When I open my eyes, the low roof of my quarters looms over me. I
don’t remember losing consciousness. Perhaps I’ve been out for
minutes, perhaps hours. Through the curtain strung across my doorway, I
catch a glimpse of a sky that looks as if it’s still undecided as to whether it’s
night or morning. I push myself to my elbows, stifling a moan. The pain is
all consuming, so pervasive it feels as if I’ve never been without it.
I don’t look at the wound. I don’t need to. I watched the Commandant as
she carved it into me, a thick - lined, precise K stretching from my collarbone
to the skin over my heart. She’s branded me. Marked me as her property.
It’s a scar I’ll carry to the grave.
Clean it. Bandage it. Get back to work. Don’t give her an excuse to hurt
you again.
The curtain shifts. Izzi slips in and sits at the end of my pallet, small
enough that she doesn’t need to stoop to avoid hitting her head.
“It’s nearly dawn.” Her hand drifts to her ey epatch, but, catching herself,
she knots her fingers into her shirt. “The legionnaires brought you down last
night.”
“It’s so ugly.” I hate myself for saying it. Weak, Laia. You’re so weak.
Mother had a six - inch scar on her hip from a legionnaire who nearly got the
best of her. Father had lash marks on his back — he never said how he got
them. They both wore their scars proudly — proof of their ability to survive.
Be strong like them, Laia. Be brave.
But I’m not strong. I’m weak, and I’m sick of pretending I’m not.
“Could be worse.” Izzi raises a hand to her missing eye. “This was my
first punishment.”
“How — when — ” Skies, there’s no delicate way to ask about this. I fall
silent.
“A month after we arrived here, Cook tried to poison the Commandant.”
Izzi toys with her ey epatch. “I was five, I think. It was more than ten years
ago now. The Commandant smelled the poison — Masks are trained in such
things. She didn’t lay a finger on Cook — just came at me with a hot poker
and made Cook watch. Right before, I remember wishing for someone. My
mother? My father? Someone to stop her. Someone to take me away. After,
I r emember wanting to die.”
Five years old. For the first time, it sinks in that Izzi has been a slave
nearly her whole life. What I’ve gone through for eleven days she has
suffered for years.
“Cook k ept me alive, after. She’s good at remedies. She wanted to
bandage you up last night, but . . . well, you wouldn’t let either of us near
you.”
I remember, then, the legionnaires throwing my numb body into the
kitchen. Gentle hands, soft voices. I fought them with whatever I had left,
thinking they meant me harm.
O ur silence is broken by the echo of the dawn drums. A moment later,
Cook’s raspy voice echoes down the corridor, asking Izzi if I’m up yet.
“The Commandant wants you to bring her sand from the dunes for a
scrub,” Izzi says. “Then she wants you to take a file to Spiro Teluman. But
you should let Cook tend to you first.”
“No.” My vehemence startles Izzi to her feet. I lower my voice. So many
years around the Commandant would make me jumpy too. “The
Commandant will want the scrub for her morning bath. I don’t want to be
punished for being late.”
Izzi nods, then offers me a basket for the sand and hurries away. When I
stand, my vision swoops. I wrap a scarf around my neck to cover the K and
lurch from my room.
Every st ep is pain, every ounce of weight pulls at the wound, making me
lightheaded and nauseous. Unwillingly, my mind flashes back to the singleminded
concentration on the Commandant’s face as she cut into me. She is
a connoisseur of pain the way others are connoisseurs of wine. She took her
time with me — a nd that made it so much worse.
I move to the back of the house with excruciating slowness. By the time
I reach the cliff path that leads down to the dunes, my whole body shakes.
Hopelessness steals over me. How can I help Darin if I can’t even walk?
How can I spy if my every attempt is punished like this?
You can’t save him because you won’t survive the Commandant much
longer. My doubts rise insidiously from the soil of my mind like cre eping,
choking vines. That will be the end of you and your family. Crush ed from
existence like so many others.
The trail twists and turns back on itself, treacherous as the shifting
dunes. A hot wind blows into my face, forcing tears from my eyes before I
can stop them, until I can hardly see where I am going. At the base of the
cliffs, I fall to the sand. My sobs echo in this empty place, but I don’t care.
There is no one to hear me.
My life in the Scholars’ Quarter was never easy — sometimes it was
horrible, like when my friend Zara was taken, or when Darin and I rose and
sl ept with the ache of hunger in our bellies. Like all Scholars, I learned to
lower my eyes before the Martials, but at least I never had to bow and
scrape before them. At least my life was free of this torment, this waiting,
always, for more pain. I had Nan and Pop, who protected me from far more
than I ever realized. I had Darin, who loomed so large in my life that I
thought him immortal as the stars.
Gone now. All of them. Lis with her laughing eyes, so vivid in my mind
that it seems impossible that she’s been dead twelve years. My parents, who
wanted so badly to free the Scholars but who only managed to get
themselves killed. Gone, like everyone else. Leaving me here, alone.
Shadows emerge from the sand, circling me. Ghuls. They feed off sorrow
and sadness and the stink of blood.
One of them screams, startling me into dropping the basket. The sound
is eerily familiar.
“Mercy!” They mock in a multilayered, high - pitched voice. “Please,
have mercy!”
I clap my hands over my ears, recognizing my own voice in theirs, my
pleas to the Commandant. How did they know? How did they hear?
The shadows titter and circle. One, braver than the rest, nips at my leg,
teeth flashing. A chill pierces my skin, and I cry out.
“Stop!”
The ghuls cackle and parrot my plea. “Stop! Stop!”
If only I had a scim, a knife — something to scare them off, the way Spiro
Teluman did. But I have nothing, so I try instead to stagger away, only to
run straight into a wall.
At least that’s what it feels like. It takes me a moment to realize that it’s
not a wall, but a person. A tall person, broad - shouldered and muscled like a
mountain cat.
I flinch back, losing my balance, and two big hands steady me. I look up
and freeze when I find myself staring into familiar, pale gray eyes.