Her mouth opened, and I clapped my hand over it before she could scream. Muffled noises leaked between my fingers. Wren helped me hold her back, both of us using all our weight to keep her pinned in place. Tears streamed down her cheeks.
“We’ll take him back,” I whispered, “just like the others.”
She moaned a violent muffled objection.
“He will pay,” Wren promised. “But he goes back to face justice, like the queen wanted. The long ride will be the best torture we could inflict.” The chievdar who had killed Wren’s parents had died in battle, but her lip trembled and her eyes brimmed with tears too, knowing Synové’s pain as her own.
We stayed in our tense knot, holding back and holding on, Synové’s heaving breaths the only sounds in the room. Her shoulders finally went limp beneath our hands. Her breathing calmed, and she nodded, resigned to her vows and duty.
Evening was quickly falling, and we returned to the main house with our plan still forming, my hands still salty with Synové’s tears. We were just inside the door when I heard the dogs loosed.
My legs ached as I walked the final steps back to my room, as if every bit of strength had finally been wrung from them. I was already raw with pain of my own, and Synové’s agony had only deepened it.
I dreaded dinner tonight. I dreaded seeing Jase. How could I pretend I didn’t know?
How could he have hidden all this from me? Doors guarded by poisonous dogs that he claimed led nowhere? An invitation to the queen that was really a trap? A groundsman who was really a murderous fugitive? Weapons to dominate all the kingdoms?
His little enclave was a dragon’s dark den.
Fool me once, Jase.
My thoughts jumped, my own words taunting me. The thing about a mark is they’ve created lies in their head, a story they’ve invented that they desperately want to believe, a fantasy that merely needs to be fed.
But this time it was I who had been that round-mouthed fish breaking the surface of the water, following crumb after crumb, swallowing each one whole.
I was the mark, the witless dupe of my own game.
And Jase had played me expertly.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
KAZI
“Where have you been, Kazi?”
I gasped, whirling toward the voice.
Jase sat in the chair in the corner of my room. In the dark.
“Here, let me.” He reached out and turned the wheel on the bedside lantern just until I could see him, the rest of the room still cast in shadows.
His face and voice were frighteningly void of any expression. “You didn’t answer me,” he said. “I’ve been waiting quite a while. Where have you been?”
You’ll have to smooth it over with him.
Apologize.
Juggle, Kazi. Juggle as you always do.
“None of your business,” I answered. “Get out.”
I had no juggling left in me. Not in this moment. Not for him.
His expression barely flinched. Just the slightest lift of his chin. Cold. Detached.
He stood.
“I think I see the problem here. I didn’t address you properly. I apologize. I should have called you Ten.”
He took a step closer, his shoulders pulled back. He knew. My stomach squeezed. “I—”
“Don’t,” he warned, his gaze as sharp as a razor, his cool veneer vanished. “Don’t even try to deny it. It’s all obvious now, palming the keys, my ring, disappearing right beneath our noses, the girl at the settlement calling you Ten and you shutting her up.” His nostrils flared. “It’s ironic, don’t you think, all that self-righteous indignation you flung at me when we were in the wilderness because I was a thieving Ballenger. I should be laughing, shouldn’t I?”
He strained to keep his fury in check, but even in the dim light I saw his temples burning with fire. “And then today?” He stroked the bruise on his jaw where I had struck him. “In front of everyone at the arena, you screamed and lectured me on the Previzi, when you were nothing but a common thief yourself! Is that why you hate them so much, because they remind you of you?”
My hands trembled. I swallowed, trying to maintain control. “Get out of my room, Jase, before I hurt you.”
He stepped toward me. “I expect an answer, dammit!”
“You mean you demand it, Patrei, don’t you?” I spit back at him. “Because you get whatever you want! You take whatever you want! You do whatever you want!”
His eyes sparked, dissecting me, judging, blazing. The bruise on the side of his face was an angry purple. “I’m not leaving,” he growled. “Not until I get an answer.”
My nails dug into my palms.
He didn’t blink. He would wait here until morning if he had to, fueling his own self-righteousness. My own rage suddenly tipped beyond a point I recognized, seams coming loose, ripping, popping, everything tearing free. “All right, Jase,” I yelled, “here’s your answer! Yes, I was a thief! But don’t you dare call me a common one!”
I flung my hands up in front of me. “Look at my fingers, Jase! Take a good long look at every single one, because I’m not missing any. That’s how I got my name! And I’m proud of it! In Venda, before the queen came, the Komizar’s punishment for stealing was cutting off a fingertip—even if you were a child! Even if you only stole a handful of bread!
“I was alone on the streets from the time I was six. Completely on my own. No one cared if I lived or died. Can you imagine that, Jase? I didn’t grow up like you.” I heard my voice getting louder, more heated, more poisonous, more out of control. I didn’t pace, didn’t move. I was a stone rooted to the floor. “I stole to survive! I had no family. No dining room table to sit at and pass pretty dishes. No carpets under my feet or chandeliers over my head. No servant to bring me food. No parties in the garden. I had to scavenge for every rotten mouthful I ever ate. I had no coats made by tailors. I wore rags upon rags to stay warm in winter. I lived in a hovel carved out of fallen ruins. No heat! No hot baths! No soap! If I did bathe at all, it was in icy water in the public washbasins. Sometimes I cut my hair off with a knife, because it was so infested with vermin I couldn’t feel my own scalp!”
I stepped over to his bookshelf and swiped an armful of books to the floor. “And I had no tutors, no books, no pens or paper! If it couldn’t be eaten, it had no use for me. My whole life revolved around my next meal and how to get it. I lived on the edge of death every day of my life until I became good at thieving, and I won’t apologize for it!”
His face had changed, the hardness gone, probably trying to imagine the filthy urchin I had once been. “What about your parents?” he asked.
The poison racing through me pooled to ice in my veins. I shook my head. “I never knew my father. I don’t know if he’s alive, dead, or the emperor of the moon! I don’t care!”
I looked down. I knew what was coming next. The thing that always hung between us. Every other question was hinged to this one, a thousand doors opening a single doorway.
“And your mother? What happened to her?”
I had never told anyone. Shame and fear perched in my gut, ready to spring. My jaws ached, the words wedged behind them. I turned away and walked toward the door.
“Fine!” he yelled. “Run away! Shut yourself off like you always do! Go live in whatever prison you’ve created for yourself!”
I stopped at the door, shaking with rage. The prison that I created? A furious cloud swirled in my vision. I whipped back to face him, and his eyes latched onto mine.
“Tell me, Kazi.”
Clamminess crept over my skin, and I leaned against the door to steady myself. I felt some part of me splitting in two, one part still cowering, the other watching from a thousand miles away like an uncertain observer. “I was six when my mother was taken,” I said. “It was the middle of the night, and we were lying together on a raised pallet in our hovel. I was asleep when I felt her finger on my lips and heard her whisper. Shhh, Kazi, don’t say a word. Those were the last words she ever said to me. She shoved me to the floor to hide me beneath the bed. And then—”
I looked up at the ceiling, my eyes stinging.