Hearts and livers on the city gates. I think of the crowd closing in around me, the spittle foaming in their open mouths. My five-fingered hand curls around the iron bars. It doesn’t matter how sharp my claws are; I can’t cut a thousand throats.
“You’ve not an ounce of good sense,” Gáspár goes on, in his pinched-nose prince’s voice. Despite everything, I can tell a part of him relishes the opportunity to castigate me. “Don’t you realize what you’ve done? Half of Király Szek has now seen you for a vicious wolf-girl, and Nándor looks more vindicated in his loathings than ever.”
I know there’s truth in his words, but all I can feel is hurt and toothless anger. I might as well be back in Virág’s hut, my thighs stinging with her lashes.
“You could have done something,” I bite out. When I remember his stony silence, the way he watched the Woodsmen drag me away without lifting a hand to stop them, it burns worse than a hundred billows of blue flame. “You didn’t say a word against Nándor once he had me. You told me I’ve ruined you, but you’re clearly still the same selfish princeling you’ve always been, dressed in your delusions of piety. Well, I apologize, my lord. I’d take back every kiss if I could. Lucky for you, once I’m dead, the secret of your broken oath will die with me, and you can go back to pretending you’re the purest, most honorable Woodsman alive.”
I’m not sure how much of what I’ve said is honest and how much of it is my bitter floundering, hoping at least one of my cruel barbs will hit its mark. Gáspár draws in a short breath, throat bobbing, and then steps sideways into the light. His eye is pooling with venom, but it’s a poor guise for grief. Even though I ought to feel satisfied that my thorns have stuck in him, my blood is cold as ice.
“You don’t understand,” he says, each word a labor, as if he truly does think I’m too simple to grasp their meaning. “If Nándor had even the barest suspicion that I might care for you at all, he’d torture you to death or madness, just to feel like he was taking something from me.”
I stare and stare at him, gulping my fury. I think of the way he held me through the long nights in Kaleva, or the way his lips moved so gently against my throat, but it all makes me want to weep again when I see how he’s looking at me now, as if I’m hopeless and doomed.
“You’ve done a good job pretending,” I say. “Even I’m quite convinced.”
His mouth twists wretchedly. “You’ll have a much easier time pleading your case in front of my father. He tolerates pagans, unlike Nándor.”
The word father runs me through like a sword. “Where is Zsigmond?”
Gáspár doesn’t look at me. The flickering torchlight leaps from wall to wall, bounding after shadows. Finally, he says, “Nándor is still having his fun.”
A blind and furious rage comes over me, like a fissure of pale lightning. I lunge toward him, the bars rattling vainly between us, tears beading at the corners of my eyes.
“Why come back at all, just to keep your head down and follow orders like some weak, worthless Woodsman?” I snarl. “What kind of prince bends silently to the wills of his bastard brother? What kind of prince stands idle and dumb as a struck dog while his people—and yes, the Yehuli are your people, no matter what you believe—suffer? You’re no better than any other soldier who tears mothers from their children.”
“Enough,” Gáspár spits back. “You would be dead already, wolf-girl, if I hadn’t—”
He stops himself, mouth snapping shut. In the time he has been speaking, I have reached out and grasped his wrist, the space between where his sleeve ends and his glove begins and where his bare skin is latticed white with scars.
“I don’t need a knife to wound you,” I whisper.
Gáspár doesn’t move. His gaze meets mine, through the cell bars, black and steady. I see a glimpse of the man I knew on the ice and in the woods again, that bridled fervor and swallowed pain.
“Do it, then,” he says, without a trace of fear. It’s the first time I’ve witnessed this courage from him since we reached the city.
I have the briefest instinct to reach for his throat, where the violet memory of my kiss is still throbbing, but I’m not sure whether I mean to smother him with my tenderness or with my hate. I let go of his wrist, skin prickling.
“Keep one promise.” My voice is trembling so terribly that I have to swallow hard before going on again. “Tell me what your father does to the wolf-girls that he takes.”