Chapter 10—Prison Singer

“Oy, kid, where’s your family?”

“I’m twenty-three—“

“And wandering around in a god forsaken desert. You can’t tell me no one cares that you’re out here.”

“She’s my family.”

“What, the princess? Ugh, this is your sentiment talking again, isn’t it?”

“Even if it is, it’s all I have. I was supposed to be a gift to her. Wherever my parents are, they’ve long forgotten about me. That’s what you’re supposed to do with gifts.”

“You can’t give people as gifts.”

“But you can slaves.”

***

It’s okay if you want him.

Those words played over and over in her head. Try as she might to ignore them, or even to push the dream to the back of her mind where all dreams inevitably went, they kept needling through her thoughts like the sharp tang of smoke.

It’s okay if you want him.

It was a horrible idea. True to the gods awful. Einar had done nothing to deserve her disloyalty less than a week into their marriage, especially when he had shown nothing but an intention to make the best of it.

It’s okay if you want him.

Despite her throbbing ankle, she was back down in the kitchens, kneading yet another mound of dough until her arms ached. She wished it were her brain and heart she rolled against the wood, anything to get these horrible feelings away.

She thought of the sky above the birch tree. She thought of swimming and apples. She thought about being free.

And it made her angry.

“The kingdom has wars with or without me,” she growled, yanking up the dough that had begun to stick just to throw it back down with a violent ‘thwack.’ “He’ll move on. I’ll move on. And I’ll just end up in the same damn place!”

THWACK.

She stared down for a long moment, breathing heavily. Outside the birds had just begun to twitter. Any moment now, Hope would come in and scold her back into a chair for the day to heal.

The corner of her eyes burned.

“I hate him,” she hissed.

Because, in the end, Einar was the one who had decided all this. He had been the one to ask the king for her hand. He could have asked for anything for saving their country, but he had asked for her without even knowing her. Like one of those stupid fairytales where the peasant gets to marry the princess for fulfilling some stupid quest. Why were there so many of those anyways?

If he had just kept to himself…

Hope did come in. As Kyanna had predicted, she puffed up like an angry chicken at the sight of the princess, still in her nightgown, elbow deep in flour. But enough of her mood shone on her face that Hope didn’t rush her back off to her room. Instead, she sat her up on a stool and got to work on breakfast. Hope tried to get Kyanna to talk, but there wasn’t much more to say. It was back to day one again, and Kyanna had enough pride not to repeat herself like a song stuck in your head. Besides, there was nothing Hope could do. There was nothing any of them could do.

She hardly noticed when the little scullery maid, Dianne, slipped into the corner with a bag of damp potatoes and started peeling them with a short, polished knife.

Einar entered just as Hope had finished the bacon.

A jolt ran through Kyanna at the sight of him, a thought suddenly occurring to her.

There was someone who could do something about it.

Hope pursed her lips in displeasure.

“This shouldn’t become habit for you two,” she said. “The King gave us strict instructions to leave you two alone. And he even did trials for the guards on their ability to stay hidden.”

Ah. So that’s why she’d hardly seen any guards since coming here.

“Hey, the Princess started it,” he said, giving said princess a soft smile as he eased onto the stool besides her. “I’m kind of surprised you made the effort to get down here on that ankle of yours.”

“Don’t remind me,” said Hope with an angry clack of tongs. She gave Kyanna her most displeased glare.

Kyanna hardly felt it, lightheaded with her realization. Why hadn’t she thought of it sooner?

“I woke up early,” she said.

“That’s an understatement,” he said, pulling a muffin over to him—just to have his fingers smacked by the spoon. “Ow!”

“You can eat that elsewhere. I’ll have it prepared for you. Take the Princess back upstairs.”

He pouted at her, which brought out the still boyish traits of his face. “I thought I was a Prince now.”

“Honey, I practically raised the Queen and the princess by myself. I can do what I like. Now, Princess, I let you down here the past few days to get used to it, but the first week is almost up and I can’t justify ignoring the king’s orders anymore, and you’re injured. So you stay with your husband—“

“I get it, Hope, you can stop while you’re ahead.”

“Then don’t make me say it in the first place! Up! Up!”

There was a loud clatter of a knife. Both of them turned in time to see Dianne clutch her fingers as the potato she had been holding tumbled to the ground. By the time Hope had come around to see what had happened Einar had walked over and taken her hand. Blood trickled down her hand.

Kyanna couldn’t help but frown. Hurting herself again? Was this maid danger-prone or what? Why’d her father even send her as a maid if she wasn’t capable?

