“Well?” Sebastian asked.
“Well, it’s beautiful,” Sophia said. “But I don’t understand—”
“Here,” Sebastian said, pointing to a spot on the painting. A spot where Sophia’s dress had ridden up in the casual joy of the day, revealing a stretch of her calf, and the mark that sat there like an accusation.
She’d covered it up with makeup for the ball. She’d done it intermittently since, but she hadn’t today. She’d forgotten. Had she forgotten for their trip along the river too? The truth was that she didn’t know, but the evidence was right there in front of her. The only question was what she was going to do with it now.
“I don’t understand,” was all she could think to say.
Sebastian shook his head. “Don’t lie to me, Sophia. Laurette paints what she sees. Only what she sees.” He reached for her then, and although Sophia started to pull back, he caught her by the shoulders. “Some of the women around the palace have been talking too, saying that something seems wrong about you. I thought they were just being jealous, but what if they aren’t?”
Sophia tried to stop him as he lifted the hem of her dress, knowing that once he did this was over. There was nothing she could do though, and in moments, the symbol of indenture tattooed onto her calf was plain to see.
Sebastian stared at it for several seconds, and then stepped back. Sophia could feel the shock rising from him, his thoughts coming in such a rush that it was hard to keep up with them all. She watched as he sank to the floor in the midst of the arranged easels, looking as though he were trying to shut out the world.
“Sebastian,” Sophia began, wanting to go to him to comfort him, but that wouldn’t work, would it? Not when she was the one hurting him.
He looked up, and Sophia could see the glimmer of tears in his eyes. It was something she hadn’t expected, and something she had definitely never wanted to be the cause of.
“Why?” he demanded. “Why lie to me, Sophia? Is that even your real name?”
“Yes,” Sophia assured him. For the first time since she’d met him, she let the accent she’d assumed fall. “Just not of Meinhalt.”
“Even your voice isn’t real?” Sebastian said, and now he sounded distraught. “We’ve known each other… what? Days, at best. We don’t know anything about one another, do we? Who are you?”
Sophia swallowed at that question. It was one she wasn’t sure she knew the answer to herself. She’d tried to create an answer, but it wasn’t the real one. She asked herself the question over and over without an answer. It still hurt to hear it from Sebastian, though.
She wanted desperately to tell him everything. About herself, her past, and above all, about how much she genuinely loved him. About how, even if all else was fake, her love for him was real. About how she never meant to hurt him. How her lying, her behaving like this, wasn’t even her.
But in her frenzy of emotions, the words caught in her throat. All she could manage was:
“I didn’t want it to be like this.”
Sebastian stood, going over to one of the canvasses. As sudden as a storm, he picked it up and smashed it, tearing through it.
“You tricked me!” he cried out. “You took advantage of me! All you were after was my wealth! My position! You never cared for me at all!”
She felt a pain in her chest at his words, at the sudden violence of it all, of seeing her image being torn to bits. It was a fitting image for how she felt about herself, her life, all being torn to bits about her.
Despite her best efforts, she started to cry. She stood there and cried like a little girl with no one to comfort her.
It seemed to surprise Sebastian. He stopped what he was doing, and his rage abated. He stared back at her, as if sorry, as if realizing he’d gone too far.
And yet he did not come to comfort her.
She wanted so badly to read his thoughts, and yet they were such a jumble of heightened emotions, of contradictory feelings, she could not read them at all.
“I don’t have anywhere to go,” Sophia involuntarily blurted out.
She immediately regretted it. She didn’t want his sympathy anymore, or his help.
And yet still, he stood there, silent. His rage and shock seemed to be calming, his face seemed to be conforming to something like compassion, or pity.
She didn’t want pity. And least of all from him.
She wanted love. True love. And she realized in that instant that, even if she’d found it with Sebastian, she’d lost it forever.
Sophia stepped back.
Wiping her flowing tears, she pulled off the ring that he’d given her. She let it fall to the carpet, because she didn’t dare to touch Sebastian again and she couldn’t take it with her.
She wanted so desperately to say: I want you to know that, whatever else was a lie, my love was not.
But at that moment, a sob rose in her throat, so great, it drowned out all speech.
All she could do was turn around and flee. Flee from this castle, this man she loved, and this life that lay just beyond the reach of her fingertips.
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
Kate returned to Ashton in frustration, but also with a kind of peace. Frustration, because she hadn’t gained the strength that she was looking for. Peace, because it made things simpler in a lot of ways. She couldn’t take the witch’s offer, and so her life would go back to straightforward days of being Thomas’s apprentice at the forge, trying to learn about blades by swinging them at the air.
It wasn’t what she’d wanted when she’d set off into the city, but it had the potential to be a good life, particularly with Will there. Maybe you didn’t get what you wanted in life, but maybe the alternatives could still be good. The thought of Will waiting back at the forge made Kate smile as she came up to the outskirts of the city. It wouldn’t be long before she was back now.
Kate dismounted, walking her horse on the last stretch toward the smithy. She’d ridden long enough for one day, her legs aching with the effort of it.
