Angel’s POV
"Kane. Take the woman away."
"No..." I spun around before I could stop myself. "Please. Please don’t. Don’t separate us, I’m... I haven’t seen her since..." My voice fractured on the last word. I pressed it back together. "Please. I’m asking you."
Sothing moved across Terrell’s face that I didn’t have the capacity to read right now.
Agnes was behind : "Don’t beg him. Don’t you dare beg him, Angel - don’t give him the satisfaction..."
"Agnes..."
"We are leaving. I don’t care who he is, I don’t care what he has, I will protect you..."
"Agnes, stop..."
"You do not cower before this man, do you understand ? You do not bow your head and you do not beg him for anything..."
"I’m not cowering!" My voice ca out sharper than I intended. I turned to face my sister fully. "Agnes. Please. Just... let handle this. Please."
My sister looked at with an expression I had never wanted to see on her face directed at .
Then she looked past , at Terrell.
The silence was loud.
After a long mont, Terrell spoke.
"Take her to your rooms," he said. Not warmly. Not generously. Simply. "She stays in your wing." A pause that had weight in it. "And Angel." His voice was quiet, which ant it was serious. "Don’t try anything."
I exhaled.
"Thank you," I said, without quite looking at him.
Agnes said nothing. Which, from Agnes, was the loudest possible form of protest.
I took my sister’s arm and I walked her away from him before she could say whatever was visibly building behind her eyes, and I did not look back.
She stood in the middle of my room and turned in a slow circle, taking it in.
The wide windows. The fireplace. The carved furniture and the soft rugs and the curtains that pooled slightly on the floor. The books on the bedside table.
Agnes turned in that circle and looked at all of it, and her expression was the expression of soone encountering sothing that does not belong in any category they have available.
"What," she said slowly, "is going on."
"Agnes..."
"This is not a prison room." She gestured at the fireplace. "This is not where they put people they’ve taken." She turned to look at , and her eyes were doing the thing they always did when she was working sothing out. "Angel. This is soone’s actual room."
I sat down on the edge of the bed.
I looked at my hands.
"It’s my room," I said.
Silence.
"Your room."
"Yes."
"In his castle."
"Yes."
"His castle. Terrell’s castle. The man who..." She stopped. Started again. "The man who ca to my village with swords and fire and killed... Angel, you know what he did, how can you possibly be..."
"I’m his wife," I said.
The silence that followed was so absolute that I could hear the fire.
Agnes sat down.
She sat down on the chair across from the bed with the careful movent of soone whose legs have stopped working without their permission. She looked at .
"What," she said.
"It’s complicated..."
"His wife."
"Agnes..."
"You are standing in his castle telling you are the wife of the man who... how? How did this... did he force you? Did soone make you... Angel, I need you to tell right now because if he forced you I will..."
"He didn’t force ." The words felt inadequate the mont I said them. "It’s... the situation is more complicated than I can explain in two minutes, and I know how it sounds, and I know what you’re thinking..."
"You cannot possibly know what I’m thinking right now."
"I have an idea." I looked at her. "Agnes. I need you to listen to ."
She was looking at with an expression that was made of disbelief, grief, and the fierce fury of an older sister who has decided sothing is wrong and has appointed herself to fix it.
"There is also," I said, before I lost my nerve, "rrick."
Agnes blinked. "Who."
"My other husband."
The silence was even louder this ti.
"Your other..." Agnes stood up. She sat back down. She stood back up. "Two husbands."
"Agnes..."
"You have two husbands." She pressed both hands to her face. Removed them. "One of whom is the man who burned my ho to the ground, and..." She stopped. Turned to the window with the focused look of soone doing rapid calculations. "Right. Alright. That’s..." She was already moving toward the window, leaning close to the glass, examining the ground below with the eye of soone who had escaped from difficult places before. "How high do you think that is? If we knotted the curtains..."
"Agnes." I stood and crossed to her, catching her arm. "Agnes, stop. I’ve already tried that. I tried everything when I first..." I shook my head. "There’s nowhere to go that they won’t find you. I know the grounds. I’ve walked every inch of them looking for exactly what you’re looking for right now."
"Then we try anyway..."
"They will catch us." I held her eyes. "And then we’ll be separated. And I can’t —" My voice cracked on it. "I can’t lose you again. Agnes, I just found you. I can’t lose you again."
She looked at .
Sothing in her face shifted.
Not agreent - Agnes never agreed with anything quickly. But the window-assessnt stopped, and she let pull her away from the glass, and she sat back down in the chair and looked at with the expression of a woman forcibly postponing a plan rather than abandoning it.
"Tell everything," she said.
"You first," I said. "Agnes, I need to know... I need to know how. How you’re here. How you’re alive. I thought..." I stopped. Pressed my lips together. "Tell from the beginning."
Sothing changed in my sister’s face then.
The fight and the fury and the relentless forward montum.
Then she started to talk.
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