Because she was your Trade, a voice inside him jeered. You used her to get to Kerlan; you cast her aside when you’d finished with her.
He still remembered the last words she’d said to him. I would like to believe that it is our choices that define us. And as he was forced into the pail of water over and over again, as Kerlan’s whip landed mercilessly on his back, Ramson clung to those words.
It is our choices that define us.
“Now it’s time for my favorite trick.” Kerlan’s voice rattled through Ramson’s half-conscious thoughts. He forced his eyes open. His back was on fire, his body on the brink of giving up. Yet despite the exhaustion that slugged at his brain, his senses perked with fear.
Kerlan had started a fire in the hearth. A single rod was perched on the floor, the iron at the end roasting in the flames.
Ramson jerked at his bonds. The chains rattled, solid as ever. He clamped his teeth against the feeling that his heart would burst from his chest. He would not give Kerlan the satisfaction of hearing him scream.
Kerlan smiled. “There we go. A dose of fear. What I’d give to see that look on your face over and over again, you incorrigible boy. Perhaps I’ll keep you alive for longer. No,” he said to the bruiser, who had moved to stuff a gag in Ramson’s mouth. “I want to hear him beg.”
Fear flooded Ramson’s chest and he was drowning again, his throat closing on him, his limbs heavy and frozen. Ramson gripped his shackles so hard that he felt a nail tear. “I’ll eat dog shit before I beg you, Kerlan.”
Kerlan reached for the hot iron rod. “I said it once, didn’t I, boy? You’ll only feel pain like this twice in your life. The first time, when you’ve earned my trust and passed the gates of hell into the Order of the Lily. The second time…when you’ve broken that trust and I throw you back into hell.” He blew on the hot iron; it glowed, bright yellow at the center, red at the edges. “I hope you enjoy hell, my son.”
Ramson’s courage and clarity dissolved. Not a monster…your choices…Ana.
A single moment flared into lucidity in his mind: a night sky black and bright, snow swirling around them as she held his hands and whispered to him that he could be good, that he could make the right choice. And when he’d let go, the course of his life had splintered into what might have been and what now was. He’d left with words unspoken that night, the ghosts of their echoes swept away in the silent snows.
She was broken, damaged, just as he was—only she still believed in goodness, and tried to be strong and kind. Drowning beneath the weight and the blood of their own pasts, she still chose to reach for the light, whereas Ramson had turned to the dark.
Your heart is your compass, Jonah whispered.
If he had a choice again, what would he choose?
When the hot iron came, Ramson gave in.
The world swayed around her, sending streaks of pain up her skull. Reluctantly, Ana surfaced from her sleep. Pale light danced across her eyelids, and the sound of creaking filled the air. Something cold chafed against both of her wrists.
Her eyes flew open. Moonlight streamed through a small glass window high on the far wall, illuminating a ceiling of wooden rafters. The floor beneath her tilted from side to side, in rhythm with the creaking. She was in a carriage.
“Ah, you’re awake.”
Ana’s heart leapt into her throat. In the corner by the door, draped in darkness, was the silhouette of a man. She tried to move, but her arms remained attached to the wall by her side. Manacles peered out from the layers of chiffon and silk of her gown. She was shackled in place.
Panic fogged her mind. She grasped for her Affinity, for the instinctive feel of blood thrumming through her and all around her, but found nothing. Deys’voshk. She recognized the haze, the lingering sense of nausea.
The man leaned forward, his long fingers clasped together. His face was pale, with eyes so black it was like staring into an abyss. The face brought back memories of dark dungeons and cold stone walls and the bitter tang of blood in her mouth. Ana recoiled.
Sadov smiled. “Hello again, Kolst Pryntsessa.”
She was breathing too hard to think; her hands shook against their shackles. She tasted traces of Deys’voshk