Chapter 1:

          Five.

          Issi forced a breath through grit teeth.  The cloth came away bloody.  She cursed quietly as she added it to the pile of stained silk gathering on her table.

          Her candle flickered as it worked to beat back darkness.  The room was alive with the dancing of shadows and the glint of gold that scattered at the edge of her vision. 

Six.

The bleeding didn’t seem to be slowing.  She eyed her master as he snored quietly on her bed, clad only in a button up with a blanket draped over his chest.  He clutched at the fabric as some nightmare or other took him.

Even from where she sat, on the other side of the small metal room he’d gifted her, she could smell the magic that settled across his skin. Sunbaked soil and the sparks she’d once noted at the metalsmith’s.  And stupidly, the scent of it was comforting, the fact that she felt anything at all, was comforting.

Seven.

The knife he’d used to carve her sat on the dresser; the tip dyed ruddy.  Her blood splattered across her sheets.  They’d need cleaning.

Replacing.

Eight.

There were a thousand things she’d rather be doing.  There were papers that were supposed to go out, and the newest batch of medical reports had come in, and she’d really like the world to stop swaying—

She sighed, planting her feet firmly on the floor as she pressed harder against the wound.

Nine.

Her master groaned from the bed.  The frame creaked as he rolled over to give her a fantastic view of his ass.  His back.

The very exposed side of his neck, beneath which an artery ran. 

Her eyes ticked to the knife by his bedside.  One moment.  One infinitely small, fraction of a tick and gods above she could be done with it.

She’d be hung, of course.  High treason called for nothing less.

Her pulse skittered.  She frowned, counting the cloths before her. 

Twelve.

Fuck.

One of these days, he was going to kill her.  The old maids used to take bets on how long she’d last. 

Turned out she was sturdier than anyone had anticipated.

Thirteen.

She breathed and set the last cloth against the table.  Her fingers flicked through her drawer and reached for another.  She bound the wound the best she could.  She was running out of headscarves.

Her master cried out in his sleep as her alchemy clock launched four puffs of cherry red smoke into the air.

It was time to get up.

Issi ambled to her wardrobe, picking out a drab grey dress from an array of pompously ruffled and lowcut gowns.  The only splash of color coming from the amethyst dyed threads that formed the raven of her master’s insignia on the gown’s breast.

Dressing was a slow, painful process.  The ground acted as if it were set atop the godsdamned sea and her fingers fumbled with the many buttons that cinched up to her neck. 

She tugged at the fabric, until it lay flat.  The mirror mounted against the not-bars of her cage showed a very tired reflection.  Issi attempted a spin and nearly pitched into the wall.

She sank to her knees and waited for the ground to still.

Pain was still better than the alternative.  Fear was better than the alternative, hells, death was better than the alternative.

She breathed in the smell of magic and felt the world around her vibrant and brutal and real.  The light from the candle played across the floors, the fabric was soft against skin, the wounds on her spine formed a steady painful ache.  She could smell the wax from the candle, and the burning of the wick, and her blood, and the soap the maids used for her gowns.

Yes, this was certainly better than feeling nothing at all.

She moved slowly, straightening to her full too short height, and tried again with the mirror.  The dress hid the bandages, and the silver that’d started to snake along her skin. 

Still, she covered what she could of the silver with make-up.

She wasn’t sure what to do about her hair.  Her master had ruined it, but she couldn’t raise her arms above her head without the risk of reopening the wound. 

Again.

She’d woken in a puddle of her own blood.  Not as unusual an occurrence as she would have liked, but, still, distinctly unpleasant.

Maybe it was the smell of it that had ignited her master’s dreams.  Surely, he’d smelled plenty during the subjugation of Repren.

She digested the thought and decided to keep a cloth on hand.  It’d be petty, but a few nightmares wouldn’t kill him.  Gods knew it was a better alternative to slitting his throat.

Tempting as it was.

          Her sheets really would be ruined then. 

She fixed her gown and set her canvas by the single window she’d been granted.  It looked to the garden her master tended.

          Once upon a time, it’d been filled with neatly filed plants that gave fruits and vegetables, and organized swaths of herbs.  She started to sketch the overgrown mess that spanned beneath her now.

          Wild, without the careful hands of the gardeners to keep it controlled.

          He wanted her to draw people, not plants.  Years ago, once he’d realized she’d a knack for it, he’d ordered her to draw portraits, and maids, and guards.  It’d been a parlor trick to show off to the court ladies, the Pet who could draw.           

          Her teeth ground together at the memory.  An ache ran up her left hand, tracing along the crinkles and pocks in her skin that’d never quite forgotten the fire that’d bitten into it.  Gloves, she’d need gloves for the day as well.

