Hyacinth "Castle" was the largest adobe complex boasting the most windcatchers, built at the innermost of the city, with the Blue Mountains as its rear defense.

Lady Amoriah Hyacinth lounged on her throne, legs parted, one foot resting on her other knee, her fingers stirring in a bowl of dates. Her clean-shaven scalp and blue-black eyes gleamed in the sunlight streaming in through the windows. Her bare breasts spilled over her three-tiered belly, which in turn spilled over her groin. She stood up and threw out her arms, then crushed little Amara within them. Once the poor winded girl had toddled off to take her place beside her three hulking sisters, Amoriah turned to her gathered guests.

"The infamous Coris Hadrian!" She cried in delight as she descended the steps, arms thrown out wide as her smile. She swooped down for the customary cheek-rubs, then drew back and surveyed him head to toe.

"Have you grown thinner, my boy? You should give my Ahmundi some advice. Can't have the boy take after his mother, can I? Ha-ha-ha—"

Her hearty belly laugh was replaced by a scowl once she'd sensed the lack of her son in the room. She glanced about, arms on her hips.

"Where is that boy? Must've sent for him a quarter hour ago!" She barked at a manservant in the shadows, who hastily bowed and scurried out a side-door.

Coris creaked up an uneasy smile.

"I hope you're joking, Amoriah. You wouldn't want your only son to adopt my methods, I'm sure." Amoriah spun back, eyebrows raised, then shrugged.

Meya blinked, aghast.

How dare she! Did she just proclaim Coris's torture to be beauty? Would she rather her own son scorch his bowels if that was what it takes to achieve a figure like Ozid?

Meya opened her mouth, but Coris beat her to it with a bow.

"I'm so sorry for all the trouble." Amoriah rolled her eyes and waved in exasperation, but he persisted, "We owe you our lives. I've written to Father. I'm sure he'd no longer haggle on Hyacinth's richest carmine."

Amoriah threw her head back and snorted.

"Agh, letters. I'd pick the reek of spit over ink any day." She shook an exacting finger before Coris's sweating nose. "I won't squish one beetle until you've asked him to the face and received a yes. You could do that right now, in fact."

She cocked her head to the side, a mischievous grin dancing on her lips. As her visitors gawked in confusion, she turned and nodded at the shadows. Two familiar figures emerged.

Kellis and Sylvia Hadrian.

Air itself seemed to have frozen. By the steely glint in their eyes, Meya realized in terror that their jig was up. Partially or all—it was up to them to test the waters and contain the fallout.

"Father. Mother. What brings you here?"

Coris stepped up to shield her on instinct, his bright smile distracting them from his trembling arms. Sylvia blanched bone-white in exasperation.

"You nearly died, Lexi! Shouldn't that warrant at least a letter?" She snapped. She'd flounced halfway down the steps, before Kellis stopped her with a gentle but firm hand around her forearm. He dipped the ever-gracious Amoriah a slight bow of apology, then turned back to his sons.

"You said you have the truth for us, Zier?"

Meya's heart skipped a beat. She whipped around to Coris and found wide, unblinking gray eyes staring back. The pallor of rage consumed whatever color was left on his face, then he rounded on his treacherous little brother.

"You poisoned Jetta?" He roared.

"Just a few drops of laudanum! She was never in any harm!" Zier stammered, scampering back as Coris pursued. Coris looked as if he would've unsheathed his vampire fangs for real, if not for—

"Coris!"

The Baron's call clapped down like lightning. The warring brothers spun around, frozen in mid-act but for their blinking eyes. Kellis's eyes narrowed in rebuke.

"We've encroached on Amoriah's hospitality enough." His voice had returned to normal volume, but remained sharp and icy. He turned to his squires, who were standing behind his sons,

"Simon, Christopher—lead Lady Arinel, Lord Frenix and the men to their quarters."

Zier hadn't told them of her true identity?

The realization didn't console Meya nor abate her fury as she watched the brothers depart with their parents. Zier was trembling, looking resolutely at his boots. Coris's expression was stony as he stared straight ahead, his eyes cold and empty.

A manservant approached Simon and bowed. Simon signaled to the spooked entourage with a firm nod, bowed to Lady Hyacinth, who seemed to be mildly enjoying the spectacle, then held out his hand for Meya.

