She paused, as if she could not decide, then shook her head wildly. “Not like you fear. He just … held me down. And laughed. The other one, he said … he said, I was pretty stupid, letting myself be used by a bastard. They said …”
Again she paused a moment. Whatever they had said to her, called her was ugly enough that she could not repeat it to me. It was like a sword through me, that they had been able to hurt her so badly she would not even share the pain. “They warned me,” she went on at last. “They said stay away from the bastard. Don’t do his dirty work for him. They said … things I didn’t understand, about messages and spies and treason. They said they could make sure that everyone knew I was the Bastard’s whore.” She tried just to say the word, but it came out with greater force. She defied me to flinch from it. “Then they said … I would be hanged … if I didn’t pay attention. That to run errands for a traitor was to be a traitor.” Her voice grew strangely calmer. “Then they spit on me. And they left me. I heard them ride away, but for a long time I was afraid to get up. I have never been so scared.” She looked at me and her eyes were like open wounds. “Not even my father ever scared me that bad.”
I held her close to me. “It’s all my fault.” I did not even know I had spoken aloud until she drew back from me, to look up in puzzlement.
“Your fault? Did you do something wrong?”
“No. I am no traitor. But I am a bastard. And I’ve let that spill over onto you. Everything Patience warned me of, everything Ch– everyone warned me about, it’s all coming true. I’ve got you caught up in it.”