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When they had climbed the stairs back to her rooun earlier, while Ten, impatient, spilled her case out on the table Brass clamps clattered in all directions Karou picked one up but didn’t put it on She was in no state to conjure a body now

What wasn’t she allowed to know?

"Do you want me to tithe?" Ten asked Karou looked up at her The she-wolf didn’t offer up her pain very often, and Karou surprised herself by saying, "No Thanks" It was only when she heard her own reply that she realized she was going to do so to do?

Oh

She toyed with the vise, twisting the screw tighter, looser Did she even reo

What shall I do for pain?

Nothing No pain for you Only pleasure

Still fidgeting with the vise, she said to Ten, "I don’t suppose you know the story of Bluebeard"

"Bluebeard?" Ten eyed Karou’s hair "A relative of yours?"

Karou shot her a wry smile "I have no relatives, remember?"

"No one does anymore," Ten said simply, and Karou realized it was true Everyone here had lost… everyone They were a people with nothingthe vise over the web of flesh and muscle that connected her thumb and palm It was a tender spot "Bluebeard was this lord, and when he brought his new bride hoave her the keys to every door and told her she could go anywhere she wanted except this one little door down in the cellar And there she an to open like a flower

"And I suppose that was the first place she went," said Ten

"The minute his back was turned"

Ten had just turned to reach for the teapot At Karou’s words, she spun back around, and cursed

Karou knew by her reaction that it had worked; she had remembered Akiva’s invisibilitydeal back then Not anymore It throbbed to the tune of her heartbeat and felt nearly as natural

It didn’t occur to Ten that Karou ht she was out theagain, and so when she unfroze, she lunged toward it, and Karou slipped out the door Ironically, the absence of the bar lamour in place, she whipped down the stairs and out to the court to hear whatever she could before Ten bolted doith the news of her vanishing

It wasn’t lamour didn’t conceal shadows, so she kept to the shade and she didn’t make a sound She was certain of that She wasn’t even touching the ground Still, she had been in the court only a couple ofnature of the " to the seraphiod, the sky dark and bright with Doht, hopeless, hopeless--before Thiago cut off midsentence, pivoted on the pads of his wolf feet, and, lifting his head just slightly, nostrils flaring delicately, scented the air

And looked at her

She froze She was already still, and she was yards away, but she stopped breathing and watched those colorless eyes with dread They couldn’t quite fix on her, but they narrowed Again he sniffed He couldn’t see her, she knew that, and neither could the rest of the coaze Still--stupid, stupid--they knew she was near the sao did

They were creatures They could smell her

36

FEEL LIKE SMILING

She took the vise off at the river, let go of the ain Her hand was blue where the clanificant than a bruise?

Would Thiago guess about the glamour? That had been stupid of her If he suspected she could do that, he and his spy would never take their eyes off her again Not to mention, if he suspected she could do that, he would want to kno He would want all his soldiers to kno, and shouldn’t Karou want that, too, if it could help theels in their sleep?

That hat Tangris and Bashees did No one knew exactly how; they had a way of pulling the shadows around thelas conducted in perfect silence Who slept so deeply that they wouldn’t wake to gasp as their throat was cut? Yet these victims slept on as throat by throat they died and all breath was subtracted from the room until only the killers’ remained

Karou didn’t knohy it bothered her so much It was painless And how many chimaera had those soldiers killed, and surely with less kindness

Kindness? What an appalling thought

Karou sat arguing with herself, wishing more desperately than ever for someone to talk to There were conflicts in herself she just couldn’t settle This brutality that she was a part of, she had been half pretending it was all a bad dreah her days, because she just couldn’t come to terms with it

With war

Her life as Karou had in no way prepared her for this War was so from the news, and she didn’t even watch the news, it was too terrible And if she’d thought that Madrigal could help her, as if her deeper self ly reality, she was al done what she’d done, conspiring with Akiva for peace? Because she’d had no stomach for war even when it was her life She had always been a drea in Eretz… The rebels had made it worse, so much worse They had knocked down a hornet’s nest The cut so been thinking, taunting the Empire like that? And the emperor’s ansift and enorht of the Doht would happen? What had she thought?

She hadn’t thought; she hadn’t wanted to know, and now look