chest as he shook his head. “The word’s not the problem, soldier. It doesn’t matter if he called me ‘slave’ or ‘sir.’ What I am is the problem.”
He was right, of course. The only difference between Sev and this bondservant was that he had been caught using his magic and Sev had not. Magic had always been a part of the empire—for some people it was like breathing. How was it okay to make existing illegal? It wasn’t, and as a soldier, Sev was complicit in the injustice.
Sev didn’t know what to say, and remembering Ott’s order, he stifled his guilt and stepped through the line of trees, leaving the bondservant behind. He took up a position at the edge of the clearing, around the side of the house and away from the front door. He didn’t want to see what happened inside.
The full heat of the sun pounded down on him, and the faint smell of woodsmoke—tainted with something bitter and unsettling—flavored the air. A bead of sweat trickled down Sev’s forehead, and his leather-padded tunic stuck to his dampened back.
As Jotham and Ott walked closer and closer to the cottage, the silence pressed in, like the forest held its breath while it marked their passing. It was unnatural. Ever since they’d crossed the border of the empire a week back, Sev had been overwhelmed by the sound of the wilderness. He was used to the noise of Aura Nova, where his senses were overloaded with shouts and cries and rolling wagon wheels. But here in Pyra—the Freelands, the Pyraeans liked to call it—the noise wasn’t noise at all. It was music, lyrical and lilting and somehow falling into a rhythm that set his mind at ease and soothed his weary soul. The sounds reminded him of his childhood on the farm, when life was small and simple and safe.
How he longed for it.
Something brushed against Sev’s fingers, and he whirled around to find one of the llamas next to him, butting its head against his hand in a comforting sort of way. There were two others lingering nearby, along with the bondservant, who had apparently chosen to follow Sev into the clearing rather than keep up with the convoy, as he was supposed to.
Sev pushed the llama aside, more gruffly than he wanted to, but he had to keep up the appearance that he was disinterested in animals. Even regular human affection might be mistaken as magic these days, and Sev couldn’t afford to give himself away.
The bondservant’s eyes narrowed. Had he sensed Sev’s magic just then? Sometimes it got away from him, when he was distracted or upset, and the next thing he knew, a bird or cat would sidle up to him, called there by accident.
“What are you doing here?” Sev asked.
The bondservant’s nostrils flared. “What are you doing here?” he demanded, his dark eyes fixing at a point over Sev’s shoulder, where Ott and Jotham approached the cabin door on quiet feet. “Don’t apologize to me for a soldier’s harsh words and then stand aside while that same soldier robs innocent people, leaving nothing behind but their corpses.”
Sev scowled. “They won’t listen to me,” he said, gesturing toward Ott and Jotham. “And I hate to break it to you, but they’ll do a lot worse before we leave this mountain.” The empire hadn’t disguised a two-hundred-person regiment and snuck them into the Freelands to undergo treaty negotiations. Sev didn’t know exactly what they were here for, but whatever it was, it wasn’t about peace.
The bondservant gave him a look of open disgust. “And you’re okay with that, are you?”
Sev stared at him, at the challenge on the bondservant’s face. It wasn’t that Sev was unused to being challenged, but since he’d been a soldier, no bondservant had dared to even speak to him. Yet this one did so without hesitation or fear.
“It doesn’t matter what I’m okay with,” Sev said. “I have no choice.”
The bondservant’s lip curled, as if Sev were lower than the dung on his boots and not his superior. “There is always a choice.”
Lies.
Sev hadn’t chosen to be abandoned by his parents at age four or to live in the overcrowded war orphanages, where sickness and hunger were rampant and hiding his animage ability was the difference between freedom and bondage. When Sev had accidentally killed a soldier, he hadn’t chosen to take the soldier’s place, joining the very people he’d hidden from all his life. Choice was an illusion, a fork