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“I know what you’re thinking,” says King Estienne, and I feel his eyes on me.

“ These are the outlaws who dared attack my men and postpone my journey? Hardly. It turns out, I find these ones in particular rather valuable. The rest,” he says, cupping my shoulders, “well, let’s just say they weren’t so fortunate.

” He spins me back toward Anton, whose usual sun-kissed skin is now leeched of color.

No, not toward Anton.

Drip.

Drip.

I try not to look. I try to hold Anton’s gaze the way he holds mine, but even then, I can’t help it, the background bleeding slowly into focus.

Behind him, secured on the back wall—just to the left of where I’d stood—hangs a large metal board with long, crystalline pikes protruding outward like a bed of nails.

And every last spike pierces a neck, an abdomen, or the yawning mouth of a corpse.

Drip, drip. Like the swing of a pendulum. The click of a heel. The patter of rainwater, cool and slick.

Drip.

Metal goblets are scattered along the floor, each perfectly positioned so that it catches their blood.

I sway on my feet.

“As for you,” King Estienne says, and a surge of panic floods my veins. “Instead of a performance, how about a less arduous role? You’d make a fine auctioneer, I think.”

He digs a key from his belt and chucks it to a guard, who then unlocks the first prisoner from the main chain. When she looks up, the sight of her in shackles cleaves open a wound inside me—one that never healed, only scabbed.

Light curls, brown eyes. Small in stature, so like Emilia I have to heave in a breath.

Her strong chin is notched upward in defiance, though she keeps her gaze leveled away from the horror ratcheted upon the wall.

Even so, I note the bruise-colored bags underneath her eyes, the chills puckering her alabaster skin.

I wonder how many of them she knew. How many she loved.

I wonder if she watched them die.

And King Estienne is going to make me auction her off.

He can’t do that, can he? Ownership of any kind—it is forbidden. Unless—

But of course. So long as she’s judged a criminal, she can be stripped of all rights. Legally.

Sorrow burrows deep into my heart. Whatever she did, deserving or not, she will spend the rest of her life a prisoner, at the mercy of whoever purchases her.

“Let’s start with ten quatra,” the scum of a king beside me says. “Vasalie, if you please.”

The woman’s hands shake, like my own, but she does not cower.

I loathe myself as I step forward and call it out.

“Fifteen quatra,” someone yells.

“Thirty-five quatra, and a ruby.”

“Fifty!”

I don’t even have to raise the price. The bids come fast.

“A hundred, and three pearls the size of my fist! She’s a darling, that one.”

“A hundred, and my wife!” The crowd erupts into laughter.

“Is she really worth it?” someone else calls. “A bit scrawny, no?”

My dinner swarms in my gut, threatening to rise. They pick apart her appearance. They joke about what she’ll be good for, how she’ll be used.

“Small hands. At least they look soft—”

“But those lips. Imagine—”

No, stop.

“Twenty thousand quatra and five chests of pearls. For all of them.”

The bidding halts.

I swivel, horrified, and meet Anton’s sparking eyes.

“Really, Anton,” King Estienne drawls. “Glory Court running thin these days?”

Glory Court. Of course.

Hatred rises up my throat. I had hoped, foolishly, that Anton might not be as despicable as I’d thought. That he might have been protecting me, earlier. That everyone was wrong about him.

But this is a game to him. A sport. Everything is, and he’s in it to win.

Anton takes a casual step forward, pilfering a half-empty glass from an unsuspecting noble. Downing it in a swig, he winks at the man before swaggering toward the throne, clapping the backs of two men he outbid. “Can anyone beat my offer? No?”

The prick has a bounce in his step.

King Estienne rolls his eyes and slaps the key into Anton’s hands, mumbling a low, “You ruin everything.”

Anton merely flashes a pleased smile. “A pleasure, as always.”

With a curl of his fingers, Anton’s guards swing forward from their positions along the wall, their glass-like helms reflecting glimmers of amaranthine torchlight.

He relays his orders—something about letting the prisoners enjoy the revelry for a while.

Come dawn, they will be loaded onto a ship and escorted to their new home.

Courtiers snicker throughout the room. Their amusement is like hot wax burning into my stomach. And then Anton tosses me a key, nodding his head toward the prisoner. “Vasalie, be a darling, would you?”

He wants me to lock her back into the main chain.

The music resumes, louder than before, this time from a trio of musicians who just arrived. At last, the attention is diverted off me, the party proceeding like there isn’t flesh decaying mere feet away. As if the monstrosities here are of little consequence, barely worth so much as gossip.

I swallow, my stomach once again ready to yield my dinner, and turn back to the woman. She does not look at me.

My palms are sweating. The key, heavy as iron, nearly slips from my grasp.

Gently, I take her manacled hands, wincing at the raw, reddened skin where the shackles dig into her flesh. My own wrists throb at the memory.

And she’s shaking.

