She forced herself to look up at Brella, blinking away the sting. Brella was staring back, open-mouthed. She was flushed, her freckles dimmed by the dark honey warmth over her cheeks. “This was supposed to be special for you. And I’m taking that away.”

“You aren’t.” Brella’s voice was nearly free of inflection. “It’s not your fault.”

“Maybe not entirely, but I can’t . . .” She choked. “I can’t do to you what’s been done to me.”

The silence was thick. Through the enchanted windows, the lavender swayed in an impossible breeze. It was nighttime out there, but Scratch couldn’t vouch for the truth of that. It could be any time, really. The two of them could be anywhere, or nowhere. The realest thing in the room was Brella’s gaze on her, those eyes like wet, fresh earth, her skin like rain-dappled road.

Brella opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. “Why are you like this, Scratch?”

“What?”

“Like—” Brella tugged on her braids so hard Scratch’s eyes watered. “I mean, you’re a person.” Her topaz eyes were open, her voice heavy with meaning. “A whole person.”

Scratch shifted on the balls of her feet. “Yes? I am.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I don’t. I could . . .” She swallowed, feeling unsteady ground beneath her feet. “Try?”

“The octagon.” Brella’s breath was high, her chest rising and falling. She began to pace the room, window to window, looking so small in the shadow of the oversized furniture. “Ivinscont wasn’t supposed to come back with victory in a day. Victory after one battle, Scratch. Do you realize how unlikely that was? And the things I thought when I heard that the person who had made that call, who had devised that plan was—was just a nobody from the Tangled Lakes.”

Her lungs clenched around something hot and hard. “A nobody.”

“Like me. A nobody like all of us. I just . . .” She groaned. “I needed to know who you were.” She looked down, then back up again. Her eyes were so huge. Criminally huge. Who gave them the right? “So I asked around. I know you were the best in your class at the Academy.”

Her shoulders tensed. “Okay.”

“And that you bought your mother a house in a nice part of town. And that you don’t visit.”

Scratch’s nails cut into her palm. “That’s none of your business.”

“Who are you, Scratch? And why did you work so hard for a country that doesn’t give a shit about you?”

“Because I didn’t know.” Her mind was a morass, wet and foggy. Her skin stung from sharp-edged questions. “I thought if I worked hard . . . The Academy saved me, okay? They saved me. Without them, I would have been nothing.”

“I doubt you would—”

“I didn’t have another choice, Brella. I had to get out of that house.”

Brella stopped pacing. “What house?”