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“You have questions for me.”

“I do,” she agreed. “Do you know who I am?”

“Amelia Drake,” he said, without hesitation. “Eldest remaining child of Duke William Drake, now the Duchess in his stead, despite the rules of Aquitainian inheritance.”

She snorted. “You sound as though you read that on a dossier.”

“I did. I read of Prince Leif Torstansson as well,” he said, gaze flicking toward Leif, where he stood a few paces away, arms folded to show off the thick muscle there. “Though I didn’t expect to meet him here,” he said, gaze returning to Amelia. “Nor to be alive, for that matter.”

She frowned. “What do you mean? Because of the siege at Aeres?”

“No. Chief Ragnar of the Úlfheðnar clan was tasked with killing both Aeretollean heirs. Both live, still, and now Prince Leif is a skinwalker as well.”

Amelia fought not to show her shock at that bit of news, and could only imagine how it must have struck Leif. Ragnar too, for that matter. She didn’t risk darting a look to him in front of their prisoner.

She collected her thoughts. “Tell me about the tattoo.”

He’d received it just before deployment, he said. Born to the soldier class – her brain shoutedwhat??in response to that – parentless, never knowing who’d birthed or sired him, he’d been raised in one of the bunkers with other boys just like him, eating plain but nutritious meals, training every hour of the day that he wasn’t scrubbing floors or being tutored on the history of the empire and its as-of-yet-unconquered colonies. He’d slept on a cot in a long hall with all his comrades. All of them had known from birth that they would serve the emperor as troops in his expansion efforts.

“I showed a greater aptitude with language and the learning of foreign cultures than my companions,” he said, “and so I was designated a captain when I turned sixteen, and trained not simply to fight, but to lead men as well.” He’d learned everything he was told to learn, pushed himself through every exercise and drill until his form was flawless, and his muscles strong and lightning-quick. And then the call to war had come, and they’d all been sat down in a line, and tattooed, one after the next, to ensure their obedience. He didn’t understand the mechanics of it, nor the magics used, but it had tampered with his free will. Prior to Leif’s “liberation,” as he called it, he’d been unable to resist a direct order from a superior, nor to speak any of the empire’s secrets to an enemy.

“We would not be able to have this conversation had Prince Leif not cut it from me,” he said, and his gaze went to Leif again, clearly grateful.

“You wanted it gone?” she asked. “You wanted to spill empire secrets?”

“I wanted to desert,” he said, bluntly. “But all three times I tried, I came to lying on the ground, unable to so much as twitch forward. I could only move backward, and when my colonel discovered what I’d attempted, he sent me on a useless occupation mission.”

“To the tower.”

“To the tower,” he confirmed. “I was to keep an eye out for your men; report back when your army was on the move.”

Realization struck. “You weren’t supposed to take hostages.”

He shook his head, white hair rippling like sheets of silver silk. “No.”

Amelia set her feet flat on the floor and scooted forward to the edge of her chair. “You weretryingto get caught.”

When he blushed, it stood as two hectic spots of color in his cheeks, stark against the paleness of his skin. “Not exactly. I…hoped that a blunder of that magnitude in the field – being forced to retreat in the face of…in my superiors’ words, a ‘backward and paltry force not fit to be called a proper army’ – that I would be called back, and demerited, and perhaps pressed into servitude and sent back to Seles.”

“You wanted to go home,” Amelia said, beginning to understand.

“Wait. Hold on,” Connor interjected. He was perched on the edge of the sideboard, wine cup in one hand, bottle in the other, paused in the act of pouring. “You wanted to go back to Seles – as aslave?”

The prisoner turned to him, expression veering toward offended; a bit of that Selesee superiority coming through. “As a servant. Those are two very different things.”

Connor shook his head, and finished pouring. “You’re scrubbing chamber pots either way, mate.”

The Sel turned back to Amelia. “In Seles, a servant might buy his freedom after ten years of exceptional service.”

“Here, they can always quit.”

His brows lifted a fraction, the lines that formed in his forehead darker than his eyebrows themselves. “And do what? Become a farmhand? Return home to room with his parents? The Aquitainian society is equally stratified,” he said, tone censorious.

“Be that as it may,” she said. “You wanted to go back. To escape the fighting?”

“Haven’t got the stomach for blood?” Ragnar asked with a sharp grin.

The prisoner turned to him, more sharply than he had toward Connor; Amelia saw the way his gaze shifted down, to the torq that rested on Ragnar’s throat, and the way it bobbed in response, as Ragnar’s smile slipped, and he swallowed. “Sel soldiers are blooded at age eight. We hunt boars, individually, on a wooded course. No, I do not quail at the sight of blood.”