“And you weren’t even Manor-born, just brought in because the Manor lost so many of their people to a plague and had to bring in outsiders even though they didn’t want to. That’s what Lord Duenn said.” When Elen looked at him in surprise, he muttered, “He was ranting and ranting, so I heard a lot of disjointed ranting. I mean, what could you have done?”

“I could have convinced your mother to escape Duenn Manor before the worst happened, not that the worst hadn’t already happened to her, I mean. It’s not like she was with Lord Duenn because she wanted to be with him. He was lord. He took what he wanted.” The words flooded. “If I had tried to convince her to run away sooner, then maybe … but we ate every single day, and she could wash every day, and wear clean clothes, and she hated him—Lord Duenn, I mean—but there’s only so much time a man like Duenn can spend walking his cock inside one specific woman, so most of the time she could sit in peace in the herb garden, with a platter of food and just herself for company. She liked some of the other women, the ones who were kind to her. I don’t think any of his concubines liked him. They mostly held on to each other, because the women of the Manor lineage didn’t like that he kept so many lowborn concubines. You know your mother was gifted with healing. She taught herself a lot, even as a child, about herbs and wounds and illnesses, and how to treat them. One of the older aunt-wives in Duenn Manor took a liking to her and trained her. She got a reputation as someone good to have during labor. It was one of the things Manor-born women in a place like Woodfall Province are allowed to do freely, to midwife and to heal. The rest of the time, she tended the garden. Plants grew for her. They loved her tender care.”

“She wasn’t so tender with me,” he muttered.

“She was when you were a baby. She would sing to you. Do you remember that one lullaby about the moon—” She broke off, seeing a flush of anger—or grief—flood his face again, and so she let the memory go. “It’s just you started to assert yourself and even talk back sometimes, when things weren’t the way you thought they should be. Nothing wrong with that! But she never knew how to deal with it.”

“That’s for sure,” he mumbled.

“Anyway, Lord Duenn got tired of her. Maybe she forgot to smile and pretend to enjoy it one time while he was fucking her.”

He winced.