“You speak with your hands?”
“Over a century ago, the king of Anthar created a language spoken strictly with hand gestures instead of words so that his warriors could remain silent in battle. We still teach it to all of our warriors.” He climbs to his feet and holds a hand down to me. I pull against his hand to stand. “We need to keep going.”
“Wait.” I take the knife from my waistband and hand it to him.
He frowns. “You don’t want the knife?”
I grip my skirt and pull it taut. “Will you please cut my skirt so I can move more freely?”
He nods, kneels at my feet, and begins the arduous process of cutting through the fabric of the skirt and the four petticoats, depositing a pile of hewn cloth beside my feet. When he is done, he looks at my bare legs and sucks his breath in through his teeth. “That’s why you didn’t want me to see your legs.”
I glance down, and a wave of shame dampens my mood. Even in the dim light, the scars stand out against my skin like puckered white veins. I smooth what is left of my skirt, pressing it down over my knees as far as it will go.
“Please don’t tell me all of those scars are from you riding astride,” he says.
“No. Only this one.” I bend down and touch a thin scar on my ankle. “The rest are from other times. My father whipped my legs whenever I was disobedient,” I explain. “I was a headstrong, disobedient daughter.” My face burns with humiliation, and I hug my arms over my chest.
“How disobedient?” he asks, voice skeptical.
“I was forbidden to call the queen mother, and when I forgot, she would get so upset that she would take to her rooms for days, so my father started whipping my legs to help me remember.” His face is as still as stone, so I continue, “It only took two whippings for me to never do it again. And once I got whipped because I hugged her. I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to touch her—I was only five. If I daydreamed during lessons and my tutor reported it, my father would whip me, so my tutor stopped reporting it, and if I left my rooms without permission, I got whipped.” I trace my finger over the biggest, puffiest scars. “The worst whipping I got was when Melchior—our wizard—left. That’s what these are from.” I can’t bear to look at him, so I stare at his hands. They are clenched so hard that they’re trembling.
“Why did you get whipped when your wizard left?” he asks, his voice harsh.
“He said his fate was tied to mine, and there was something he had to do for me. No one has seen him since, and there aren’t any other wizards or witches in our land—except Nayadi—so my family no longer has the guidance of a seer.”
“How old were you when he left?”
“Eight. My father carved grooves in the willow switch that time, and it tore my skin.” I can still remember the white-hot pain, and the fury in my father’s eyes. But the worst part was the days following. The agony of my bleeding legs lingered much longer than the initial whipping. “I hate my father,” I whisper, finally looking at Golmarr.
He nods and the muscles in his jaw pulse. “I do, too.” His gaze shifts to my slippers. “How are your feet?”
I wiggle my toes and cringe. “Sore, but I’ll manage.”
He looks at my legs once more. “Come on, Princess. Let’s find a way out of here.”
Some smoke still fills the cave, but most of it is in thin tendrils curling over the uneven rock ceiling. Once more Golmarr leads the way through the cavern, but with my shortened skirt making it easier for me to move, he doesn’t have to stop and wait as frequently. When he does stop, his gaze flashes to my legs, and I wish I could cover the scars.
“He whipped my legs because he said no one would ever see them,” I explain. “They would always be covered by skirts. If he whipped my back, I couldn’t wear dresses that showed my shoulders because everybody would know my father is a monster. No one was ever supposed to see my legs.”
“What about your future husband?” Golmarr snaps, voice angry. “He would see your legs.”
“He said no one would ever want to marry me. I would be an untouched virgin until I killed myself at a young age.”
His jaw clenches and releases. “With the way you were treated, I’m surprised you didn’t kill yourself.”
“Only my father treated me that way.” I leap over a jagged stone—something I wouldn’t have been able to do wearing a long skirt. “Nona, the woman who raised me, loves me.” My chest aches at the thought of Nona finding out I have been given to the fire dragon. It will break her heart. I climb up a massive boulder spanning the entire cave floor and gasp. “Golmarr,” I whisper. He’s already jumped down.