          She worked on a patch of golden bell-shaped flowers, hells, it didn’t matter that she couldn’t see them. She’d painted the same thing yesterday, and the day before, and the flowers would never do something as interesting as walk away. 

          The patch expanded as she summoned oval leaved vines, and the small, gnarled bodies of the wide petalled flowers that smelled of sweets in summer and disappointment nearly every other time of the year. 

          Her mind wandered, she’d drawn the gardens so often, she suspected she could accurately track the rate of the overgrowth.  Not that that was the type of experiment she found to be titillating, but it was something to do during the hours she wasn’t allowed to read or write.

          She’d moved to the palace wall by the time her master began to stir.  She ignored the groaning of her bed as he shifted about and the quiet curses he spat when he realized where he’d woken up.

          He hated waking behind the not-bars of her cage nearly as much as she did.  Disguise them all he want as flowers and meadow grasses, a prison was a prison was a prison.

          Issi’d yet to find someone who enjoyed waking up in one.

          To be fair, she didn’t meet a lot of people these days.  Maybe she’d get lucky if she cast her net a bit wider.

          “There’s blood,” he commented.

          Issi squinted in the early morning sunlight that tumbled through her window, “There is, it’s mine.”

          “There’s a lot of it.”

          How would the king ever survive without him?

          “It was hard to stop the bleeding, master.  I apologize for the mess,” she stood, faced him, and bowed.  The world swayed drunkenly to the right.  She locked her legs and focused on the floor until it steadied.

           She wondered absently if her sister had to put up with this.  Their mother had never adjusted well to the beatings.  The twins were almost the age to be sold off too.  How long would it take them?  A moon, a year?

          “—Issi?”

          She blinked, “I’m sorry, I was days away.  Could you repeat the question?”

          “Stand.”

          She straightened slowly and plastered a warm smile on her face.  Her master closed the distance between them.

          Hot earth and metal sparks.

          His hand cupped her cheek and she breathed deeply as he tilted her head towards him.  The world seemed to sharpen with the smell.  She melted against his palm.

          “What were you drawing?”

          “Plants, the golden sanguinary is doing well,” she lied.  It was dying a slow and painful death by the window because the concubine’s shadblow had finally grown enough to blot out the sun it’d been languishing in.

          He kissed her forehead, “Are you not bored of plants? I can get you a model.”

          Again, her hand ached, she clenched it to remind it that life would be easier if it didn’t insist on being an ass.

          She pretended to consider his offer.  Issi was, indeed, very bored of plants.  She could draw them from every angle in every state of germination, and she could tell him which parents had fathered which seeds. 

          But that didn’t mean she’d like to draw people again.

          “Master,” she reached up.  Her hands ran through the soft curls of his hair and as she grinned, “I love drawing them.  Would you like another sketch?”

          She felt him shudder.

          He had an entire drawer filled with the damned things.  She’d made sure it was the same stupid flower every time. 

          “No,” he tried to keep his expression warm, but that stressed look had started about his eyes and mouth.

          He hesitated, “I don’t enjoy disciplining you.”

          Rage ignited in the pit of her stomach, “I know, it won’t happen again.”

          He nodded.

          It’d been a stupid thing, she’d been trying to ask for an oil lantern.  Well, ask was a bit too direct, she was trying to circle about getting around to having him offer her an oil lamp when she’d made the mistake of warning him against casting light and set him off.

          And now her sheets were covered in blood.

It didn’t take much these days.

          “Does it hurt?”

          She held out, the answer on the tip of her tongue, a compulsive need to respond that would soon cinch her throat shut and stop her breathing until it was let out.

          One heartbeat.

          Two.

          Three—

          It wasn’t a smart game to play while suffering from blood loss, “No.”  Her record was 100, but she couldn’t remember how that one had ended.

          Obviously, she had lived, which was a bit of a pity.

          The Grand Mage smiled, “Good.”

          He kissed her, and Issi fought the revulsion that turned her stomach.  His fingers wound through her hair and his free hand pushed her flush against him.  She forced down her disgust, as she busied herself with the technicals of the response.

          He wanted warm and playful.

          He wanted love and comfort.

          He wanted the lie.

          And it was Issi’s job to make it feel real. 

          He broke away, his breath painting the air between them, “Tell me.”

          Issi ignored the urge to retch and gave him a playful smirk, “Tell you what, Sir Grand Mage?”

          He grinned.

          Gods how she wanted to break his nose.  She should have run the knife through the skin of his throat when she’d the chance. 

          But rage was important.

          Hatred was important.

          Because it wasn’t nothing. 

She swallowed the bile that bit at her throat and kissed his cheek, “I love you.”