“When we get back,” she told the horse, “you can have a quiet life again, and I’ll be the best apprentice Thomas could ask for.”
He was definitely a better teacher than the alternative. He was kind, and patient, and crucially, being a smith’s apprentice presented no risk to owing a witch an unnamed favor. There were some things she couldn’t do, even for the strength to be able to take revenge. Realizing that brought a kind of peace with it, as if a flame that had threatened to consume everything in Kate had dimmed.
Maybe that was a good thing, though. Maybe all of this was a sign that she should put aside violence. Maybe—
“There you are!” a voice called. “I know you!”
And Kate knew that voice. The last time she’d heard it, its owner had been chasing her to the edge of the river, determined to beat her to a pulp before dragging her back to the orphanage.
Sure enough, when she looked, the biggest of the boys from the docks was there, swaggering toward her with the certainty of someone who knew that there was nowhere for Kate to go. He took his time, and Kate knew enough about the tactics of bullies to know that he was just giving her time in which to be scared.
She could read from his thoughts that he could barely believe his luck at having found her at last after looking for so long.
He didn’t look good. He still had bruises from the scuffle down on the docks, but they were matched by fresh marks that had clearly come from a beating. If it had been anyone else, Kate might have felt some sympathy for him. As it was, she edged away from him, wondering if she could get on the horse and ride clear.
“There’s no point running,” he said. “I’ve spent days looking for you, you little bitch! The others crawled back to the orphanage, said they’d rather be sold to a mine than keep looking. I kept going, though.”
“Good for you,” Kate shot back. She was still working her way toward the horse. If she could mount it, she could be away from this idiot as quickly as she had bee
n on the river.
“Good for me, bad for you,” the boy said. “Don’t try to run. You think I don’t know you’re working for the smith? I looked for you. I asked about you. And now…”
Kate gave up edging toward the horse, holding her ground as the boy came forward.
“And now what?” Kate asked. “You don’t have two friends to help you this time.”
“You think I need them? To deal with one girl? I’ve hunted you, I’ve avoided the hunters myself, and now I’m going to make you beg me to drag you back.”
Kate took the practice blade out of her belt. It was only wooden, but it was still long enough to threaten with.
“You need to think about this,” Kate said.
“I am thinking,” the boy said. “I’m thinking that when I bring you back, they’ll let me join one of the hunting gangs. I’ll pay my indenture with my first catch. I’ll be able to do what I want, then.”
Kate sighed at the stupidity of it all. She knew all about the way plans worked out in the real world. “You can already do what you want. Look, what’s your name?”
“Zachariah,” the boy said defensively, as if expecting some trick.
“Well, Zachariah, look at where you are. You aren’t in the orphanage, are you? You aren’t in the middle of being indentured. You can walk away and do what you want. You’ve avoided the hunters for a day or two, so why not forever? There aren’t as many in the country, are there? You can just turn around and walk away.”
It seemed so obvious to her. Neither one of them was indentured or in danger. The boy would go his way, she would go hers, and the House of the Unclaimed wouldn’t have any hold over them. He might be able to forge a life out there, whether it was finding a farm to work on or, more likely, taking to a life of robbery. Wasn’t that enough?
“I could,” he said. “I don’t want to. What I want to do is beat you bloody, yell for the watch, and then laugh while they drag you back. Guards!”
He shouted it loud enough that Kate winced.
“Guards! There’s a runaway!” He looked at Kate with a sneer on his face. “And when they catch you, they’ll make you give up that sister of yours. Maybe I’ll get to—”
“Don’t you talk about my sister!” Kate yelled, swinging the practice blade at his head. He flinched and it hit his shoulder, bouncing off.
“I’m going to beat you to a pulp,” he promised, charging forward. He slammed into Kate, and in an instant the two of them were tumbling to the ground, the momentum of the rush carrying them both down together.
Kate hit at him with her wooden blade, but the boy caught it, twisting it from her hand. He hit her hard, and in that instant, Kate might have been back on the training ground, or by the dock. She tasted blood the same way, felt her head ringing. She felt the same sense of utter helplessness, and she hated it.
“I’m going to leave you looking as though you’ve been kicked by that horse of yours,” he said. “Then I’m going to find your sister, and I’m going to drag you both back together.”
Kate reached out for the wooden sword he’d knocked from her hand. He hit her again, then grabbed it himself, lifting it up.
“Oh, do you want this?” he demanded.
“No,” she replied, and her voice sounded strange even to herself. “I just want your hands full.”
She pulled her eating knife from its sheath and buried it in his chest in one movement.
It was easier than she’d thought it would be. The knife was sharp, and the boy’s flesh was soft, but even so, it didn’t feel as though it should be that easy to kill someone. It shouldn’t be that simple to just slide a knife up under someone’s ribs, listening to them gasp as it reached their heart.
Zachariah looked shocked by the sudden pain of it. He looked as though he was going to try to say something, maybe call for the watch again, but the words didn’t come. Instead, blood trickled at the side of his mouth, and he slumped, his weight collapsing onto Kate.
