The last three days had been a blur of aching muscles, but for the first time since Germany, I didn't feel like I was drowning.
Anya, always appearing when I was at my weakest. A half-eaten piece of bread tucked into my apron. A flask of clean water hidden behind a cleaning bucket. Last night, she had even sat me down in the darkness of the scullery and gently combed the knots out of my hair, her touch the only tenderness I'd known in weeks.
I was changing. My skin was losing that gray, sickly hue of starvation. I was standing taller.
And Magda had noticed.
I saw her watching me from the gallery as I mopped the foyer. She looked frustrated—like a child who couldn't break a toy no matter how hard she threw it. She expected to see me crawling; instead, I was becoming radiant again.
....
In Magda's chambers.
She stood before her vanity, draped in a sheer blue silk robe that flowed over her curves like water.