"Lady Arinel?" Amoriah's booming voice rang out before Meya could accept it. She spun around to find the Lady's calm, unreadable eyes upon her. "A moment, if you please."

Meya frowned. Her intuition was tingling, but it was likely Amoriah wanted a chat over tea as fellow women in power. Or perhaps she had news on the Graye sisters, and Cleygar and Lors. There'd been no word from the four since they left, and Ozid and Jadirah had heard nothing. Coris dashed off an apprehensive letter to Amoriah, then a reply came from Lasralein Hasif, the court physician, assuring them the Lady Graye had been taken into her care. Yes, perhaps that was it.

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Meya gave the wary Simon a nod and watched as members of the entourage filed past her. Dorsea shot her a worried look. Philema avoided her gaze, like most of them. Tissa gave her a wink. Frenix held Atmund's hand and was urging him along—the poor boy was sniffling back tears, frightened by Coris's outburst. Little Lord Pearlwater looked to her for reassurance. For once, he seemed just as scared.

Meya eked out a nod of confidence she didn't feel. The side-door closed behind the boys, then Amoriah's command thundered in the silence.

"Seize her."

"Wha—"

That was all Meya managed before a gag slipped between her jaws. Hulking Hyacinth guards jerked her arms behind her and bound them, then stamped on her kicking feet. Wriggling in vain, Meya glowered up at Amoriah, but the woman had turned her back to the scene, ascending the steps back to her throne.

"Lord Crosset sent word that an impostor has assumed his daughter's place." She plonked down with a contented sigh then dipped her hand back into her bowl of dates. She tossed one into her mouth and chewed noisily, "You'll be held until his men arrive to take you back to Crosset."

The struggle left Meya's limbs, driven out by blood-freezing cold like she had never known. Not even when Coris exposed her fraud. Not even when Gillian stormed the entourage. For Meya's back hadn't forgotten the touch of the salted whip, nor her tongue the taste of the Liar's Bridle.

The voices from near and far were mere tinny echos in her ringing ears.

"My lady, should she be held in the men's prisons or the women's?" The guard on her right asked. Amoriah paused munching, then spat out the date pit in annoyance.

"Are you blind? Look at her hair!" She jabbed a finger at Meya's crop of mangled golden locks, then sank back to her cushions with a grin of savage entertainment, caressing her lips with another date fruit, like rouge.

"She aspires to become one of us. We shall treat her as one of us." She concluded, then jerked her chin with a terse order, "Strip her."

The verdict was carried out swift as the blink of an eye. As one guard tore the cloth off her breasts, the other tugged down her trousers. She was left naked as the day she was born. Whispers, jeers, gasps, laughing, pointing from across the length of every wall of the Hall, appraising her body like that of a horse's. Shame burned her like the waters of Fyr's Lake. She wanted to faint, to escape from it all. But she couldn't. Tears spilled down her cheeks. As the guards dragged her to her doom, she was reduced to desperate prayers.

Coris. Zier. Simon. Christopher. Maro. Dad—help.

⏳

The warden closed Meya's wrists in a pair of hanging shackles. She traversed the narrow, fenced walkway to the heart of the crossroads, then scaled down the rungs jutting from the tower's dividing wall.

Meya followed her until she disappeared into the bustle of the hallway below. A cool breeze fluttered her hair. She turned to face it, peering through the sand-colored bars to the city outside.

Under the blazing sunlight, a choppy sea of flat, sand-colored rooftops blanketed the desert all the way to the gaping mouth of the valley.

Windcatcher towers rose high above the townscape. Some had four sides, like the one Meya was in. Some had six, and some as many as eight. Meya's tower seemed to be the tallest, a mark of peerless wealth and authority.

Chains jangled in the silence. A voice hollered across the divide,

"Oi, new girl! What's yer name? Where ya from?"

Meya whipped around. Her fellow prisoner was wedged into the opposite corner of the tower. Had she been standing, Meya predicted she would've been two heads taller and twice as wide as the average woman. Her arms dangled from rusty shackles on either side of her head, tanned, toned and thick as logs. Her bare breasts rested over twin rows of muscle. She crossed her legs on the wooden box, which served as her seat and latrine. She tilted her shaven head with a grin,

"I know those teats. Yer pregnant? Whatcha in for?"

