmon 1036
Four entire weeks of waiting. I was ready to tear out my fucking hair. It took one day to assemble a crew of forty after the council came back with their decision. The wrong fucking decision. We would not invade Inra. They could all get fucked.
Serae wasn’t safe in Inra. It didn’t matter if they were her people, they took her by force.
Their leader, whose life was forfeit the next time I saw him, nearly slit open her throat.
And they wanted me to trust her life to those people?
Serae, who meant more to me—to the whole of the Riht—than any other.
The counsel should’ve known better. Even Longven was ready to help, providing the fastest galley in the fleet to speed us across the White Sea.
It was carved with a single dragon head at the stempost, and looking at it made my insides churn.
Vaya’la.
I’d repeated the name hundreds of times in my head. A name I only knew because of Serae. A name I now safeguarded on Serae’s behalf, because I couldn’t fucking safeguard her.