I snatched a scrambling rat before it could retreat

to its hiding hole, breaking its neck in one smooth motion.

Samara, a princess is not meant to hunt vermin.

That’s what my mother would have said if she saw my dirty fingers grab the rat’s matted fur, likely as her delicate fingers pinched her nose. I’d have meekly apologized for my unladylike behavior.

The dying squeak chased away the echoes of her imagined reprimand like smoke. It had been more than a decade since I’d last heard her voice, pained and pleading. Now, I went days, a week at a time, without uttering more than the occasional grunt. It was better that way. Safer. It was all too easy to remember I wasn’t a lady, and despite my mother’s wild wishes, I’d never been a princess.

The prison allowed no delusions.

I slid the carcass into the makeshift pouch in my skirts with the others, and hustled down the hall to check my traps, adding several more unlucky rats to my collection. My cloth-wrapped feet scraped over the rough stone as I worked systematically through the halls. Time. Somehow it passed too quickly in a day, and too slowly in a year.

A dozen rats weren’t easy to catch, even with the traps I’d made.

Especially not today.

A new prisoner had come in. That wasn’t so unusual. But whoever this prisoner was, he’d set off the rest of the inmates. The halls had echoed with screams for hours, the rough crack of the whip their metronome. The guards liked to have fun with the new ones. When the other prisoners cried out, they’d have the whip turned on them as well.

Catching rats was tricky at the best of times, but the yelling and carrying on had made my job all the harder. They hid in small corners and scratched and bit to try to escape the inevitable, even after they were caught.

Not that it ever worked. Something I knew all too well.

My mother would have thought it was horrific. Me? I was numb to the task after all these years. The disgust of being around dead vermin wears off pretty quickly once you realize it’s keeping you away from the living ones.

As I walked into the kitchen, Nelson was at his preferred post, the single half-functional chair in the main servants’ chamber. It might as well have been a throne by the way he ordered everyone about. “Hurry up, you lazy shit!” he snapped with his scratchy voice. “Kitchen won’t wait all day.”

I picked up the pace, taking care not to drop my haul.