Page 14 of Bought to Break
She stiffened but didn’t acknowledge him.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean–’
‘Are you going to have me publicly beaten or kill me?’ she asked in a small voice.
‘Neither.’ Viktor walked around the log and crouched in front of her. ‘Why would we do that?’
‘I raised my hand to my master. I know the law.’
He grasped her chin and tilted her head up to look at him. ‘The Brothers’ laws aren’t quite the same.’
He leaned forward and kissed her. Her mouth parted slightly as she gasped, and he slipped his tongue past her lips to taste her. Her eyes widened and he broke away, leaning his forehead against hers.
‘You’ve never kissed a man either?’ he muttered.
She gave her head a tiny shake and he groaned.
‘How are you so innocent?’ He pushed her unruly hair back from her face, his thumb caressing her cheek. ‘I’m sorry for the things I said. I was angry and afraid they had hurt you.’
She didn’t speak for a long time, and when she did, it wasn’t what he expected. She pulled away from him. ‘I wasn’t always a slave.’
‘What?’
‘You asked why I’m so untouched. I wasn’t born a slave.’
Viktor’s brow furrowed. ‘You were taken then.’
She gave a wan smile. ‘Not quite, but this is the south. You must know how it can be here. Sometimes all it takes is a bit of bad luck.’
Viktor shifted and sat on the log next to her. ‘Go on.’
‘My mother was a freewoman.’ Lana gave a small, brittle laugh. ‘Not only that. She was the richest one in the valley.’
She stopped talking and Viktor took her hand in his. ‘What happened?’
‘My mother made my father leave us when I was very young. I don’t know why. She told me he was dead. The one she married after him, Garrick, wasn’t the sort of man she thought he was.’
‘And he sold you?’ Viktor guessed.
‘I was thirteen when she fell ill and died,’ Lana said matter-of-factly. ‘Garrick took me to Dirk the day after her body was burned.’ Lana turned towards him. ‘No one ever touched me except Ather. No one ever really showed any interest in me that way except Ather, and,’ she shook her head, ‘it was only to prove to himself that he was my master in all ways.’
Viktor gritted his teeth at what he was about ask, but he forced out the words. ‘Why did no one ever … take advantage?’
She shrugged. ‘I suppose they thought my kin would come for me one day. No one ever did, but most people didn’t try to be cruel to me. I think they felt sorry for me most of the time.’
Viktor was silent for a while. It was one thing to be made a slave in war or be taken from your home to become a slave in another land, but she’d been a freewoman until she was half-grown and then sold to a neighbour amongst people who had known her and her family as equals. The south truly was a different land to the north. He’d never thought on it before, but he supposed that enslaved free folk from the south were taken to the north as well though.
He glanced over at her. She was staring off into the forest at nothing, lost in her own thoughts. ‘I wasn’t always a Dark Brother,’ he blurted out suddenly. He cringed, wishing he could unsay it.
She looked back at him with sudden interest. ‘You weren’t?’
He took a steadying breath. ‘No.’ He looked abashed. ‘I was a farmer. I had a homestead in the far north. I had a wife, children.’
She cocked her head. ‘They died.’
‘Yes.’
Her hand tightened on his. ‘How?’
