Page 65 of The Space Between Stars

Attilatia sprinted for the far wall and ripped the dowaga free. It was cold and horrible in her hands.

The man hesitated only a moment before attacking, making for the weapon’s twin grips. He tried to wrench it from her. He nearly succeeded—would have, had he not been verging on stupefaction. She leveraged the weapon against him, slowly pressing the curving blade toward his chest until—one more kick where it counted—his grip released.

The steel plunged down. Once. Twice. A third time. The man crumpled. Blood gushed from the holes in his chest.

Unwilling to take her chances, Attilatia clenched shaking fingers around the handle before cleaving the dowaga into his neck. It didn’t cut clean through, the way she’d thought it would. She could have stopped there; he was certainly dead. But something deeply broken within her wanted to feel steel strike floorboard.

Her arms had never worked so hard. The blade kept rising and falling. She might have been screaming. She might have been silent. Her face was wet when the wood stole the blade from her hands. Her fingers curled instead into the man’s hair, pulling his head from where it belonged. She tried not to think about how heavy it was. Tried not to think of the heat drenching her feet.

She staggered from Thacklore’s room, through the hall, down the stairs and directly into Thacklore’s dinner party.

Bearded men shouted. Women in beaded kaftans fled, their screams shrill. Attilatia’s heart drummed in her ears as her eyes found Thacklore. That was what did her in—that deadpan face, staring at her. He was still seated at the table’s end, lips pulling at a freshly lit pipe.

She threw the severed head onto the spread. It scattered trays of food and dishes and cast red freckles against crystal stemware before coming to a rest, jaw slack, glass eyes reflecting the chandelier.

“Sell me!” She didn’t recognize the barking voice as her own. “Sell me!”

The whole room went silent enough to hear a steady dripping of fluid against porcelain. Thacklore released a cloud of smoke into the haze. He pulled an embroidered cloth from his pocket, bundled the pipe, and returned it.

“Jamad,” he called lightly over his shoulder. A heartbeat later, the too-large man entered the dispersed dinner party, his eyes winding around the space to fall on Attilatia. Her spine straightened. “Please bring my guest to her room. She seems to be unwell.”

Jamad tossed Attilatia to the floor in the room that had served as hers for the past few months. Thacklore walked in behind them, slamming the door shut. “You wanted a show? Fine. You are up for auction.”

A maid hovered in the corner, carrying Thedexemore. Suddenly nothing else mattered.

“Atti!” the boy squealed, blissfully ignorant.

The woman set him on the floor and left without acknowledgement or eye contact. He ran to Attilatia, and she scooped him into her arms.

“Along with the baggage you carry, I imagine you’ll catch a nice price.” Thacklore’s hawklike eyes were trained on the babe. “The Kovathians have been preoccupied over their short count.”

The hairs on her arms raised. “You said… you said your Seraphinden contacts—”

“Don’t be dense. It was your decision to make this a business transaction, Attilatia.”

She hadn’t considered him putting them back into Kovathian hands. Then again, what consideration had been made before hacking a man two dozen times in the neck? She hadn’t been thinking at all.

“While I do have a colleague in Nelfindar with a good eye for investments, I doubt he’d be interested enough in non-functional distortion technology to pay more than the Tera’thian government for you.” He stalked to the door, a sneer marring his otherwise polished appearance. “You’re lucky you’re worth more to me intact. Otherwise, I’d be glad to sell you piece by piece.”

The door slammed as he and Jamad exited, locking the door behind them.

Attilatia clutched Thedexemore to her chest, stroking his hair. She was cold. Relief and regret battled for her headspace. How could she be holding this perfect, innocent boy? She’d just murdered a man. She’d done more than murder him. She’d butchered him and made art from what was left of him. It had felt good when she was doing it. What was wrong with her? She’d spent months placating Thacklore to try to rescue Thedexemore. Now she’d doomed him. It couldn’t end like this. There had to be another way.

Thedexemore picked at the blood crusted along her arms. “What happen, Atti?” he cooed.

A tenday passed in a haze of revolving food trays, guided bathroom trips, and darkness. Attilatia and Thedexemore were kept in isolation. That was ideal, really. She treated each day as her last; they were good days.

They sang songs. Thedexemore had begun stringing more and more words together, Azadonian and Nelfinden. Sometimes he threw a fit. It was almost always over nothing, and it always made her laugh. Even his anger was kind. At night, she cuddled him to sleep. Then she would turn away, arms finding her knees instead.

She thought about the things she’d done, the things she deserved, and the things Thedexemore didn’t. She thought about how, given a second chance, she might do things differently.

She cycled over and over again through planning an escape, realizing it was futile, and considering bargaining with Thacklore all over again—for Thedexemore’s sake.

In the end, she knew that upholding her father’s wishes to keep distortion limited in function was worth more than their lives. She’d rather die doing right by him than live to save her own skin a thousand times over… but this poor boy. She hoped when death came, it was swift for him.

Fifteen days into isolation, Thacklore entered. He threw open the curtains, uncaring for how it had them shield their eyes.

“You are no longer my problem. There is a coach waiting for you outside that will take you to Karval. Your escort will direct you on a ship to Seraphinden. Try to escape, and the boy will face swift execution.”