I turned, following the rutted road with my eyes as it wound around the wood off to my right. I knew if I kept following, it would take me to a gateway in the walls around the Palace.
It was rumored the King took in young woman and employed them… to keep themsafe.
I swallowed hard and looked left.
If I followedthatroad, it would lead me to the city streets. The streets to which my father had threatened to abandon me.
My mother, on her knees, sobbing, pleading as I clawed at my father’s hand which was fisted in my hair, trying desperately to pry his fingers off. But he kept shaking me so that my vision blurred and my ears rang.
“Is that what you wanted, Bren? To walk the streets, bringing shame on your poor mother and me?”
“No!” I shrieked. “Please! Father—”
“Did you even think before opening your legs? Or were you so overcome by the devil you had no thought beyond your ownlust?”
I sobbed, and it turned into a retch.
Bent at the waist, hands on my knees, gulping at the air, it took several deep breaths to swallow the nausea back. When I was sure my stomach wouldn’t revolt, I straightened slowly and stared at that grassy verge, suddenly buried by the weight of all of it.
Ruin.
Ruin had been my last hope.
Reluctantly, I let my gaze follow the final path.
Straight across the road, just a little east, the wide mouth of a rocky trail began, disappearing quickly into the trees, but following the rise of the land up, up,upto the Dragonmaw cliffs.
My body swayed and I fell to my knees as the terrain in front of me disappeared and my mind conjured Ruin.
“Go home and hang yourself in the barn for all I care—”
After all the promises. All the plans. After everything I’d given, Ruin discarded me as easily as a shirt he couldn’t mend.
A sick, knotted weight appeared in my stomach as I stood there at the crossroads.
The palace, to become a slave in finery? Or the streets, for freedom in poverty?
The city was a choice. I wouldn’t be the first lowborn girl from the farmlands to give herself to the streets as my father had suggested was all I was good for.
After the thrill and joy of Ruin’s love, how different would it feel to give myself to a man I’d never met?
But then it hit me—thrill and joy? What thrill remained? What joy? It had all been a lie.
“Are you fucking with me? You can’t honestly believe—”
“Y-you said—”
“And you opened your legs, just like I wanted.”
I recoiled.No.I had to go home and face my father’s wrath. Plead for his mercy, or…
Or?
My dark, foreboding thoughts were interrupted by a resonant thunder, beating the air in rhythmic time, and followed immediately by a high, thin cheer.
I looked over my shoulder, over the trees, squinting into the pale sky of the rising sun to see the huge, graceful dragonfuries rise and rise, necks stretched forward, noses pointed to the sun, their massive wings beating the air and carrying their riders—from this distance the men looked like insects clinging to the dragon’s backs.
For a breath I forgot my pain.
