“When I heard a group of Order Wielders would be arriving here, naturally, I had to take precautions, given how uncooperative the Orders have been in offering their assistance.”
I exhaled slowly and pushed myself up from the ground. Ahzeen circled me, his voice too loud, too confident. He was putting on a show.
“But this… this is beyond what I expected. A spy and a seductress, here to turn my allies against me. Or perhaps, my stolen property returned to me. Get up.”
His fingernails dug into my skin as he yanked me to my feet. I was so dizzy I could barely stay upright, but I straightened my back through sheer willpower.
For the second time in my life, I watched my plans crumble.
What was I going to do?
My eyes drifted to the slaves gathered at the edge of the room, their faces filled with barely concealed horror. The look on Serel’s face was like a dagger to my gut. I couldn’t bear to meet their gazes, so I focused solely on Ahzeen, locking eyes with his one dark, hateful eye, matching his intensity with my own.
He smiled at me, an ugly, joyless movement. “I do remember you now. You and your beautiful dances. Why
don’t you perform for us, whore?”
Whore. I hated him. Hated that word. Hated the anonymity of it all. “My name is Tisaanah.”
“Your name is whatever I want it to be.”
Commotion drew my gaze at the other end of the ballroom, and my chest seized as I saw the fight break out
— guards trying to capture my companions. Glimpses of blood.
No. I would not let this happen. It would not end like this.
Think, Tisaanah—
A vicious impact struck my face, and my body once again collided with the stone ground.
And another one — a kick to my stomach that sent me curling in on myself.
Something stirred weakly at the back of my mind. “Get up.”
I did, even though my body screamed. I didn’t let it show. As soon as I hit my feet, he struck me again.
Pain bloomed through my skull, but I straightened as if it were nothing, locking empty eyes back on Ahzeen.
Uneasy whispers ran through the crowd. How unseemly,
they were muttering. How uncouth.
My vision swam, and it was a struggle not to laugh. Two-faced hypocrites.
Ahzeen had always lacked restraint. And that was his greatest crime: not beating me, but that he did it out here, in front of them. They were too civilized for such things. They beat their slaves in private. They raped behind closed doors.
“Perform,” Ahzeen commanded. “No.”
Another stirring in the back of my mind — gone before I could understand what it was.
He grabbed my arm, fingernails digging into my skin, eye baring into mine.
“Do you think the Orders can protect you? Do you think they make you any less of a slave? Do you think their power is greater than mine? Clearly, that is not true.” He gestured to the door. “I have taken your companions, including the Second of the Orders, captive quite easily.”
There it was again: the performance. We were all just pieces to illustrate his dominance to all these people he so desperately wanted to impress. I bit the inside of my lip so hard that blood flooded over my tongue.
I didn’t look, even though he clearly wanted me to. I looked only at him, and I hated him.
I hated all of them.
“You try so hard to fill your father’s name,” I spat. “But everyone in this room knows that you never will.”
Another strike to my face before the words were even out of my mouth. I hit him right on that nerve, just as I had intended.
“You forgot your place,” he snarled. “But I will remind you.”
You forgot what you are, Esmaris had said to me.
I smiled a serene, bloody grin. “If you want to kill me, then kill me.”
Ahzeen’s one exposed eye glinted with an anger that rivaled my own. His fingers tightened around my arm.
“Fine,” he spat. “I’ll finish what my father started.”
And dragged me through the parting crowd, to the entrance of the ballroom, down a white hallway that was all too familiar.