Meya's cheeks burned. She wished she still had enough hair to cover her attributes. She smirked wryly, shrugging,

"Meya Hild of Crosset. Impersonated a noblewoman." She called across the chasm. The woman blinked, then folded her lips and smacked a kiss,

"Ooh. Highbrow." She crooned, "Name's Mithrin, by the way."

"What did you do?" Meya asked. Mithrin's smile widened, revealing a sliver of yellowed upper teeth.

"Me hubby's too pretty, so I fixed that."

She winked. Meya shivered in the heat as her imagination ran wild.

She turned instead to study the silent prisoner in the corner between them—an emaciated, wasted lady with long, straggly soot-colored hair streaked with white. She sat slumped and listless, glassy eyes staring into air.

"Save yer breath. That one's a goner, " said Mithrin. Meya shot her a questioning look. "Stole a baby from the School for herself. Crazy, innit?"

Meya's heart lurched in equal parts pity and fear. She licked her parched lips,

"How long she in for? And you?"

"Five years. Two left." Mithrin answered, then cocked her head at her defeated cellmate, "Twelve, two done."

Meya gawked,

"You sure 'tisn't the other way 'round?"

Mithrin exploded with laughter, swaying against her chains,

"Sure as the sun. You?"

Meya fell against the wall with a sigh.

"I'm just here 'til my Lord's men come fetch me. I'll be tried for real in good ol'Crosset."

A chill rushed down her spine as she was reminded of her predicament—no, theirs.

Meya glanced down, but all she could see were her stupid pillows. Wee-Coris was still too wee for the bulge to reach past her ample breasts. Her hands trembled with a burning, torturous itch. It was the least a mother could do, but she couldn't even comfort the babe with her touch.

Grinding her teeth against the tide of fear, guilt and loneliness, Meya peered at the tiny heads sailing by on the hallway far below, some bare skin and some covered with short tufts of hair, as if hoping to see a familiar dark-brown head come to a stop beneath this one tower among the hundreds in this warped little town, see that familiar pale, gaunt face and beautiful silvery eyes, looking up to her with that gentle, reassuring smile.

She shook her head out of it, back to reality, chastising herself for the moment of weakness.

The wooden trapdoor of the latrine seat chafed against her bum. She nudged the lever on the ledge with her foot. The two halves fell away beneath her, revealing bottomless darkness, probably a pipe leading outside the tower and straight to the cesspit.

An amusing idea crossed her mind.

"Say, they know we can chuck our shite down there, right?" She jerked her chin at the potential victims milling about like ants far below. Mithrin tilted her head, picturing the gratifying scene.

"If you could get your hands free, of course." She wiggled her tethered wrists, rattling the chains.

"How are we supposed to eat and drink?" Meya asked. Mithrin lowered her feet onto the ledge, where sat a bowl of water. She nudged it before her with her foot, then cupped it between her feet.

"There we go," she deposited the bowl on the seat with a grunt, lowered her legs again, then squeezed the bowl between her thighs. She looked up at Meya with a smirk, then nodded down at her rigid abdomen, "This how I got these buns."

Mithrin raised her thighs and bent down in demonstration, slurping noisily from the bowl. Meya slumped against the wall, closing her eyes as despair engulfed her.

Meya was no stranger to the chains, but this would have to be the worst, even worse than the time she was punished in the Famine. Back then, she had the comfort of knowing it would end after ten whips. She could graze her hand on the Lattis shackles and transform, perhaps, but there was no telling what destruction she'd wreak in her blind agony, what chaos she'd leave in her wake, if a dragon were to take to the sky of Hyacinth.

And where would she run? How would she survive? What about Arinel? What about Coris? What about the babe she now carried? These invisible shackles were harder to break than Lattis. Impossible, even.

To think that a week ago, her biggest worry was skinned buttocks.

Another gust of wind lambasted her, robbing more heat from the poisonous metal burning against her wrists. Its chilled touch reminded her of the ice shackles that had fettered her a mere month ago, and she had slipped through.

If only things were that simple now.