“Hey, I’m sorry,” Ash said. His face contorted with confusion as he did his best to make amends, explaining, “Your coloration… I just thought—white, snow…” Ash searched uselessly for a defense, still unsure as to his misstep. “I wasn’t…”

“Oh.” Amaris shook her head, using the back of her hand to wipe away one treacherous tear before he could see it tumble. Of course, the first day they allowed a girl in the keep, she would blubber in the training ring. “It’s nothing. It was someone…it’s nothing. It’s just not a nickname I like to be called.”

Ash offered one quick nod, making an apparent mental note. She wished she hadn’t made him uncomfortable. She would have to find better ways to seal off her emotions if she was going to succeed as a reever.

Amaris couldn’t think of Nox right now. She pictured her emotion as the kraken of lore, battling it into a shell of space within her chest. She tackled the beast and locked it in a cage, forbidding it and its feelings for her friend to sweep its treacherous tentacles toward her. The cage would be slapped with a lock, then wrapped in chains, then shoved into the same seamless chest where all traumatic feelings were kept.

She had told Nox to wait. Nox hadn’t run after all. She’d still be in Farleigh, undoubtedly carrying out Agnes’s personal chores. Amaris made a vow to herself. She would spend her life making amends to Nox for abandoning her. Amaris would not let her rot in that mill.

As soon as she had the skill, she would return to Farleigh and liberate Nox from the matrons. Perhaps she could earn enough to buy Nox’s debt from Agnes. Unless, of course, seeing Amaris only enraged the Gray Matron. She shook the thought from her head, slamming the box on the kraken into place. Amaris resolved to train, to learn, and one day to rescue the one who had spent their childhood saving her.

Then, she refocused on the faeling in front of her. Attempting conversation, she ventured, “Did they buy you to fight?”

Ash blanched at the implication. He frowned. “What?”

Amaris gestured to the coliseum and the hewn keep around them. She reiterated, “The reevers—did they buy you for their cause?”

The offense was plain on his face, though Amaris wasn’t sure what had provoked him. He pushed back, “What kind of question is that?”

She wasn’t sure how she had managed to do so many things wrong in such a short amount of time. Everything she said, everything she did seemed to betray her ignorance of the world. What was the use of the books she’d read and the lessons she’d endured when everyone beyond the walls of Farleigh reacted to her as if she were a cave child?