The healing salve cools my skin under the bandages wrapped around my midsection. It’s the one thing I am grateful for in this wretched place. My jeweled sandals scrape against the floor as I swipe the broom along a small section of the parlor. The dust gathers in a tiny mound on the stones.

Madame Camilla tasks me with cleaning the pleasure house while my back heals. She has deemed me unfit for her customers until she can train me. She says I’m too ornery. Too savage.

The whipping she gave me makes my back ache even days later. I keep my spine as straight as I can, careful not to bend over.

A woman reclines on a sofa in a sheer red dress like my own. She’s a girl, really, her body not quite grown into itself. She rises when the front doors open, and a man in fine clothes strides in. She takes his hand and leads him into the courtyard, taking him to one of the private rooms.

I watch as he pinches her rear in its translucent fabric. She pretends to smile. She glances at me, and her eyes are dull. Dead.

My heart thunders and I feel the blacksmith’s clumsy hands on me again. I feel his rough skin as he forced himself on me, the stone bricks scratching my face—

Suddenly I feel sick. I lean the broom against the back of a sofa and rush stiffly to the washroom off of the parlor.

I retch, spitting bile into the chamber pot in the corner. I sit hunched over it for a few moments, gagging though nothing more comes up.

I slump back against the wall with my knees up. My chest heaves and the sash around my waist squeezes my ribs so hard I can barely breathe. I press the back of my hand to my mouth to muffle the sob rising up from my throat.

I’m trembling all over. I try to breathe through the sobs racking my body, but I can’t get enough air. A shaking groan breaks from me. I curl in on myself, wrapping my arms around my knees and tucking my face into the pocket of darkness it creates.

Slowly my breaths come easier. My panic ebbs. I raise my face, swipe the tears from my cheeks and neck with my hands. I lean my head back against the wall.

I close my eyes and try to steady my breathing. My back is still raw and bloodied from Camilla’s whipping; it’s the only reason I’m cleaning the parlor instead of removing this damned dress for a customer in one of the private rooms.

I have to get out of this place. I don’t think I will survive here.

I let my back heal for a few more days, until it itches with scabs under its dressing. I emerge from my room one night to find the pleasure house crowded. I duck around the teeming clusters of people in the parlor, the whores in their sheer dresses and customers in nondescript clothing.

The place reeks of wine. The clamor of voices and moans from the private rooms is loud in my ears. Madame Camilla’s laugh is high and lilting over the cacophony. I glance at her; she’s distracted, a glass of wine in her hand as she cools herself with the flit of a paper fan. She doesn’t see me as I grab a cloak and a brimmed hat that a customer discarded, draped over a sofa.

I pile my hair atop my head, tucking the silver strands under the hat and pulling the cloak around my shoulders. I duck my head and slip out the door as a group of drunken men hold it open to get inside.

I stuff my hands into the pockets of the cloak as I walk along the cobblestoned streets of Highcaster, the stars above leading me north.