“Mealtime,” Thief explained. He had scarcely moved from his place on the hay, but he sat forward on his haunches.
Jack approached the door, trying to see as much of the corridor as he could. A guard was pushing a rickety cart full of dinner trays, stopping at every cell to slide it under the door. When the man reached Jack’s cell, he paused.
“Get back,” he barked impatiently.
Jack startled at the gruffness but eased away from the door. “May I speak to Lady Cora?”
“Pierce said you would ask that. No. You can’t speak to her.” He roughly slid the dinner tray beneath the door.
It looked like a slice of bread with a burnt crust, a bowl of watery soup, a mealy apple, and a wedge of cheese. Thief leapt to hoard the tray, taking it back to his corner. He began to shove the bread into his mouth, but he watched Jack with glittering amusement.
“Please,” Jack said to the guard, unable to temper his desperation. “Cora will want to see me. I promise you.”
The guard ignored him and moved on to the next cell.
Jack sagged against the wall, exhausted. He slowly slid down to the floor and stared absently ahead of him. He was so far away in that moment that he nearly forgot about Thief, even as his cellmate slurped the entire bowl of soup.
“Who is Lady Cora to you?” Thief asked eventually.
Jack wanted to ignore him. But he needed to stay in Thief’s good graces if there was any chance of them swapping places.
“She’s my wife.”
Complete and utter silence.
When Jack glanced sidelong at Thief, he saw that his cellmate was gaping. And then the laughter came, as Jack knew it would. He suffered through it without a word, stoic and brooding, and Thief finally wiped the tears from his eyes.
“Married to Cora. I haven’t heard that one yet.” He chuckled as he tossed the mealy apple to Jack. The only part of dinner he was going to share.
Jack sighed. He took a bite of the fruit, felt its juice drip down his chin.
Thief said, “Now I see why they call you mad.”
Jack was dozing when the guards finally came for Thief.
The door unlocked and swung open with a bang, and Jack jerked awake.
“Up with you, Thief!” one of the guards said. “Time to prove your honor in the arena.”
Jack watched as Thief slowly rose to his feet, brushing stalks of hay from his tunic. He took one step forward but then paused to look at Jack.
“Mad Thief would like to take my place in tonight’s fight,” he said. “I’ve agreed to it.”
Jack’s heart became electric. It began to pump so hard and fast that he saw stars dance at the edges of his vision. He pushed himself up to his feet.
“This true?” the guard asked brusquely. “You want to fight tonight?”
“Yes,” Jack whispered. He hated how small and weak he sounded.
“This is the thief Pierce brought in,” said one of the guards toward the back of the group. “He wants to be present when this one dies.”
“Well, go ask him if tonight will work. He’s already here, in the arena.”
One guard hurried away with a torch while the others stepped outside the cell and locked the door, waiting for Rab’s approval. Of course it came, as Jack knew it would. He knew Rab Pierce was eager to see his blood spilled.
As Jack stepped forward, allowing the guards to shackle his hands behind his back, he looked one last time at Thief, who was sitting on the floor and leaning against the wall, in the same spot Jack had first seen him.
“Good luck to you, Mad Thief,” he said, tipping his head as Jack was hauled forward. “I’m afraid you’re going to need every bit of it, facing Oathbreaker.”
Chapter 22
Dear Adaira,
You’ll be surprised by this letter. You’ll be surprised that I’m writing to you so soon after my previous letter, especially given my past record of letter-writing responses. I know I let a shame-worthy number of days pass between my replies to you, and for that I can only blame my stubbornness and pride.
I hope to serve my penance to you, though, in whatever ways you’d like.
You can expect me to write another letter tod tomorrow, actually. It might take a few days to reach you—the ravens are flying quite slow as of late—but when it does reach you . . . when you hold it in your hands . . . I hope you turn eastward and envision me, walking the hills and thinking of you.
And should there come another expanse of days between my letters . . . then you can rest assured that there is a good reason for it.
—Your Old Menace
Adaira read through Jack’s letter twice, puzzling over it. She smiled at his strange humor at first, but then her thoughts were overcome with a nagging suspicion.
He knew their letters were being screened, so what was he trying to express to her? There had to be another meaning lurking beneath his odd choice of phrases, the deliberate ink blots, the crossed-out words. Jack was the sort of person who would write the same letter four times before sending it, to perfect it in appearance and tone.
She carried the letter to her desk, shifting her half-eaten dinner and her notes from the new library aside as she sat. She bent over the wrinkled parchment and studied it by candlelight, drawing out different words he had written and testing them on her tongue.
It was the tod tomorrow that intrigued her the most. At the time he wrote this, something must have been happening for him the next day, which was now probably the other day, or perhaps even two days ago now. Adaira wasn’t sure how long David held her letters before delivering them. It had occurred to her a few times that her father might hold them a while before handing them over to her.
The notion made her anxious because whatever Jack was striving to convey to her in this letter was time-sensitive.
It might take a few days to reach you. He plainly spoke of another letter, but what if he was alluding to something else reaching her?
A knock on her bedroom door startled her out of her reveries. Adaira had come to learn the different raps at her door; she knew this one was Innes, and she winced as she rose to answer. She had been avoiding her mother ever since the culling and ever since she had snuck in and out of the castle. But knowing she could put it off no longer, she unlocked the door.
Innes was silent for a moment, regarding her with a cold, emotionless expression. Her silver-blond hair was braided, and she wore a blue tunic trimmed in thick golden thread. Her vambraces were gone, and the tattoos that wove up her arms were on full display. Interlocking patterns that danced around stories and scars.
“Would you like to come in?” Adaira asked gently.
“No, I have somewhere I need to be tonight,” Innes replied. “But I haven’t seen you lately. I wanted to ensure you are well, and that you don’t need anything.”
“Oh.” Adaira couldn’t hide the surprise in her tone. “I’m quite well, and I don’t need anything at the moment. But thank you for asking.”