There was something darkly poetic that it happened just minutes after William had left her in the stables. The very moment William came back into her life, he had not been there when she needed help. It didn’t matter. When next he saw her, William swore obscenities and would have marched directly to Jon Bassett and cleaved his head off if he could. But the entirety of the Captain’s Regiment had yet to return from their journey, and there was no word as to what delayed them. William was left to fume with no target, and to swear empty horrors upon the man once he was finally back.

Arable might have appreciated his chivalry if she had not already spent two days coping with the attack entirely alone. At first she had been in shock, clutching her face in horror for hours until a horsehand found her. Then, nearly as painful as the attack itself, it took the majority of her savings to tend to the wound. She paid handsomely for a decent physicker in the Parliament Ward, who promised he could stitch her with ant heads and catgut without leading to any greenrot. He was kind and had a calming voice, and he likely did not realize how terrible his words were to her.

“You’re lucky,” he actually said without laughing. “Whoever did this used a sharp blade, and very thin. Might have been far worse.”

There was no world in which this made Arable lucky. Luck was not involved with what had happened to her.

“I won’t inquire as to the particulars,” he continued, “but you were wise not to struggle. Smart girl, could have made a botch of your face otherwise.”

If her face had allowed it, she might have told him exactly what she thought of this determination. The idea that it was someway her responsibility to react appropriately when an attack like this happens was nauseating. But she could not so much as scowl without agony lancing through her cheeks, so she had said nothing. She paid the physicker once for his work and twice for his silence and returned to the castle with almost nothing in her coinpurse.

Reflected in the silver, she saw France. Her lost chance to escape was carved into her cheeks. She had wasted so much time worrying about an exact destination, and now she could not afford to have one at all.

The few times she had seen William since, his smile turned into a sympathetic frown with a thousand connotations. She instinctively took its worst meaning—that when he saw her, he saw only her wounds. As if that was all she was now, a thing to be pitied. She was no longer herself, but a victim. Bassett’s victim. His signature was on her face. Surely William did not think that, but it was all she could see.