“Aw, jee, that’s deep…”

The pale, thin fingers were trembling in his hands as he pulled out a handkerchief from his shirt and accepted a wet rag from Hope. Kyanna watched as the scullery maid’s face turned all sorts of colors behind a thin curtain of orange curls and felt a twinge of displeasure.

Einar carefully cleaned the blood away and wrapped up her palm tightly in his handkerchief.

“There you go,” he said. “Too tight?”

She shook her head swiftly. No. No, this could work. If he grew fond of another woman, this would make this much easier. Even if this was highly inappropriate for a married man, let alone one of noble status. Ugh, she was beginning to understand why everyone got so annoyed with her not acting like a proper princess.

Hope came around to shoo Einar back towards the counter, voicing Kyanna’s same thoughts.

“This girl is my responsibility, not yours, your highness. You may not know this, but it is highly inappropriate for one of your status to be taking care of a scullery maid who is by no means helpless, and in front of your new wife, no less.”

Einar blinked, a piece of bacon that he had swiped from the counter half way to his mouth. “Oh, uh, sure. Um…would you be okay sending this out front for us? It’s a nice morning and all.”

Next thing Kyanna knew, she was sat beneath another large tree on dewy grass, watching the white dray horses run by on the other side of the fence as she tore apart muffins. The world still held that crisp chill of dawn and the sun glittered behind the treetops across the pasture, wearing a top hat of pink that spread across the horizon. Einar sat beside her, happily munching away at breakfast.

“I can check ‘watching the rising sun’ off my romantic to do list.” He said with his cheesy, puppy-dog smile. “Didn’t know you could make apple muffins. And man, this bacon is good.”

“Hero,”

“I’m supposing by that you mean me?”

“Don’t be snarky, what was all that about back there in the kitchen?”

He stopped half chew to look at her in confusion. “Hm?”

She sighed. “Look, I know you grew up a practically like a peasant, but I figured you were well traveled enough to know basic manners. You practically cooed at her right there in front of me.” She hesitated. “Are you fond of her?”

Now his expression changed to disbelief.

“She was bleeding all over the place and Hope’s hands were caked in—in stuff! Just because I did something nice doesn’t mean I fancy her.

“It’s okay if you do.” Kyanna kept her eyes averted and her face carefully schooled to look uncaring as she daintily bit into a muffin.

She could feel his confusion. “Well, I don’t. I’m married to you, aren’t I? I thought I’d made it plenty clear who it was I wanted from the get-go.”

Her stomach clenched and warmed.

Kyanna swallowed. “About that…”

But the words caught in her throat as a sudden anxiety came over her. If he was telling the truth about wanting her from the start…though it could only be superficial. He hadn’t known her outside of her title until the day they had been married. It couldn’t be like he was that deep already.

During the awkward pause in which Kyanna searched for words, Einar leaned against the oak tree they sat beneath, an unsettling gleam came to his eye as he slipped a piece of bacon into his muffin. Rearranging it unnecessarily he said casually, “There’s no need to get jealous. I swear I only have eyes for you.”

She scowled. Before she could think better of it, “Why in the world would I be jealous over you?”

Taken aback, he said, “I, uh…”

She clenched her eyes shut, reining in the rush of feelings. “Excuse me, that—I didn’t mean for that to come out that way. That was offensive.”

When Einar didn’t say anything to that, she sighed, once more disgusted with herself.

“Look, I…I apologize. That had nothing to do with you.” Kyanna breathed. Perhaps she should have said nothing. It would be easier if she was unappealing to Einar. “The reason I asked is because I…I have a proposition to make that would be easier if you did find that maid attractive.”

She glanced to the side at him then and suddenly wished she hadn’t.

Einar’s expression had sharpened like a blade, banishing the very thought of those goofy grins and soft eyes he had given her before.

For the first time, she saw a man that fit the title of war hero.

“No.” His tone was as hard as steel.

She wilted. “You haven’t even heard me out.”

“I’m not going to find someone else. I’m married to you, I love you, and I am never going to give up until I have won your heart as well.”

Heat, like fire, broiled up from her stomach to her face.

“That’s ridiculous! You’ve only known me a few days—“

“I’ve known you a lot longer than a few days, Princess. Just because you don’t remember me doesn’t mean I don’t remember everything about you.”

The heat clenched into a chill up her spine. “Wh-what?”

The edge to his features softened a bit, and the Einar she had grown used to returned to the surface, though his eyes remained hard and bright.

