Does he know she was one of the babies taken from the Common community during my first campaign? Would he remember? We have harvested hundreds of babes since that day, so I wouldn’t know how deep his recall goes.

I wouldn’t put it past him to remember each baby.

“I met her at the parlour weeks ago,” I state, withholding that piece of detail. “She was wounded when I arrived, and the CR Guard was having a field day with the campaign. I played along, for once.”

He clicks his tongue, dubious. “I see. She seemed perfectly formed. Clean. Pretty. Is she well in all other senses?”

Clean. Pretty. “Her sigil was cut off and her tongue was lacerated,” I say plainly.

“But she has been with the doctor for four days, yes?” He reads his answer on the screen. “The tongue is healing nicely, and so is the skin graft. We can brand her again once it’s fully taken. But I have not been able to see either girl, as I’ve been occupied by the lords’ imminent visit. Either way, we don’t need her tongue or her voice, but trauma is generational. Epigenetics can change the path of DNA forever. Transfers from babe to babe. Are you certain you want her Meaningful Purpose carried out with a member of your Collective? There are other Silk Girls from other Silk Aviaries to choose from. If this Wardeness is as careless as you have seen, perhaps these girls need to be placed with lower value Trade men— a Guard perhaps.”

Like fuck they will.

The past week I have spent balls deep inside most of my House Girls trying to fuck out the thought of her. I’ve been out of my mind, fierce, and hurt one of them badly.

And forgetting her?

It didn’t work.

I widen my stance, making the mass of my body even larger. “You visited Kong and pressed me for an heir. I now have two new Silk Girls. A random selection. I don’t seek anything outside of an heir. They will do fine.”

He lifts his gaze once more, eyes hitting me hard. “You will choose one, then, Sire?”

He wanted this. He’s desperate for the entire set of five to have Meaningful Purpose, a complete house. But I’ve never been a willing part of The Trade’s chessboard, a piece placed just so. The king. The queen. The pawns.

“Who has the most power in the game of chess?” Kong asks me the day before my eighteenth birthday.

“The king,” I answer, moving the pawn ahead of my favourite piece to give him an opening. I like moving the king around the board. He is the largest piece and that is my misguided priority.

“Why?” Kong moves his pawn.

“The entire game is about him.”

“So he is important,” he agrees, “certainly. But is he the most powerful? What about the queen?” He slides his queen out on a diagonal to target my king. “Why not her? She can move as many squares as she wishes, in all directions.”

Annoyed at the thought, I look at the girl who I am sure is my little sister, sitting cross-legged a few feet away and playing porcelain dolls with her Sired Mother. “She is not being chased. That’s why she’s got more freedom to move. Nah. Not the queen. The game continues without her.”

“True. But you’re still wrong. Try again.”

“I don’t know, Kong. This is stupid.”

“The player, boy. The player has the power.”

I suppose—I flick my tongue—I didn’t want my Silk Girl to be too compliant. It would amuse me to have her ruffle his feathers while carrying my heir—untouchable based on his own policies and practices.

“I will choose one. Perhaps the redhead.”

“Perfect. Tell me when the union is made, so the others can begin. They have been waiting rather patiently. Well, all except one.”

I turn from him and head back down the corridor toward the outdoor, thinking about her compliance.

Aster isn’t compliant with me, she addresses me incorrectly, she speaks her mind, she dances sweetly on the line of appropriate behaviour and bats her lashes in nativity, but… She chose scolding, Aster, and gold. A conditioned response. Perfectly obedient.

A clone.

A boring little Silk Girl.

Doing as she is told to do.

Obeying the player.

Lost in thought and sentiment, annoyingly so, I freeze at the outdoor, and stare down the adjoining long passage that forks from this one.

To Tuscany’s old room—the room we both died in—before she moved into the Queen’s wing. The night she was carved open, I remember the agony in my abdomen, remember how sleep spun me, hurt me, tossed me around. I should have woken up. I should have known… She was calling to me. To make my way to her. To save her.

I scowl at the patched bricks several meters before it, from when I crushed the skulls of two Guards trying to stop me from getting to her.

Nevertheless, I was too late…

I open the door and head outside.

OceanofPDF.com

Chapter Three

Aster

Silk Girl Vows:

For The Cradle, I shall adore all its children equally and with quiet humility. I have no claim over what I provide for The Cradle.

I stare at my feet, watching my toes disappear into rich, clean soil. I’m not sure I have ever walked outside with bare feet before.

Where are you?

What is this place?

I must have noticed the weather shift, cooling. Must have walked down the giant manicured hill, the one surrounded by castle-like buildings made of granite, veined with grey and white marble.

I must have smelt the fresh-cut flowers and sniffed the lemon and vinegar cleaning tonics through the open windows, must have walked these gardens more than once already, but I cannot recall the specifics.

I only remember eyes tracking me. For days now, between one shadowy memory to the next, I recall several eyes on me—one from above, keener than the rest.

On my tippy-toes, I pluck a red rose from a tall perimeter hedge. Looking at it, I inhale. There is a breeze. My hair moves on my shoulders, the ends brushing my waist. Surely, I noticed such an odd sensation, a perfectly controlled gust from the south.

I must be at the very bottom of The Estate. I look down the green landscaped garden hill to a high wall in the distance, and beyond, to the tops of woven tree canopies. The branches move with life, but the limbs strangle together, unwelcoming and defensive.

I wonder how deep the woods are…

I know that to the north, an architectural masterpiece makes the Redwind behave—a fort of protection, with just enough vents to allow a conditioned atmosphere within the keep. I only know this from my studies. I have seen pictures of The Estate. It houses over fifty-thousand citizens and is entirely shielded by a rolling limestone wall shaped like the open wings of an eagle.

Foliage moves beside me.

“Are you ready for some lunch?” someone calls from my right.

A grumbling in my stomach suddenly answers for me. That’s good. I’m present. I know what happened. The Endigos cut my tongue and sliced my mark right off like a strip of meat. Though, all the things that happened to me are jumbled together now. I am still not convinced I didn’t bite my tongue while eating an apple or maybe Iris cut me in my sleep.

All possible.

Iris… is she alive?

And the Wardeness?

With the fever I’ve had… was it three days? I’ve been gliding through one strange land to another, stepping from cloudy plain to cloudy plain, never knowing which is real and which is a construct of my mind.

“Aster?” Someone touches my shoulder.