The gray of morning seeped into the silk tent, then the brighter light of dawn itself. Anna slowly pried open her eyes. Jecks lay under a single blanket, snoring lightly, practically against the tent wall.
At his snoring, Anna found herself smiling—until she tried to raise her head. While she didn’t have the double images engendered by the use of Darksong, a flash of lightning with the impact of a sledge drove her back onto the rolled blanket that served as a pillow, and tears streamed from her eyes.
“Shit …” she murmured under her breath. They can murder thousands of women who just wanted to be free and not even get a headache, and you do the same thing to those who did it and you can’t even sit up. And you even offered them terms, if they’d just let the women who survived rule themselves.
“Lady?” At her slightest word, Jecks rolled out of his blanket and stood by the cot.
“I’m here.” Her voice was raw, hoarse.
The white-haired lord brought her the water bottle from the narrow camp table and held it to her lips, watching as she did.
“Today … you must rest,” he said.
“ … don’t think I have much choice, do I?”
“You cannot use so much sorcery so often, my lady,” Jecks said.
Tell me about it. “I can see that.” But it wasn’t the sorcery, but the guilt … the backlash … or something. “Why … why … wouldn’t they accept terms … not as though … I was going to make anyone a slave …”
“You are a woman, and they have not seen your power.”
Anna took another long swallow of water.
“In time, they will understand,” Jecks insisted.
How much time and how many deaths? And will anything really have changed once you’re gone?
Anna closed her eyes again.