"Stop! Who dares touch my food?"
A heel slammed into my ribs before the question finished. Pain flared and I spat dust and blood into the cold stone courtyard.
"She stole again," one of the house servants said, laughing. "Trash like you lives on scraps."
"You're worthless. Everyone knows what your kind does," another added.
I clutched the wooden bowl they had ripped from my hands. The stew sloshed onto my lap. My fingers tightened around the bowl's rim.
"Give it back," I said.
They shoved me. I hit the ground. The matron stepped forward and pressed the sharp toe of her shoe into my chest.
"Travis says you can be useful as an example," she said. "Do better, and maybe you'll keep your scraps."
"Travis," I repeated, tasting bile. The head of the household stood on the raised veranda, fingers wrapped around a teacup like a man holding a treaty. He didn't move.
"Keep still," the matron ordered. "This won't take long."
They kicked my ribs for show, for sport. A towheaded servant laughed until he slapped me into silence.
"You're pathetic," he said.
I had learned two things living here. One: you did not cry. Two: you did not fight back without a plan. Neither rule mattered when the breath left me.
Black took the edges. The courtyard blurred. I went down like a sack.
Something bright opened inside my skull, not a sight but a sound. A voice that wasn't
