The Blackguards sometimes repeated an old saying that sounded like bluster from those who didn’t live and die by it. It was what they said when a brother or a sister had to take a battlefield Freeing: Death before dishonor. Now, to those who counted on her, one way or another, no matter what Karris did, she would bring death and dis-honor both.
She sat on the bench and felt as if the world had slipped out of joint.
Ironfist had been a dear friend. A man she’d admired and appreciated for so long in so many ways that what began as a political marriage could become more in time . . . if it weren’t based on deception. If it didn’t shame and dishonor them both.
But how could she say no to him? Acceptance was so obviously the right thing to do on every conceivable level that her rejection would make him lose face. It would seem a profound personal rejection. It would shame him, and he wasn’t only her former friend. He was a king.
Rejecting him had consequences far beyond her.
But how could she not reject him? She was married. To a man she loved. To a man she’d waited for without any hope offered, waited and waited . . . until yesterday. And now she was going to give up on him, again?
Her own happiness was the last thing she could think of. She was the White.
Shortly before she’d died, Orea Pullawr had once asked Karris not to hate her. Karris still didn’t know what for, but apparently there were hard truths in that mysterious bundle of papers the Order had stolen. But maybe the papers were irrelevant now. She understood what Orea had meant.
Not so long ago, Karris wouldn’t have believed it was even possible to do the wrong things for the right reasons. Now she knew she would do things for entirely unselfish reasons, knowing she would regret them bitterly afterward.
She was the White now.
The White didn’t wait for a man to come save her.
The White was the one who came to save.
She didn’t seek her heart’s desire instead of doing her duty; she made it her heart’s desire to seek her duty.
So. ‘ Big-girl pants.’ Thank you, Orea. The burden you left me is heavy, but a White Oak stands strong in the storm.
Karris had until Sun Day. She could search for Gavin until then. If she could produce him, she wouldn’t have to remarry. Couldn’t. If she found him, Gavin would forgive Ironfist’s betrayal, and Ironfist would trust Gavin’s word that his absolution would hold. Peace and alliance were still possible. The rift could be mended. Wounds healed.
She would have to destroy the Order before Sun Day, though. Utterly, if she hoped to live in peace. If they ever hoped to be safe again.
If she failed, when Sun Day came, she would do what she must. What the innocent lives she safeguarded demanded of her. She would keep her mouth shut and marry, thus dishonoring two men, herself, and the office that demanded purity.
But then, once her people were saved?
What moral authority had a White who had stained her robes dark with broken vows? How could that which was white hide a stain?
She wouldn’t try. She wouldn’t heap deceit upon deceit. Her people would live, but having proven herself unable to live with honor . . .
Her mind flashed suddenly to her father. In that horrible fire, the White Oak family had lost not only all her brothers and the estate itself, but also goods worth more than the indebted family could ever repay. Despite her attempt to elope with Dazen, Karris’s engagement to Gavin Guile must have looked like the only way to save the family. Gavin had known it, too, mocking him, talking in front of him in the most disgusting terms about what he was going to do with Karris—who drank herself into a stupor that night, hoping to make herself insensate. The eldest Guile son had done all he’d promised, too. Then he told Karris she wasn’t good enough for him, not smart enough, not pretty enough, too boring, sexually dull. He told her he didn’t care about her family’s lost fortune—but that he could never marry a woman so far beneath himself in every other way. She hadn’t fought him then, not even when he threw her out into the cold, clothes torn, hair disheveled, tear-streaked and drunk, only making it home when a street merchant steered her away from a wrong turn into a bad neighborhood and gave her something hot to drink.
She’d known she was pregnant immediately, because she had to be, because it was her worst fear, and she’d confronted her father, turning all her rage on the man who’d gambled her honor and his own and had lost.
He’d not defended himself. He’d quietly put his affairs in order and then he’d blown his head off.
She’d hated him for his weakness, but the young find it too easy to hate the weak.
How can a man live without honor? How can a woman?
Her father had wagered her in order to save his own fortunes; she would wager herself to save the very lives of her people. That made them different, even if she had to take the same exit.
But perhaps she would finally be able to forgive him, if it came to that. But it wouldn’t come to that. She would make sure of it.
So. I have until Sun Day.
Karris felt oddly invigorated. She had a little more than a month to accomplish everything she could in her life, or nothing at all.
She was deep in the muck. It felt like quicksand sucking at her boots, but no matter. She was gonna fight like hell.
Chapter 30
As sensation returned to her dull carcass, Teia probably should’ve had some gratitude that she was waking up at all. The ropes strangled that in the crib.
She swallowed hard against hemp. She’d already visibly stirred. There could be no subterfuge now. That game was finished. And maybe every other one, too.
“Master? What the hell, Master?” she said. It was her last card. Not a good one.
“Master? Master.” Behind her, his voice low, Murder Sharp seemed to be chewing on the word. “No, Adrasteia. You needed a master.” He sounded suddenly mournful. “I couldn’t be that for you. You needed me, and I was gone. The war called me away, and you went astray without me.”
She hadn’t been blindfolded. Why not?
It could be a mistake. Sharp was fearsome, but he wasn’t very smart.
As if he could read her mind, Sharp suddenly grabbed her at the ropes at the nape of her neck and breathed into her ear—soft, trembly breaths smelling of mint leaves and darkness.
“What—what are you doing, Master Sharp?” It wasn’t one rope around her neck, it was at least six, and they all bobbed with her fear.
She should be looking at the room, establishing exits, figuring what she might grab as a weapon—but her world had collapsed to a bubble of this man’s breath and all the kinetic potential for violence in him, like a boulder tipping at the edge of a great cliff held back only by her attention on it.
“Anything. I. Want,” he said.
She’d already forgotten her question.
His canine tooth closed gently on her earlobe, his stubble scratching her. Against her very will, gooseflesh raised across her arms. He wasn’t the kind of man to—He was just tormenting her. Maybe if he was so amused, she had some hope.
He bit down hard and she yelled. She pursed her lips and cursed inwardly.
Sharp chuckled, pulling back. He didn’t seem alarmed in the least, which told her that wherever they were, no shouting was going to bring her help.
“Oh, Adrasteia,” he said. “Sweet, stupid child.” He grabbed the ropes again and lifted her. She’d assumed her limbs must be bound to the chair. They weren’t. Instead she was cocooned in ropes on top of the chair, so she stood with his motion, ready to lunge and drive her head into his face, but he kept her high and in front of him.