When he didn’t answer her, even going back to nibble on bacon as though no tension existed between them, she found herself growing sore with disappointment and anger.

“So you were around at some ball or nobles meeting,” she snapped. “When did I ever give you the idea that I would fall in love with you? Someone beat you to it and that’s Jeremy, and the one who took me away from that is you! I thought I’d be nice enough to allow you a lover in return for him, but now you’re just being stupid! You say you know me, but you don’t know me at all if you aren’t afraid of the living hell I can make your life!”

The words shocked even her a bit. But they had been the words of her heart and Kyanna was anything by a liar. If he was dedicated enough to give her that frightening warrior’s look then he might as well know what he was getting himself into.

Yet all Einar did was turn those hard eyes back on her.

He tossed his strange bacon and muffin combination back onto the plate.

“If you love this man so much you’re willing to have an affair, why bother going through with marrying me? It seems less effort and dishonor to just refuse from the get-go.”

Kyanna flinched and dropped her head. Ah, yes, here was the rub.

“I saw wisdom in my father’s words.” She said quietly. “And, even if I am a sorry excuse for a princess, I do care about my kingdom and what happens to it, and I know what kinds of bad decisions people can make when carried away by their feelings.” She clenched her fists in her lap, burying her fingers in pink cotton. “I’ve…I’ve just been a spoiled brat up until now, doing what I want, but I couldn’t do that with something like kingship. Even if it is cowardly and weak, I can’t be like the Soan. I can’t just do what I want.” She looked up. “But that’s exactly it. Princess or not, I want to be free.”

Einar snorted, an unruly and skeptical sound that was unlike him and his kind ways.

She closed her eyes. That was it, then. She’d truly offended him now. And hearing her own words out loud deflated whatever determination she had into shame.

What am I saying?

“Well, I’m sorry, Princess, that you are so disappointed with the lot you chose. If I had known you were so fond of self-pity…” There was a brief quiet that expanded in her mind for hours in which Einar sighed to himself.

After a moment, filled with the twitter of birds and horses whiffling in the distance, he got to his feet.

“I’ll consider it.”

Any hardness that had been in his voice before had left, leaving him sounding tired. As he climbed over the fence and walked away, she considered following him, twisted ankle be damned, and recanting everything she had said.

And yet…

Pushing breakfast away, she covered her face in her hands.

Maybe she had been just a little bit jealous.

The early morning caught up with her as the sun began to warm the land. Her copious skirts turned into a nest in the grass that she curled into, pretending with all her might that she still drifted in the river by the apple trees, the water blocking out the world and the sun glittering through the leaves above.

Eventually, the leaves faded away and Kyanna found herself on her feet and in the royal stables.

“Why did you agree to marry him?”

Jeremy stood before her leaning casually against a post. His arms were crossed and next to him a black horse munched on straw. They fit together, the horse and him. A dark-haired and eyed man next to a dark horse.

Kyanna put a palm to her clenching heart.

“Because…because…” somehow her mouth didn’t want to work. She knew what she had to say, she knew her excuses, but that’s what they were. What she really had been was weak, disloyal, and cowardly, and she could practically hear his thoughts saying so.

“I thought you loved me. What happened to all our times together? Was that nothing?”

She moved to say no, but her sluggish tongue was beaten by Jeremy.

“You’re just like everyone else, taking the easy way out. I was okay with waiting like you asked, but it was you who couldn’t wait. You were just jumping to have some guilt-free sex like some common whore?”

“No!” she cried, and she pressed her hands over her ears.

But she hadn’t been loyal to Einar either. She hadn’t had the honor or character to even go through with her initial decision, just as she hadn’t gone through with anything with Jeremy. So she really had to be—

“No! I did not get married for those reasons. I just wanted to do what was right, and there were other people’s welfare involved, I had to do what they needed. And I couldn’t abandon my father—“

“—by running away with me?” he sneered at her and pushed off the post “Well, congratulations, Princess. This is the last time we’ll ever be able to be together because of your choice.” Then with a sudden tremor he bowed his head and brought his hand to his face. “Kyanna, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to make you feel so awful, I just…don’t think before I speak and am expressing how I feel about all this. I didn’t know who else to talk to and I was always way too open with you. And you’re so…you were the angel of my life. I feel lost now without you, as though the lights have been snuffed out, and now, I’m alone in the darkness. I should have stolen you away when I got to the bridal room. It was just…I was hoping you’d do something. You are the princess. I’m just…”

She had heard these sorts of words before. Jeremy had always had a dark air of melodrama about him, and that was partly what drew her to him. But something had broken past her ribs and fire was steadily burning away her heart.

