I nodded. I'd recognized Mary's voice right away, and I'd known this was coming.
"It's bad enough to be stripped of my dignity, but to do it for-for animals!" Mary screamed from inside her own room. There was a stone golem standing outside her door, impassive and steady as something banged and crashed. "It's a relief to leave!"
"If it's such a relief, why didn't she do it sooner?" one girl muttered from her door. A few of us snickered in response, but I noticed some of the other girls watching Mary's door with frozen expressions.
Mary appeared at last, her hair a messy halo around her reddened face, eyes wild as she caught us all watching her scene.
"I am the daughter of a viscount!" Mary snapped, and I thought I caught a shimmer of tears rising in her eyes. "I am sick to death of degrading myself for the pleasure of monsters! This place can burn for all I care!"
Her breath hiccuped in the ensuing silence. What could any of us say?
"You know it too," Mary hissed, eyes narrowing, fists shaking at her side, one clamped around a hastily packed case. "You know this is just a filthy horrible place, and you're all just filthy whores serving them."
The elfin man dragged his companion back inside of their room, the door snapping shut, and some of the watching girls dropped their heads. My face was hot, throat tight again, but it wasn't with the ache of my attack this morning. I stepped out of my room fully, facing Mary at the opposite end of the hall.
"You're wasting all your energy on your own shame when you could've found a measure of joy here. Why didn't you leave? Why come here at all?" I said. But I knew the answer—she'd wanted money and nothing else.
Mary's jaw clenched, nose rising high. "I'm not listening to the girl who squealed like a pig for more cock than any lady would ever—"
"Enough," the golem said, bending to grab at Mary's bag. She startled and reared back at his sudden movement, shrinking in on herself, one hand wiping absently under her eyes.
"Come back inside, little star," Amon murmured.
Whatever poison Mary had wanted to sling at me must've dissolved because she was small and hunched as she followed the golem to the stairs.
"She will manage from now on," Amon said, guiding me backward, his voice soft in my ear. "She has enough saved, and a man who will take her in. She's just afraid of change and a little of herself."
I frowned and twisted in Amon's arms. His gaze was distant as if he were seeing through the walls of my bedroom, following Mary on her path out of the house.
"How do you know?"
"Knowing is one of the domains of a sphinx," Amon answered, his voice a little echoey. "That which the sun touches, we see."
I glanced at the others, Jonathon's eyebrows raised in surprise, and then back to Amon. "Why did she come here?"
"She thought she had no choice. She was promised to an old friend of the family, one who would bring them out of debt. When he tried to hurt her, she ran and found her way here." Amon blinked and shook his head, frowning at me. "That's enough."
"Sorry…I didn't know you could do that," I said, head tipping.
Amon's smile was sly. "A sphinx can do a great many things, my star. You'll see…in time."