Page 22 of Her Manticore Master

She tilts her head, studying me with uncomfortable intensity. "You really won't do it, will you? Even to save your own skin."

"No."

"How... unexpected." Something shifts in her expression—surprise, perhaps, or confusion. "Most men would have already torn my dress off."

"I'm not most men."

"No, you're the fool who threw away freedom for a stranger's life." Her voice turns cutting. "Tell me, warrior, was she worth it? The girl in Oshta?"

The words hit like hammer blows, dredging up memories I've tried to bury. The terror in young eyes. The slavers' casual cruelty. My failure to save her.

"You know nothing about it."

"I know you destroyed both our lives for a moment's heroism."

"Better than destroying them for a lifetime of cowardice."

She recoils as if I'd struck her, face going pale in the flickering light. When she talks again, her voice is barely more than a whisper.

"Cowardice?"

"What else would you call it? Trading your soul for silk sheets and safety."

"Survival. Something you clearly don't understand."

"I understand it perfectly. I just refuse to pay the price you did."

Her hands clench into fists, silk rustling with suppressed fury. "You sanctimonious bastard. You think your noble suffering makes you better than me?"

"I think knowing when to fight makes me human."

"And knowing when not to fight makes me weak?"

"This is all your fault," Corrina hisses, her composure finally cracking. "If you hadn't provoked him at the banquet, hadn't given him ideas?—"

"I gave him nothing he wasn't already thinking."

"You think he planned this?"

"I think men like Valdris always have contingencies. We just gave him excuse to use one."

She begins pacing the narrow confines of our cell, silk whispering against stone. The movement is restless, caged, like a leopard testing the bars of its prison.

"So this is my life now," she mutters. "Sharing a cell with a stubborn brute who'd rather die than bend."

"Better a stubborn brute than a calculating master."

"Is it? At least Valdris was predictable. You..." She turns to face me, eyes blazing. "You're chaos wrapped in righteousness."

"And you're surrender wrapped in silk."

"I am not—" She cuts herself off, jaw clenching with visible effort. "You don't know what I've survived. What I've endured."

"Then tell me."

"Why? So you can judge me more thoroughly?"

"So I can understand why you chose this cage."