Suddenly, a great brightness burst out from behind her, striking deep into the dim light of the barn. The horses screamed in fright. The colors bleached with the light—everything except for Jeremy. He stood out like a silhouette in his gray livery and black colorings. Even his pale skin shaded silvery like the moon.

He stared straight on into the light, alarmed.

“Kyanna, no, don’t—”

But she had already turned around.

A desert expanded about her, the stable nothing more than a thought. Sand glowed white with the reflective brilliance of the sun. She unclenched her hands to shade her eyes.

Before her, dancing to that yet to be heard music, was the Soan. As beautiful as ever, she turned and twisted, shimming her hips while somehow keeping the rest of her body absolutely still. Even as Kyanna watched the isolated wave of those hips, she began to hear the zills, trilling with each rotation.

Kyanna’s ears strained for the drums. The horns. The heat.

“Wh-what are you doing here?” she asked. Her mouth worked well again.

The dancer paused to saunter over to her, those amber eyes of hers as hot as the sun above. She jutted a hip out to rest her hand on it. For once, her expression was far from amused.

“Is that really what you want? To be at the whims of a man? To be manipulated?”

Though she still ached with the encounter with Jeremy, this question made her angry.

“Look, I’m not the same as you! I have responsibilities! I live in a different world and in different circumstances. I can’t just leave everything behind to go be a sweaty floozy in the desert!” She dug her fingers through her hair. “Why do you even care? Do you even know me? Or Jeremy for that matter?”

The Soan just smiled slyly, as though she had heard a grand joke. Kyanna could hear the drums now. They called to her. The chiming zills chattered her bones. Without meaning to, as though pulled by strings, Kyanna raised her wrist and curved her spine to imitate the red-haired beauty, almost feeling her curves pushing aside the air. But at the last minute, she came to herself, and stomped her foot in frustration.

“I can’t!” she cried. “I can’t! Why do you keep taunting me?”

“Because it’s not what you want.”

“But it doesn’t matter what I want! And it never will!”

She awoke with Jeremy’s name at the tip of her tongue.

Einar bent over her, his knuckles brushed against her cheek. It had been that touch that had woken her.

“Are you alright?” he asked, his expression once softer, their previous conflict forgotten.

She blinked slowly, trying to guess at how long she had been asleep by the sun. It couldn’t have been more than an hour…or two?

He backed off as she sat up, eyebrows still arched with concern.

“You looked like you were in pain,” he said.

Sighing, she wiped a hand across her forehead, though no sweat had gathered there. It was still rather cool in the shade.

“Just a nightmare,” she pressed a thumb and forefinger to her eyes. “And this stupid reoccurring dream.”

“Of what?”

“Are you a dream diviner as well as a storyteller now?”

“Sadly, I can only be a man of so many talents.”

She heard his smile before seeing it. Always so easy to give it to her. Though, even as she thought that, it fell away, and consternation edged his gaze.

“You don’t have to tell me. I just…” he leaned back, lifting a knee to hang his hand off it. “I wanted to say I was sorry for snapping at you, though I’m not sorry for what I said.”

“I’m the one who should be sorry. Though…” she bit her lip, knowing she shouldn’t say anything, but the urge to be honest was difficult to resist. “Though I had figured being nasty to you might help you change your mind.”

He grimaced. “Am I really so bad to be around?”

“No!” And even as she said it, she realized it was true. “No. You’ve been nothing but kind, and I’ve loved the stories, and…and swimming and climbing trees was so much, so much fun. It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to just let loose and be myself,” and she should stop talking now, while she was still ahead.

But his eyes had already brightened. “You really feel like you can be yourself around me?”

“That isn’t necessarily a good thing.”

“How can it not be? I’m your husband?” and puppy smile back in full force, he scooted closer to her, leaning over. “And you really like the stories?”

She leaned back from him. “Yes?”

A shadow flickered across those sky-blue eyes. “Did Jeremy tell you stories?”

“…No.”

Pleased, he eased back onto the grass, folding his legs crisscross and allowing his knee to press up against hers. “I just remembered one while I was out and walking about that you might like, if you’re up to it, Princess.”

But just as he had been moving away from her, her eye had caught onto an odd symbol, made in silver-pink scar, mostly hidden by his wet wheat hair. It was only while leaning over her that his hair had shifted enough for her to see its curve against his neck.

“Einar, what is that on your neck?”

