Nox had felt it coming. Farleigh’s children were spoken for at slower and slower rates as time marched on, which was one of the many reasons that Amaris could no longer remain set aside on market day. She had been trotted out only twice in her thirteen years in Farleigh. Once to a lordling and his wife as a prospective adopted daughter—a meeting that had ended disastrously. And another time to a duchess seeking a proper lady-in-waiting. The duchess had been genuinely offended that she had been presented with someone who would outshine her in her own court.

There were a few catalysts for the lack of consistent profits that the mill now faced, one that Nox understood and one that she didn’t. The first cause of their ever-thinning purses was a result of Farleigh’s increase in runners. After three young boys with promising fetching prices had escaped the mill following the altercation in the kitchen many years ago, more orphans were emboldened to try their hands at braving the forests rather than take their chances with the market. The second was the Gray Matron’s own reluctance to replenish the beds as they emptied, as she seemed less and less willing to purchase incoming children as she aged, which was something of a curiosity to Nox. Why should the matron develop a conscience so late in life?

It was now time for Amaris to make herself presentable for buyers, though she would continue to hide once a month whenever a representative from the church would inspect the manor.

While they had once spent the first day of the month in smiles and conspiratorial whispers as they hid, the bishop’s visits were now accompanied by ritualistic silence. Nox and Amaris had an unspoken agreement never to discuss the traumatic day the bishop had forced Nox to kneel, or the atrocities that had been committed at his command. Instead, it served as a sobering monthly reminder of how powerless they were at the hands of their overseers.

The nights that had followed her punishment had been the longest nights of Nox’s life. She neither slept nor spoke. She’d tumbled so deeply into the detached void within herself that it had taken weeks to return. By some small mercy, Nox had been permitted to remain in monastic silence. No one forced her to rise, or eat, or participate in lessons. Agnes had shooed the other children and matrons away from the healing young woman in her own show of remorse, aside from Matron Flora, the nurse who was allowed in and out to change Nox’s bandages and oversee her healing. While the Gray Matron hadn’t wanted to perform such an inhumane punishment, intentions were dust in the face of inaction. Agnes was not blameless, and Nox would not forget.