She had to rest her head against the bars as emotion hit her hard. People did not help the likes of her. What if she didn’t deserve his trust? She was everything Lord Duenn claimed: a thief, a murderer, a liar. Yet that was only one way of looking at the story. She was a survivor. Aoving’s beloved sister and Kem’s aunt, even if they weren’t blood kin. But what are blood kin, after all? They might be your staunchest allies or your most vicious betrayers.

“If I am to help you, I need trust from you in return, Elen.”

She raised her head. “I have served you loyally, without fail. I have never betrayed your generosity.”

He shook his head, as a teacher might at receiving the wrong answer from a student who was capable of more. “Elen, I know you well, and yet do not know you at all. That is not what I am asking. When you and Midwife Aoving asked for permission to reside here, you told me you are not Manor-born.”

“We are not.”

“So.” His frown cut her to the heart. “You were precise in your choice of words, in a way meant to mislead me. You were speaking only of yourself and your sister.”

She said nothing because he was correct. They’d been so careful.

Shifting from one foot to the other, he went on. “I am sorry to say, I must now believe you deliberately hid from me that Kem is the child of a Manor’s lord.”

“Aoving did not become Lord Duenn’s concubine because she wanted to be. He abused her.”

“Having met him, I don’t doubt it. But the law is the law.”

How she hated that tiresome phrase! “After Kem was weaned, his second winter, Lord Duenn got tired of Owlet, as he called her. He took Kem from her to be raised by his wife, and handed Aoving over to the barracks. He knew what would happen to her there. I think it gave him pleasure to know he could allow his people to get away with cruel and brutal things that would have been criminal if committed outside a Manor. But the law allows him full command over the lives of the people in his household. She would have died if we hadn’t run.”

“I am not unsympathetic to her plight. I assume that the lord’s castoff went first to the captain of the barracks militia, this Roel.”

Her hands spasmed around the bars. “Yes,” she choked out. “I had thought he was a decent man, who would never—” But she could say no more. Memory was a venom burning through her mind.