I remember the color of his lips.
They were blue. Not the blue of the open sky, not the color the elders said the gods wore in war, but the cold, dead blue of river ice. He looked at me when he fell—my father, the unbroken storm—and I didn't understand at first. I thought maybe he'd dropped something. That he would rise. That his laughter would chase off the silence creeping into the circle of tents.
But he didn't rise. He shuddered like a horse in its last breath and went still.
Someone screamed my name. My brother, maybe. The wind was too loud to tell.
The tribe broke that night—not in fire, but in silence. Men whispered like cowards. Women cried into their braids. Our horses pawed the earth, restless. The stars didn't watch. I asked them to, and they didn't.
Then came the blood.
We were running. Hooves thundered behind us, and I smelled smoke. My mother pulled me into her arms. My baby brother screamed. My second brother turned, knife in hand, to face the shadows chasing us. He was only seven.
I threw myself at the men to draw them away.
I remember their hands. I remember the laughter. I remember the sound of silver coins clinking as they sold me like cattle.
And I remember the chains.
---
She woke to the stink of old straw and horse piss.
Her body tensed, like it always did, before her mind could catch up—fingers curling around the phantom shape of a bow that wasn't there, breath already quiet and shallow, trained by instinct to make no noise.
There were no stars. Just the dim grey light of early morning leaking through the cracks in the stable wall.
She lay still a moment longer, listening: the stamp of a restless horse, the creak of wood, the far-off clink of armor. Her dream was still tangled in her chest, burning. Her father's face hovered behind her eyes.
Then the pain in her shoulder reminded her where she was.
Her shirt was rough wool, slave-stitched, open at one shoulder where the overseer's whip had torn through it the day before. The scabs there itched, but she didn't scratch. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction.
She sat up slowly. The chain around her ankle clinked.
A gift from the noble who owned her now—a lordling with too much land, too much pride, and not enough sense to see that the girl mucking his stables had once been royalty. Not that she cared anymore.
Royalty didn't matter in chains.
She reached for the bucket of water left near the wall. Took a sip. Let it sit in her mouth before swallowing. Cold. Clean enough. Better than most days.
Today, she told herself, would be quiet. Keep her head down. Keep her hands moving. Survive.
But the dream clung to her like smoke.
And somewhere beneath her ribs, the fire hadn't gone out.