I yank the rag away and prime my shoulder to punch him in the nose, but I stop myself. He’s not mocking me. He’s asking for true. Out of curiosity.

“Fine,” I say, reapplying the rag. “But after I tell you, you must truthfully answer a question of mine.”

“Deal.”

I take a deep breath. “It was Elisa.”

“The empress gave you that mark?”

“Stop talking! As I’m sure you’ve heard, she bought me while passing through the free villages toward Invierne. Hector had been taken hostage by an enemy, and she was desperate to get him back. We were in horrible danger the whole time; I know this now. But . . . I was just happy. I’d been bought by a fine lady, you see, and I was given warm clothes and kind words and the same food as everyone else. I thought I was the luckiest girl in the world.”

He raises an eyebrow as if to say, “Go on.”

“A few days later, we caught up to Elisa’s enemy, and we attacked his camp, freed Hector. It all went mostly well. But after the battle, just as we were realizing that one of them had gotten away, he launched from the trees and attacked Elisa. I remember it so clearly . . . she couldn’t breathe. There were all these dried leaves in her hair. Her arm was stretched out on the ground, limp, dirt in her nails . . . it made me think of my mother. The last thing I ever saw of her was her hand, sticking out from beneath a pile of rubble, and I . . . Elisa had been so kind to me. . . . It’s like I went to another place in my head, and I wasn’t me anymore but this monster. . . .”

I pause a moment, swallow hard, take a breath. The spigot drip drip drips. Iván’s eyes are intent on me, but again there’s no judgment there. He’s just listening.

“I launched at him. Pounded him with my fists until he let go of Elisa’s throat. But I was just a little girl, and he was a fully grown Invierno assassin, so of course he had me flipped over and pinned in seconds. He hit me so hard my sternum caved in.”

Iván’s brows knit, as he puzzles something out.

“The next thing I knew,” I continue, “I was alive and awake on the cold ground, Elisa collapsed on top of me. Turns out, Hector had killed the assassin, then Elisa used the power of her Godstone to heal me. There was a lot of blood on the ground by then, and Elisa was newly come into her power, so the healing was . . . intense.”

I dash off the words as if they’re no big deal, and I gently peel up a corner of the rag to check Iván’s lip. “The bleeding has lessened,” I say.

The laundry dungeon is cooler than the barracks, and the chill dimples my arms. It’s easy to imagine myself back in the mountains, the air brittle with approaching winter. I don’t remember a lot of what happened to me before I met Elisa, but my flesh remembers being cold.