Day Laborer, What Kind of Life Will You Kidnap?
READING AGE 12+
The first time I kidn*pped someone in the kingdom of Veyr, I took a girl from a locked room beneath a monastery and carried her through a drainage tunnel while the bells rang overhead. I didn't want a ransom. I wanted her alive, and I wanted the other people the monastery had marked for its next "voluntary" offering alive, too. After a lifetime of work in worlds that had all let me die at sixty, I'd learned how easily a contract could make cruelty look respectable. But the girl I rescued had a question for me, and the answer would decide whether I could keep her safe: if I was going to build a life by k********g people out of theirs, would I ever let anyone choose to stay?
Unfold
I saw Cal in the line, a pale boy with Ben's dark curls.
Ben broke from the crowd.
I caught his coat, but he pulled free. He ran toward the chapel, and I followed. The guards turned. The court officer shouted. The crowd pressed toward the gate.
I heard the magistrate order the guards to stand down. I heard Lord Harrow demand……
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