Chapter 6: Forty Lashes

"You wouldn't."

"Try me."

Lucan said it so simply. No anger, no shouting. Just a fact, like telling me it would rain tomorrow.

Pip was still on his knees, rubbing his raw wrists. He looked up at me with wet eyes. "My lady, don't. It's all right. I can take it."

"You're a child," I snapped. "You can't take forty lashes. Nobody can."

"Then talk," Lucan said.

I looked at him. Really looked. At the scar on his temple, the hard set of his mouth, the grey eyes I had loved since I was seventeen. Somewhere inside this cold stranger was the boy who used to skip stones with me on the river and laugh when mine sank. I had to believe that. If I stopped believing it, I'd have nothing left.

"There's an old woman in Ashfall," I said slowly. "Her name is Odette. She took me in when I had nowhere else to go. She's the closest thing to a mother I have."

"The aunt."

"Yes. She isn't really my aunt. I only said that because..." I swallowed. "Because I thought you'd let me write to family."

"And the message?"

"I wanted her to have the ring. To sell it. Winter is coming and she's old, and my stepfather won't lift a finger to help her once I'm gone."

It was almost the truth. Close enough that my voice didn't shake.

Lucan studied my face for a long moment. Then he turned to Pip.

"Is that what she told you to say?"

Pip's eyes darted to me, then back to him. "Y-yes, Alpha. Give the ring to the old woman."

"Just that?"

"Just that."

"Liar." Lucan's voice didn't rise, but Pip went white. "My patrol leader says you were muttering to yourself the whole ride back. Over and over, like you were afraid you'd forget." He crouched again, eye to eye with the boy. "What were you saying, Pip?"

Pip pressed his lips together and shook his head.

Brave, stupid, wonderful boy. He was going to take forty lashes to keep my secret.

I couldn't let him.

"Whip me instead."

Lucan went very still. Slowly, he rose and turned to face me.

"What did you say?"

"You heard me." My hands were shaking, so I fisted them in my skirt. "I gave the order. I'm the one who broke your rule. If somebody has to bleed for it, let it be me."

"You have no idea what forty lashes does to a body."

I almost laughed. It came out as something closer to a sob.

"Don't I?"

Before I could lose my nerve, I turned my back to him, reached up and undid the top three buttons of my grey dress. I pulled the fabric down off my shoulders, just far enough.

I heard him breathe in sharply.

I knew what he was seeing. I'd seen it myself in Odette's little mirror, years ago, when the wounds finally closed. Pale, raised lines crossing my shoulder blades. Dozens of them. Some thin as thread, some thick and ugly where the skin had healed badly because nobody had cleaned them for days.

"I've taken forty before, Alpha," I said quietly. "I can take forty again."

The silence went on so long I thought he'd walked away.

Then I felt it. The lightest touch, just the tips of his fingers, tracing one of the scars from my shoulder toward my spine. He touched me like I might break. Like the scar might still hurt.

A shiver ran through my whole body. Under my collar, the old mark started to burn.

"Who did this to you?" His voice was low and rough, and very different from a moment ago.

I didn't answer.

"Nyra." His fingers stopped. "Who did this?"

Your stepmother did. In your own courtyard. While you lay unconscious upstairs.

"It doesn't matter," I whispered.

"It matters to me."

"Why?" I turned around, clutching the dress against my chest. "Why would it matter to you? I'm Ashfall's payment. You said so yourself. In front of everyone."

His jaw clenched. He looked at me the way he had by the river, like he was standing at the edge of something and didn't know if the ground would hold.

"Do your buttons up," he said hoarsely.

I did, with fingers that wouldn't stop trembling. He turned away while I did it. When he looked back, the cold mask was back in place, but it didn't fit quite as well as before.

"Pip," he said, without taking his eyes off me.

"Y-yes, Alpha?"

"Get out. Go back to the stables. If you ever take one of my horses without permission again, I'll break both your legs myself. Understood?"

Pip scrambled to his feet so fast he tripped. "Yes, Alpha! Thank you, Alpha!" He threw me one last look full of guilt and gratitude, then bolted out of the hall.

Then it was just the two of us.

"So that's it?" I said. "No lashes?"

"Not today."

"Then what?"

He walked past me toward the doors. "You're moving out of the servants' wing."

My stomach dropped. Lyra's voice echoed in my head. Ask for rooms in the far wing. "Where?"

"The room next to mine."

I stared at him. "What?"

"There's a door between them. It locks from my side." He stopped at the doors, his hand on the iron ring. "From now on, you eat every meal at my table. You don't leave this house without my permission. You don't send letters, and you don't talk to stable boys. If I want to know where my wife is, I'll only have to open a door."

"That's a prison."

"That's a marriage." He glanced back at me. "You wanted my name. This is what comes with it."

"I never wanted..."

I stopped. He was already gone.

They moved my things before supper. There wasn't much to move.

The new room was three times the size of the old one, with a real fireplace, thick rugs and a bed so soft I was afraid to sit on it. On the left wall was a heavy oak door. I tried the handle once. Locked, just like he'd said.

I lay awake for hours, staring at it.

I could hear him through the wall. Footsteps, back and forth, back and forth. The creak of a chair. The clink of a glass. Once, something that sounded like a fist hitting wood.

Near midnight, the footsteps stopped right on the other side of the door.

I sat up, holding my breath.

"Are you awake?"

His voice was muffled by the oak, but I'd have known it anywhere.

"Yes," I said.

A long pause. I heard him lean against the door. I imagined his forehead against the wood, the way he used to lean his forehead against mine.

"The boy wouldn't tell me your message," he said. "He's loyal to you. I don't know what you did to earn that in three days, but he'd have bled for you."

"I know."

"But my patrol leader has good ears." Another pause. "He heard what Pip kept muttering on the ride back. The same words, over and over."

My blood turned to ice.

"'The little bird needs a new nest,'" Lucan said quietly. "'Tonight.'"

I pressed both hands over my mouth.

"So tell me, wife." His voice dropped, soft and dangerous. "Who is the little bird?"