Chapter 15

“You know the one thing that gets under my skin the most? The way that you lie.”

Maiden Threwon blinked at me. I balled my hands into fists and barrelled on: “Oh, I don’t mean all the meaningless things you tell us to keep us in the dark. Those things I can wrap my head around; perhaps you think of it as a mercy. Thanks for that. No; what I really hate about all of you maidens is the way you just. Simply. Squirm.’

Threwon’s face had begun to take on a darker shade. Perhaps I owed her sleeplessness for the fact she hadn’t grabbed me by the ear and yanked it off already. I had never seen anybody talk to a servant of the Estate this way before, excluding Madam Dro and her personal staff, who wrote the rules. But I was far too upset to care.

Warning bells rang in my head, telling me it wasn’t just my life on the line here, but…

“Would you still behave the way you do if it were your body about to be molested? Would you still crawl beneath the floorboards… I honestly have no words for what it is the lot of you do, especially you, Lady.” And my voice again dripped heavily, not with honey this time, but with contempt. “I can’t abhor you. I just want you to know the shame I feel at merely being near you; the sheer depth of disgust you create within me. I just wanted you to know. I just wanted to…”

I meant to continue on, to keep attacking her, but for some reason the words stuck in my throat. My limbs shook with invisible energy. It took me a moment to realize that my vision swam, not from rage, but from tears. They swept down from my eyelids like a torrent, choking me; soundless sobs now wracked my body from gut to lung.

I spasmed, perhaps in an effort by my brain to choke oxygen back into me, to dam up the wreckage of my future and my life I would never get to have and the thick sludge of dread that coursed through my blood, like a poison. The weight of my past came back to me. The weight of the nothingness I was raised to become; it all came back to me.

‘This is it; this is what dying feels like’ I thought to myself. ‘It’s far more painful than I imagined.’

I felt a slight pressure apply itself to my arm. Maiden Threwon was petting me, up and down, though she did nothing else.

“Don’t do this” she whispered as though far away. “Please.”

Dornell alone might be okay. He’d always had an intellectual’s mind; perhaps that would be enough to weather his future. It was his soft heart that I worried about. But if anyone could do it, it was him. Elodie…

The chasm in my heart widened even further as thoughts of what would be done to her invaded me. She was strong. She would hold out, at least for a while… Most likely she would keep it all deep inside, letting concern for the younger children drive her even wile she broke, until she could bear it no more. And none of the others could hope to survive in the same way. None of them…

I blinked, feeling my tears beginning to run dry now. A small blessing, to think that at least for this moment, I had passed beyond the point of pain. Past all feeling; my body was now numb and my lungs drew breath as though nothing but they had any meaning anymore, which I couldn’t argue. I felt sleepy; oh, so very sleepy…

But what was the point of sleep?

I looked at Threwon for the first time since I began my tirade, expecting anger, expecting disbelief… I honestly expected anything aside from what I now saw.

Her eyes were bloodshot. They bugged out of her head like a frog’s during asphyxiation. Apart from that her expression remained frozen; I immediately thought of an icy lake about to thaw, and the ill-timed wayfarer trapped on top of it, who feared the plummet into brackish depths should the platform beneath her suddenly give way.

‘That’s Threwon. She is the fisherman upon the frozen lake, trying to keep from falling in.’

She continued stroking my arm with one hand; up and down, up and down her fingers went, though there was no life in her movements. We simply stared at one another. Then without warning she began to plead a steady string of epiphanies: “I’m sorry. Please. I’m sorry. Please don’t do this, please don’t… not here. Please… No.” Her voice was so small and dead that something stirred again inside of me.

I moved without thinking. One moment my arms remained dead at my sides; and the next, they were kneading roughly on her shoulders, trying to massage some life back into her.

Then abruptly – and without any thought, or even common sense on my part, I assure you – I was deep within her arms, crying like a babe.

From there, a little bit of hope found its way back into our sorry lives.