Sara Larson - Defy

“Take all the girls who are too young up to share the attic. Put the rest in the other rooms.”

A door opened down the hallway and another man walked out, buttoning up his pants. Before the door shut behind him, I caught a glimpse of a girl lying motionless on an unmade bed, her head turned toward a small window above her where a sliver of the moon was just barely visible in the dark sky.

I took a step back and bumped into the door behind me. My hands shook and my heart pounded. I couldn’t stay here one minute longer. Not without killing Horace or the man striding toward us, still tucking his tunic back into his pants after doing his “work.”

I grabbed the door handle and yanked it open.

“Where does he think he’s going?” I heard someone ask, but then I was running, tripping, fleeing from that place. From the disgust and horror and fury that had almost made me do something that would have ended my own life.

“Marcel!” I heard my twin call after me but I didn’t turn back, not even for him. Not even to see why he’d yelled his own name at me, instead of mine. I ran and ran, all the way across the grounds, through the palace, dodging servants and furniture, up the stairs, and to my room. When the door was finally shut behind me, I slid to the ground, buried my head in my arms, and sobbed.

Marcel came into our room about twenty minutes later, when I’d finally regained control of myself. But before he could cross the room to me, a king’s guard opened the door after him. I turned away, trying to hide my tear-stained face.

“Marcel?” he barked out.

“Yes,” my twin responded.

“You will come with me,” the guard said.

Before I had a chance to ask what was going on, Marcel had rushed out after the guard, shutting the door firmly behind him. I stared at the door in concern.

He didn’t return to our room for over an hour. While I waited, I realized how stupid I’d been. How much trouble I had probably gotten us into. I’d run away from my duty — disobeyed a superior. I had never made such a big mistake before. I’d always been able to maintain control. To keep calm — stoic, even — no matter what. But the breeding house had been too much — Horace had been too much. I still wanted nothing more than to take my sword and embed it in his fat gut.

When Marcel finally came in, looking haggard, I was standing by the fire, my arms wrapped around my body, holding myself together.

“Marcel — I’m so sorry,” I began but he shook his head and walked very slowly over to his bed.

“You don’t need to apologize. I wanted to run away, too. I’m sure it was worse for you.”

I sat down next to him on the bed and he took one of my hands in his, gripping it tightly. I stared down at our intertwined fingers, grateful that at least when I was alone with my twin in our room, I could be myself. That I could admit my weakness, my fear. “How much trouble did I get us into?”

“None. I took care of it.” He sighed and grimaced suddenly.

“They weren’t mad?”

“Oh no, they were mad. But I told you, I took care of it.”

“Marcel, what did you do?” I asked quietly, fearing that I already knew.

He tried to turn away from me, but winced suddenly. That’s when I noticed the blood seeping through the back of his tunic.

“ Marcel — no! You took my punishment!”

He didn’t deny it and my heart constricted.

“What did they do?”

“Ten lashes,” he muttered, his voice tight with pain.

My eyes burned with tears as I gently helped him out of his ruined tunic and tried not to gasp when I saw the crisscrossing lines on his once-smooth back. “You shouldn’t have done this,” I whispered. “It was my mistake. I deserved to be punished.”

“And be exposed as a girl? They don’t whip you with your shirt on, you know.” He turned to face me, his face contorted with pain, but his eyes were tender when he met my ashamed gaze. “The king’s guards don’t know us well enough to tell us apart. I had to take your place. I had to protect you.”

I shook my head, unable to say anything.

He took my hand again and squeezed it. “I’m glad it was me and not you. Now help me get bandaged up and let’s get to bed. It’s been a long night.”

I was quiet as I did what he asked, cleaning the wounds, then winding the extra bandages I kept to bind my breasts carefully around his torso. When it was done and I’d helped him pull on a clean tunic, I finally said, “I can’t believe you thought so quickly to call out your own name.”

He shrugged, then winced in pain. “You might be the better fighter, but I was always the smarter one.”

I couldn’t bring myself to laugh, because it was true. His quick thinking had saved me from discovery and the breeding house twice now.

“Do you want me to get you anything?”

“No,” he said. “But I will let you be the one to deal with Prince Damian in the morning.”

I grimaced. “Of course.”

He carefully lowered himself to lie down on his bed with a smirk on his face. “I’d take ten lashes over one of Prince Damian’s temper tantrums any day.”

I shook my head with a rueful smile. “Thank you, Marcel.”

“I’ll never forget that little boy, trying to protect his sister,” Marcel said suddenly, his voice quiet. “I did what I had to do.”

I waited until his breathing was deep and steady before I finally crawled under my own covers. Even then, it was hours before I was able to go to sleep. I couldn’t stop thinking about what Marcel had done and the horrors of the breeding house. Of Kalen, lying down in the attic, probably still crying with the other girls. Of the girl I’d glimpsed on the bed, her face turned toward the moon.

And just before I drifted off, I thought of Iker, hunched over a table in his room, doing something with a knife that smelled of blood and fire. Something that he was so upset about us seeing, he’d punished us even more thoroughly than he probably could have imagined.

I hated him, and the king who did this to our people, more than ever.

THE NEXT NIGHT, the air was still damp from a passing storm, and would most likely stay that way for hours. The darkness was so complete, it felt alive, as though it sucked at me, pulling my eyelids lower and making my limbs heavy. Because of King Hector’s dinner party, the normal perimeter squadron had been called inside the ballroom, and Prince Damian’s guard was assigned to patrol the outer doors to the main palace until the party ended.

“I’m going to go walk the perimeter,” I announced, pushing away from the wall. Walking would help me stay alert. The drenched heat of the jungle was too much for me tonight; I’d never stay awake if I continued to stand in place.

Marcel glanced over at me from his position on the other side of the doorway. “Would you like me to come with you?”

“It’s been a quiet night. Stay here and rest,” I said, noticing the sheen of perspiration on his forehead and the pain in his eyes. “I’ll take the whistle just in case.”

The palace grounds were mostly peaceful, although inside, the royal dinner party was still going strong, and had apparently turned into an impromptu dance. Strains of music began to waft through the air as I neared the dining hall windows. I caught a glimpse of Prince Damian waltzing with a pretty young woman across the dance floor. In his evening attire, with the warm candlelight painting his features so softly, his customary sneer absent from his face, he was almost painfully beautiful. His dark hair, olive skin — so much like mine, since we were both half Blevonese — and his pale blue eyes were a striking combination. I couldn’t deny that he was attractive. Too attractive.