“I tried to get away from him.” Nadya made rolling motions with her arms like she was panicked and off-balance. “I was up on a set of steps. I couldn’t see, I was in pain, I was worried that he had more acid.I spun around and fell. I broke my leg when I landed and I’ve never screamed so loud in my life. I was just… screaming.”
Nadya sat there for the longest time, shaking her head, lost in the attack. “I clearly remember him standing over me. He was… shocked. But what did he think was going to happen? And then my father showed up. I wasn’t allowed to drive a car because I was a female, and my father always dropped me off and picked me up at the library. And it was as I was lying there that I realized I was the message back to my father. My injuries… were the message back to him that he shouldn’t have tried to force the sire and the son like that. Anyway, that’s the story, and that’s how I ended up in the prison camp.”
“Wait—what? Why were you blamed and sentenced for what he did?” Kane sat forward, like there was someone in the underground hideout he could take the injustice to. “How does that make any sense—”
“No, it wasn’t like that. My father immediately took me to a nurse who was of the species. My injuries were so severe, I had to stay with her, and she attended to me as if I were her own. As I got better, she started teaching me about taking care of patients. She was very kind to me, very generous with her knowledge. She was just starting her decline of old age, and I know that she was happy to have someone to pass on what she had learned over a lifetime.”
“But where were your parents?”
She shook her head sharply. Then had to clear her throat. “I made the nurse tell them I had died. That I couldn’t handle the pain and that I took myself out unto the sunlight and there was nothing left of me.”
Kane lowered his head. “Oh, Nadya—”
“It was better than them having to see me all the time. My father was consumed with guilt and regret, weeping at my bedside. It seemed kind of ironic that I became the curse for him as opposed to the sire of my intended. I just knew, if I went home, he’d never be able to move on and neither would mymahmen. At least if I were dead, they could grieve and find some kind of a new life.”
Kane couldn’t imagine any part of the situation she’d been put in. “And where did you go after you were with the nurse? I still don’t know how you ended up in the camp.”
“After I was as healed as I was going to get, I continued to stay with my mentor, but I kept hidden from everyone. Around the time I developed some stamina, she started going to the prison camp to treat the sick and injured. I wanted to go there with her because I needed to do something to be of use to someone. I always went draped, of course, and it became something we did together. It saved me, the purpose I found therein.” There was a silence. And then she accepted another apple slice from him. “Under her instruction, I took care of so many different males and females, and I got to be a really good nurse. When my mentor finally went unto the Fade, I assumed all her duties, and as her house was left unto her relations and I had nowhere to go, I began to stay in the camp.”
“Where is the male who hurt you?” As Kane heard the hard tone of his own voice, he tacked on, “I mean, is he anywhere in Caldwell?”
Do you have an exact address?he thought.
“Well, there was this one prisoner… who was so kind to me.”
A spear of jealousy made Kane imagine going after two different males, and given his aggression, he wasn’t surprised she ducked the question about her intended.
“And…?” he prompted.
“It was about ten years ago.” She folded and refolded her brown robing in her lap. “He was dying and I helped ease his suffering as best I could. He was old, but had once been so vital. We got quite close, and perhaps because I was missing my family, or lonely, or whatever, I told him what had happened to me. I told him everything. He’s the only other one who saw what I look like… aside from now you.”
As she fell silent, he absorbed the honor she had paid him, to remove her hood, to share of herself in the most vulnerable way.
Nadya looked at him sharply. “I need to be honest with you, even though it will affect what you think of me.”
“Nothing could affect—”
“Allow me to rephrase that. Itshouldaffect what you think of me.”
He glanced around, measuring the clean and tidy space, with its comfortable furniture and its kitchen and its little bathroom. Even though they were out of the prison camp, he felt as though they had returned to its confines once again, to the point where he could smell the stink of the place, the dirt and the filth and the old sweat remerging in his sinuses.
But that was the power of the camp, wasn’t it. Even free, neither of them had been truly liberated because of what they had seen… and what they had done.
“Keep going,” he murmured. “Please.”
“I used my intended’s name.” She shrugged. “It was just in relation to my story. Or at least I told myself that. But if I’m honest? I think I knew who the old male was… and what he might do if he ever got a hold of my intended.”
“You said the older male was dying, though. Surely he couldn’t haveahvengedyou?”
“He went unto the Fade soon thereafter and I thought that was all.” She took a deep breath. “But about five or six nights later, I returned to my berth, the place where I slept. There was a… I found a knot of cloth on my pillow.”
Kane waited for her to continue. When she didn’t, he said, “What was in it?”
“A signet ring. My intended’s.” She seemed to hang her head. “The old male? I had heard he was… how do you say it, an enforcer? And it’s hard for me to admit this, but yes, I knew he had contacts outside of the prison. I mean, the guards themselves deferred to him, and brought him things. He told me once that I was like a daughter to him.”
“You’re not responsible for that male’s choices.”
“I believe I am, actually.” Her hand hovered over her chest. “My heart was unclean when I told the story. I embellished nothing, but… I did give my intended’s name. I had learned to hate him, you see. Over the years. He had decided to destroy my face so that he would not be judgedfor not following through on the arrangement and so my father would be punished for the blackmail. I mean, if we had been aristocrats? My father would have ended up in the prison for what he did, but because of our station as civilians, my intended took matters into his own hands, with no consequences except the ones I bore.”