Total pages in book: 204
Estimated words: 193124 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 966(@200wpm)___ 772(@250wpm)___ 644(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 193124 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 966(@200wpm)___ 772(@250wpm)___ 644(@300wpm)
That’s when his mask falls away, and I’m leveled from the pain and the regret in his soul. It’s as if I’ve entered a dark, deep cave of torture and I’m staring into an abyss of pain. And still his eyes roam around my face, my hair, my shoulders.
“You are a rare light in this world, Sorrel. Fearless and brave, strong and true—”
“I am no such thing.”
“You need to acquaint with yourself, woman.” His exhale is ragged. “You’re all that and more.”
“I’m a coward who’s asked you to commit murder.”
His shrug is so offhanded, we might as well be talking about the weather. “The cook has it coming. And don’t let him bother your conscience. He’s not worth it.”
“Murder is wrong.”
“And you’re only feeling like this because it’s your first time.” Abruptly, his tone grows weary. “It’s the hardest.”
“It’s my only time.”
In the silence, I think of the speech that Sallae Mae always gave the new girls, about how the first time … was always the hardest—and I try to find the farmer in the mercenary before me, the man beneath all the weapons and the scars.
“Was that true for you? Was your … first … the hardest.”
It’s a long while before he shakes his head. “I thought so for a long time. But as fate would have it … I was wrong.”
Riding a desperate wave, I gather his much bigger hands in my own, and squeeze to try to get through to him. “You can stop. You can get out of this life. I see what’s inside of you—”
“No, I can’t.” He separates us and goes back to the window seat, resettling his body in a determined pose of repose. “And … you don’t.”
Fifty-Three
Belt and Suspenders.
It happens again.
As I come awake, there’s grit in my mouth and down my throat, and the sensation of the sand is all I’m aware of—that and an urgency gripping my mind and body. Some kind of dialogue is happening when I sleep, but I don’t have any conscious memory of what was said or by who—
Sitting up with a jerk, I seek Merc across the room. He’s where he was, in the window seat, and he’s got a journal open in his lap. He’s brought the lantern over, and in the golden glow, he’s writing something with a lead pencil.
“Why didn’t you wake me?” I shift my legs off the bed. “How late is it—”
“Late enough.” He makes a couple more notes, puts the journal aside, and gets to his feet. “The crowd is full downstairs. It’s time.”
I don’t hear anything but the maddening rain and a screaming in my head. How many hours have passed—oh, fates, maybe it’s too late and the girl is dead.
“What are you going to do?” I ask roughly.
“Do you really want to know.”
As I fall into silence, Merc stretches his arms over his head, his powerful body arching like a bow. Then he goes to his pack, and I know what he’s taking out of it. He tucks the oddly bladed weapon up his sleeve and pulls things back into place.
Opening our door, he glances over at me. “I don’t know how long I’ll be—”
The sound of men laughing and women cooing draws both our attention. Down the hall at the head of the stairs, there are charges coming and going out of the working women’s rooms, a nonstop carousel of arousal and satisfaction the velocity of which suggests Merc’s very right about the crowd down below. They’re drunk and very distracted.
“Lock up,” he orders in a grim voice.
Things close behind him, and I go to the latch. After I bolt myself in, I turn my hands over and expect to see red upon my palms. That they’re flesh-colored is a surprise. Meanwhile, all that vengeance I was alight with earlier has faded, and so too the moral qualms. The clarity I have in the aftermath is a cold, empty logic.
The maid’s death. The cook’s death. One of the two I must live with, and I know which is the easier of the curses.
And that’s my decision.
As for Merc? Well, he’s a professional, isn’t he.
As the din of the crowd rides another swell in volume, I go restlessly into the water closet and run the sink. Bending down, I part my lips to drink—
There is sand on my tongue. Actual sand.
My fingers tremble as I bring them to my mouth to clear the particles, and I go to the slice of light that penetrates in from the bedroom lantern.
Black grains of sand.
Rushing back to the sink, I try to rinse them out of me with great swooshes of water, but no matter how many times I draw from my cupped hands and spit things into the drain, the sand refuses to clear.
Convinced I’m going mad, I prowl around the bedroom, and my pacing takes me over to the window seat. What I find there is the only thing that could distract me: Merc’s left his journal open, and in the light of the lantern, the graceful strokes of lead pull free of the pale paper and form something with depth and breadth, as if the page is a window and I’m looking out at an actual landscape.