The worst part was that her power let her see the moment when he died, his thoughts going from pain and panic to a kind of total emptiness as his spirit fled him. She sensed the instant when he died, and she felt…
…well, what did she feel? That was a harder question than Kate had thought. That he’d deserved it, mostly. That she needed to get out from under the sheer dead weight of him before it crushed her. Not remorse though. Not yet. Not the panic that Kate was sure she ought to have felt, because she’d just killed someone.
Instead, she found herself feeling almost weirdly calm about it. Still, like the center of a storm, as if the rest of the world were something not really happening. Kate pushed her way free of the boy’s greater bulk, wiping her knife clean and then seeing that there was blood on her tunic as well. There was nothing she could do about that, though.
In the distance, whistles and shouts signaled the approach of guardsmen, or just locals banding together when someone had called for help. That was what they did when there was danger, wasn’t it? They sent up the cry and all those who lived there joined in to chase off thieves or fend off wolves. Or hang murderers. Kate heard them getting closer, and for the longest time, all she could do was stand there, trying to make sense of it.
Now, emotion started to creep in past the shock of it all. She’d just killed someone, and the full horror of that landed on her like a lead weight. Whatever the reason, whatever the situation, she’d just stabbed someone. If the watch came for her, or the rougher justice of the mob, would it make any difference that he’d been beating her half to death at the time?
Somehow, Kate doubted it. She went back to her horse, half stumbling with a combination of emotion and the pain of her beating. It took her three attempts just to mount it, pulling herself up into the saddle clumsily and almost falling even then.
She didn’t know what to do with Zachariah’s body, wasn’t sure that she could do anything, when the sheer dead weight of him was so much to move. In any case, the sounds of trouble were coming closer, and there was no time. So she left him there, in the middle of the road, riding in the direction of the blacksmith’s shop.
As Kate rode, the full implications of everything she’d just done started to sink in. She was one of the indentured, running away from her fate, who had killed someone when he tried to take her back. They would kill her for that, and it would be a miracle if they only hanged her for it, rather than leaving her in a gibbet to starve or breaking her on a wheel.
She was almost back to the smithy before she realized the truth: she couldn’t go back. Kate didn’t know if anyone had seen her fighting Zachariah. Certainly, someone would have heard what he was shouting. It wouldn’t take much for people to work out that she was the one he’d found, especially if he’d been asking questions about her.
If she went back, she would lead trouble straight to Thomas and Winifred’s door. Straight to Will. What was the penalty for aiding a murderer? Just the thought of something happening to Will made Kate feel sick.
He and Thomas were outside when Kate came back. She didn’t dismount. She didn’t dare, because if she dismounted, they might talk her into staying, or might tell her that they would protect her from what was coming when they couldn’t. When no one could.
“Kate,” Will said with a smile. “You’re back! That’s good, you’re just in time, my father and I have a surprise for—”
“Will,” his father said, cutting him off. Thomas obviously saw more than his son did. “Quiet a moment. Something’s wrong.”
Kate sat there on the horse, just staring at them, not knowing what to say. It seemed wrong to say anything, because the moment she did, she would bring a wealth of pain down onto the only people who had ever shown her kindness.
“Kate?” Will said. “What’s happening? Why is there blood on your tunic? Did someone attack you?”
Kate nodded. “A boy from the House of the Unclaimed. He wanted to take me back. He attacked me and—” It was hard to come out and say it. She didn’t want Will
or Thomas thinking of her as some kind of monster.
“And?” Thomas asked.
“And I killed him,” Kate said. “I didn’t have a choice.”
Was that true? It had seemed as though she hadn’t had any other options when she’d plunged the knife in, but the truth was, by then, she’d wanted Zachariah dead. He’d deserved it, after all he’d done, and all he’d threatened to do.
“Get inside,” Will said. “We’ll need to hide you.”
Thomas understood better, though. “They’d find her even if we hid her, Will. They’ll know I have a new apprentice. It won’t take them long.”
“Then what do we do?” Will asked.
Kate answered that. “There’s only one thing I can do: I have to leave. If I get away from the city, they won’t look for me forever, but if I stay here, they’ll hurt you as well as me.”
“No,” Will said. “We can stop it happening. We can fight them.”
Kate shook her head then. “We can’t. Not all of them. They’d just kill you alongside me, and I don’t want that, Will. I have to go.”
Kate could feel the pain and disappointment boiling off Will like smoke. It matched some of what she felt in that moment, but she knew he didn’t understand the dangers that were coming.
“I don’t want you to go,” he said.
“And I don’t want to go,” Kate replied. “But I have to. I’m sorry, Will. Thomas, thank you, you gave me a home, and I wish I could have learned more.”
“You would have been a good apprentice,” Thomas said. “I have something for you. It was going to be a surprise for you. Will?”
Will didn’t respond for a moment, but then nodded. He went to a spot where a cloth covered something, pulling it away. Kate saw the gleam of a sword. More than that, it was a sword she recognized, because she wore the wooden version of it on her hip.
“There wasn’t enough time to do more than forge the basic blade,” Thomas said. “I’d intended the sharpening, the handle wrap and the detail work to be part of your training, but it’s strong, and it’s light.”