Chapter 6: Mine

He did not speak the whole way back.

The horse took the palace ramp at a walk, and his arm never left her waist.

He carried her through a private door, up a private stair, and into a room she had never seen.

A big dark bed, a desk piled with maps, a fire burning low.

The door shut behind them with a heavy click.

Torin set her on her feet and stood very still, breathing.

"The head laundress is mine," he said. "She sent a boy the moment you stepped into her yard."

"Of course she did."

"Did you think I'd put two guards on your door and nothing else?"

"I thought you'd be a prince about it and go to sleep."

"Aveline." His voice cracked on the name. "If I had been a quarter hour later..."

"But you weren't."

"You tore up his paper and called him a liar to his face!"

"I know," she snapped. "I was there."

"Why would you do such a thing?"

"Because I know how this ends!"

It burst out of her before she could stop it.

She was shaking, with cold or fear or fury, she couldn't tell which.

"Whatever I do, whoever I side with, it ends the same way."

She went on, ragged.

"A man in a black hood puts an axe through my neck on Gallows Green, and you watch from a window."

Torin did not move.

It was the stillness of a man who has been struck from behind.

"Say that again," he said, very quietly.

"You heard me."

"Gallows Green."

"Harvest Day. There's a crowd, and it's a clear morning."

"Who told you that?"

"Nobody told me anything." She laughed, and it hurt. "Nobody ever tells me anything. Does it matter?"

His eyes had gone dark and strange.

For a moment she thought he'd shout.

Instead he crossed the room in two strides and took her face in both his hands.

"You will not die on Gallows Green," he said.

His thumbs pressed into her cheekbones.

"Do you understand? Not while I breathe."

"You can't promise that."

"Watch me."

He was twenty-eight, she was twenty-two, and neither of them looked away.

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