He went very still, though she saw his fingers stiffen around his shins. “Probably just a scar. I do have a lot.”

“No, it,” and before she could stop herself, his proximity probably only worsening the temptation, she reached out and brushed away his hair.

Einar sucked in quick through his nose.

Eyes made from a misshapen, crude figure eight stared back at her from a circle, cut in half by a line.

She gently ran the back of her fingernail across the bumps, a painful sympathy clenching tight as a fist in her gut.

“Einar.”

“Yes?” he sounded resigned.

“Where did you get this scar?”

His hand came up to pull hers away, allowing his hair to fall back into place over it.

“I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t like that story.”

“Why not?”

But he wouldn’t look at her, even with her so close. She blushed at that and sat back, stuffing her naughty hands beneath her knees.

“It’s…not a happy one. Or a good one.”

After a few seconds, though, he turned back, managing at least a small version of his usual smile.

“But the other one I had in mind includes a warrior queen who leads her country—“

“Einar, please?” At his fallen look, she dropped her gaze to her hands. “You said you know me, but until I remember when I’ve met you, I don’t know anything about you. And it’s rather disconcerting,” she hesitated, but since it was true. “I want to know you more.”

In some far corner of the manor, Hope shouted something, too far for the words to be made out. A magpie called through the grass.

“Well…I guess you could say I got it in a prison.”

She looked up, surprised. “A prison?”

He leaned back in the grass, putting his hands behind his head and stretching out his legs. His downturned lashes hid whatever emotion she could have seen in his eyes.

“It was a brand. A brand to show to the world where I belonged. When I got out I grew my hair out a bit so I could conceal it.”

“Are you saying it…it was burnt into your skin?“

“Yep. Welcome present to all new arrivals.”

“Why were you put in there? Where is this terrible place?” and then in a rush of fervor, she added, “I should tell father about this place and destroy it! How dare they brand a human being like cattle!”

He chuckled, but it had not an ounce of amusement.

“Oh, Princess…”

She prickled at the tone. “Don’t you dare call me naïve. Just because it happens doesn’t mean that it should.”

“I was going to say no such thing. That passionate sense of justice is one of the reasons I like you…I sometimes…”

“Sometimes what?”

When he didn’t answer, she shifted, wondering if she should wait or prod more. When he made no signs of continuing, she asked, quietly, “What are you thinking about?”

He only hesitated before answering. “About a story an old geezer once told me there. Seems that’s where my thoughts always go back to eventually: stories. Maybe I really should have been a bard.”

“Could you—would you mind telling me how you got in that prison? It’s okay if you don’t want to.” She pulled her knees up and rested her head on them. “Gods know I’ve done nothing but make you uncomfortable so far today. I know I said I wanted to know more, but I don’t want to infringe on you.”

“No, it’s all right. It’s just…” he sighed. “Even though I said you wouldn’t like that, that’s not the only thing. I haven’t talked to anyone about these things. They’re hard enough trying not to think about, but I might as well get started. I hear if you keep these sorts of things in they drive you mad.”

She had heard of that too. Stories of war veterans screaming in the night and eventually going insane were not uncommon.

The thought of that happening to the man beside her filled her with dread. Once more, she wondered why she had never thought of something like this.

Einar took a steadying breath.

“I was an enemy soldier. But I’d proven to be even worse than that with all my lone infiltration missions and how many men I’d killed. I was good at evasion, and the only reason they’d managed to get me at all was because they had shot out my legs. By the time I arrived at Hrathbern, the special place for their favorite prisoners of war, and branded, I had lost a lot of blood. I was expected to die in my cell, but my cellmate, a man named Nath, took pity on me and used his meager rations and knowledge as a battlefield physician to nurse me back to health. A real weirdo, Nath. He had this huge lump on his nose he named Percy and he’d pet it when he was bored and…”

But Einar trailed off, turning his head towards the tree.

Kyanna didn’t press him, and eventually, he continued.

“One night while I was lying there, feeling bitter and mad as hell for getting myself stuck in that pit, some of the prisoners along the hall began to sing. The song was so mournful in the way it was sung, but so eerily beautiful with how it echoed off the walls that I found myself caught up in it. It had been…” he closed his eyes, an enraptured look upon his face. “I asked Nath what they were singing and that’s when he told me of a beauty named Katherine. See? I always go back to the stories. I can’t even stay on my own life. I wonder if, really, I’m just a gossipy housewife in a man’s body.”

“Who was Katherine?”

