An attractive bride might fetch a high bid at auction, bringing great pride to everyone in the pool. This propaganda drilled into everyone’s heads by the bride master wasn’t the true reason behind the pains the captive women had all taken to present themselves so well. No, these fellow inmates clung to the superstition that a pretty, well-groomed bride might catch the eye of a kindly man, one who wouldn’t be inclined to beat her on a regular basis.
Halfway up the hill, Maynya paused to gaze at the plume of smoke rising from the foundry’s great chimney, careful not to linger long enough to feel the sting of a cane against her thigh from one of the two hulking, big-boned matrons walking with her on either side. The cloud of soot drifted to the edge of the forest and beyond, perhaps far enough for a free Mystic to see from a vantage point deep in the woods of Sanctimonia. She’d been transfixed by the smoke every day for a full year now. The sight of its unimpeded drift never failed to trigger a pang of homesickness. The path in life she’d chosen a year earlier, when she traded places with a pregnant prisoner, would probably preclude her from ever seeing her homeland again.
She looked away and moved on.
As heavy as the burden of homesickness might seem, another sorrow pressed down on her heart with greater weight than the cross on her shoulder. She’d enjoyed the company of an invisible sister in Sanctimonia. The mysterious companion of her dreams vanished on the day her captivity began. The memory still triggered aching sadness. Maynya could no longer travel to a remarkable world by night and view a different life through her other half’s eyes.
She seldom dreamed anymore at all, literally or figuratively.
“You go, Maynya!” The cry of a bride spurred her onward. The only joy she now found was derived from the company of these poor souls. They’d been drawn to her from day one as if they were her own children, even though many were her age or older. She sang to them, she combed out their hair, she whispered encouragement, and above all, she helped them plot their escapes. Thirteen brides had gotten away during this single year of her captivity. She’d used illusions most times, and she’d also taught others how to cast their own. Some few other Mystics in the pool had similar gifts but needed instruction on harnessing their powers, a knowledge that had come to her by instinct.
The cross scraped through the thin shoulder fabric of Maynya’s wedding dress, stinging its way across a welt, a reminder of the price she’d paid for helping these cherished women. Although she’d never been caught in the act of aiding a slave’s escape, suspicion had been directed her way more than once by angry guards seeking a scapegoat. Just a week earlier, a flogging forced the bride master to throw aside the open-backed gown he’d originally planned for this momentous wedding in favor of something less revealing. He’d beaten her for spoiling his plans, nearly causing the need for a veil over her face. But the bruises had mended.
Maynya distracted herself from the pain by gazing at her onlookers and imagining happy lives for each bride. Then she met the eye of a soldier whose intense return stare nearly buckled her knees. She almost thought she knew the man. Yet such familiarity couldn’t be possible. She’d been cloistered away from the men of Virtus for a full year except for two failed, unconsummated, and very brief marriages. The bride master had beaten her bloody the second time. No man enjoyed refunding money less than he.
The soldier’s lingering gaze could only be born from lust, and she cursed the mother who would raise a boy to grow up so arrogant and presumptuous he’d look at another man’s bride in such a manner.
Maynya lost her footing and stumbled to her knees, triggering a wave of murmurs, groans, and even cruel laughter from the throng. She blamed the soldier for distracting her, and she despised him all the more.
The damnable dolt was at her side in an instant. His cap fell from his head when he bent to take her arm, revealing a mass of wavy blond hair. She turned away from the man’s handsomeness, but somehow the light touch of his hand stirred her heart, even though she held nothing but scorn for any and all barbarians.
One of the matrons flanking her scowled at the soldier. “Let her be! She must rise on her own and finish the task.”
Maynya found herself in league with a captor—a rare occasion indeed!
“Do you not know who I am?” the soldier asked.
The second matron pulled her companion aside, but not far enough to keep Maynya from overhearing her harsh whisper. “He’s Quintus Laskaris, the king’s brother.”
The king’s brother! Maynya almost laughed at the cruel game. One man had set her on a path to role-play her own crucifixion. Now his brother came to her aide, no doubt with the design to further her humiliation. She spat at the man’s feet and tried to shrug his hand from her arm. “Leave me be.”
Even if she were wrong, if the soldier acted with noble intentions, she had no need for a hero. She could have used her gift for illusion to escape from Virtus at any time from the moment she’d taken the pregnant woman’s place in the cage a year earlier.
These brides needed her as their champion! A true guardian could find no nobler role. She’d been flogged, beaten, bound in the stocks without food and water for as many as two days at a time. She could certainly survive this latest trial without assistance from a soldier with lust in his eyes.
“Let me carry the cross for