There’s a lockbox at the end of a smaller chain, which hooks into the shackles. I pick it up.

I can’t . . . can’t help her. Even if I slipped her this key, what could she do? The both of us would be caught.

I slant a glance over my shoulder, where King Estienne slouches back on his throne, a companion curling up with him. She is as tall as he, and equally as muscled. Another sweep of the crowd tells me no one’s watching.

And I’m in the shadows. Even the guards holding the main chains are laughing, conversing among themselves. They don’t bother to stay alert, and why would they? No one would dare try anything here.

When I lock her into the main chain, I make the mistake of meeting her eyes.

They’re big, golden, soft as melted butter.

I see the single, stubborn tear glossing her right eye, refusing to fall.

She tightens her lips in resignation. There is no hope for her, and she knows it. I am well acquainted with the feeling.

Before I can think better of it, I pry a pin from my hair. She couldn’t use it until she landed on the main shores, but—

No. I won’t risk it—can’t. Ever since my father, and Marian . . . my purpose has shifted. It’s no longer about disappearing, no longer about a second chance, no.

It’s about justice. Vengeance.

I’m about to pull away, to refuse her this chance, when Anton grabs my wrist. My breathing stifles. His fingers dig through mine. He finds the pin easily and wrestles it from me, then drags me along with him.

Fear pounds through my veins, pulses in my eyes.

I’ve been caught.

He will have me arrested.

What was I thinking? I’ve put myself at risk twice now. Twice.

Hate burns within me, like a flame set across oil, igniting at its flashpoint. I shake with it. Shake as it spreads into every vein, every capillary.

I hate all of them. The Crowns, the courtiers, their sickening cheer amid such atrocities. I hate my father. Emilia, for leaving me, when I could have just gone along with my father’s plans and she would still be alive. Most of all, I hate myself for condemning this woman to her fate.

I am so angry that I don’t notice the arm Anton has wrapped around me, as if I’m his souls-damned escort, until he ushers me into a shadowed alcove, sheltered from the two sconces above.

“Foolish Minnow,” he says, holding up the pin. “Tampering with my winnings.” He then slips it back into my hair, just above my ear. I ignore the tingle that runs along my scalp.

I can’t find it in me to muster up an excuse. To defend myself. Even as he waits, his green-gold eyes like lanterns in the dark.

When finally his patience frays, he blows out a breath. “Vasalie, I will not report you for what you just attempted to do, but do not try it again. If my brother had seen you, you would not be standing here right now. You would be on that wall.”

Drip.

Drip.

My fury liquefies, becomes molten. “You,” I spit. “You dare to protect me, and in the same breath you purchase them? Merely to stock your despicable Glory Court?”

“ Yes. ”

I clamp my teeth over my lips, so hard I draw blood. A part of me had hoped—desperately, inanely—that he might set them free. He has the power to do what I cannot. But then I recall his arrogance during the banquet. He’s proud of that vile, horrible court.

“I paid enough, didn’t I? What, does that disgust you? Anger you? Are they not criminals?”

“Yes, but—”

“But what?”

I have no right to defend them after what I didn’t do, and yet .

. . “Some are practically children, others elderly! And souls, what if they were hungry? Desperate? What if they weren’t all guilty?

I don’t know—I don’t know!” My vision tunnels.

Blurs. “Not all criminals are evil.” I bet most aren’t, in fact. “And none— none—

deserve this.”

“I shall be nothing if not a cordial host.”

“A demanding one, you mean.” Oh, the way rage boils within me, the way I long to shove my knee in his most tender spot . . .

“I am offended,” he says, pointedly not. “I wine and dine my guests; rarely do they want for anything.”

“Except freedom.”

He takes my chin in his fingers, tilting it this way and that. “You would know a thing or two about that, I assume.”

I open my mouth, then snap it shut.

He leans in. “Speechless? Yes, I tend to have that effect. Now leave, Vasalie. If Estienne calls for you, I will tell him I sent you away. Your Master, ” he drawls, “shouldn’t have sent you here to begin with.” Once again, he ushers me toward the door.

My Master.

The Master of Revels, he means. I think.

After tearing off my gown, I retrieve the pin from my hair, watching the reflection of a flame lick along its golden surface.

My fingers close around it, squeezing until it scores a red mark against my skin.

I don’t know how to process what happened this evening.

I don’t know what to do with the emotions that push and pull against my rib cage; I feel as if they’re ripping me to shreds.

I’m exhausted, ashamed. Relieved. And there’s hatred still—for myself, for Estienne, for Illian.

My father. The Crowns. The courtiers. Anton.

He protected me. He stopped a war. The queen admires him, and yet he did that.

In this moment, I hate him the most.

Because I almost had faith in him.

Because I want, so badly, to believe he is different, and yet every encounter with him leaves me confused, frustrated. Breathless.

Because I don’t know whether he’s the safest of them all.

Or if he is, by far, the most dangerous.