“Katherine had been just another of the many prisoners that were brought to Hrathbern. Her story was not unique in its tragedy: she had lost her few-month-old baby to illness, and she had taken the place of her husband as a prisoner of war. She had been young, newly married and widowed, and very beautiful. The prisoners who had lasted long enough to remember her always spoke of her eyes: bluer than the deepest dye and gleaming like diamonds. See, Princess, blue eyes are rather rare amongst the desert people, so they stand out a lot. A blue-eyed slave over there could go for thousands.

“Well, a prison is no place for a woman, and Hrathbern was no exception. The work was not designed for anyone but the strongest, and there were not just traitors and prisoners of war there, but full-blown criminals who would have no trouble of conscience in taking advantage of a woman. On her first night, however, after she had been branded and no one cared for her quiet weeping, she began to sing within her cell in a voice that stilled all those below and above. Nath said it spoke to the spirits of the dead left to rot there and the tired yearning of the living. All the nights afterwards, on finishing a hard day’s work of struggling to stay alive, she would crawl into the moonlight and sing her song for the prisoners. She would sing for the weary, for the sad, for the disheartened, and for the dying with that clear voice of hers.

“The prisoners came to depend on her song and came to guard her from the rapists, the murderers, and the guards to the best of their ability. They even helped her with her work at their own risk, for if one does not fulfill their work up to standards, one dies, and some nights she hadn’t even the strength to sing.”

“What do you mean? What kind of work is it?”

Einar pushed back the long sleeves of his undershirt, bringing the splotches of bumpy silver-white and pink to light. They almost looked like clusters of flowers set against his tanned skin.

“At the time I was there, we heated crucibles and prepped ingots for the smith. Problem is, we weren’t exactly given any protective clothing or told any precautions, and the crucibles themselves could have held a dozen men, so there were more than a few who fell in or were killed by the heat. But, if that wasn’t enough to keep the prison population under control, there was Tribunal every week.”

“Tribunal?” she was afraid to ask.

“Those who had grown too weak, old, or did not fulfill their duties to the taskmaster’s liking were taken up before the prisoners and slaughtered. There was this big stage of stone they used that had turned brown with all the blood spilt on it.”

He gave a long sigh.

“Anyway…despite Katherine’s newfound friends and her beauty, she was taken there with the rest of the weak eventually. They say she went before her time because she had brought hope to the prisoners and the guards feared that. In her memory the prisoners would sing that song, sort of as a ‘stick it to the man’ sort of deal, and the tradition’s gone on through the years, with one prisoner teaching it to the next.”

Then, very softly, in the same rich tenor he had sung the ballad of the two sisters in love with the miller’s son, Einar began to sing to her.

“Between the light of the moon and day, Beside my departed love I’ll lay, Away from the gruesome sun so hot, We’ll know love with only stars to watch.

For only life keeps us apart.

When I close my eyes to see A different part of the living me I’ll hold my lover close, and he Well never again have to leave, For only life keeps us apart.

We’ll meet only dressed in dew, In moonfall kiss ourselves anew, Never again to feel the pain Of being separated again, For only life keeps us apart.”

Kyanna wrapped her arms tightly around her chest. The song vibrated through her stomach and bones like the desert music of the Soan had, yet the last thing it urged her to do was dance.

“That’s…how could that encourage anyone? It just sounds like she wanted to die.’

“More or less.” His tone was flat. “In that place heaven or hell is all you have waiting for you.”

“But why not escape?”

“It’s the brand, Kyanna. Everyone in that country knows it as good as their own name, and they all know what it means. A branded man has no life at all.”

“But then, how did you get out?”

“Nath. It wasn’t till I was to full health did I realize he had been giving me almost all of his rations on top of my own. If I had been fully aware and known what was happening, I would’ve stopped him. He knew he was growing old and that he’d be chosen for the next Tribunal. He told me that while he was up there on that bloody rock, he would cause a distraction and I could break free. It was obvious I was a foreigner, meaning I still had a chance to get out of that country. But besides that, he learned from me talking in my fevers that I was after Syan himself, the tyrant leader of the desert armies, and that I had found the way to defeat him, so he put his hope in me. If Syan went down, so would Hrathburn. I tried to save him in the chaos.”

“Did you?”

His lashes shivered and he lifted his head to look back at his arms, now crossed over his chest. Tight bundles of splotchy pink and silver flowers. “No. I didn’t. Some of my scars are for trying.”

She looked down at her fingertips, pressing each one with her thumb.

Somewhere in the manor, a door slammed shut.