CHAPTER TWENTY
Loti’s heart swirled with mixed emotions as she labored in the fields with the others, using her long wooden rake to break up rocks and soil, preparing the Empire fields for planting. It was a monotonous and tedious exercise, one she had done nearly every day of her life, hoisting the long wooden rake high, the shackles around her wrists preventing her from using it as a weapon, and scraping the endless waste of the desert. As she brought it down low, the metal cut into her wrists, scarring them, as they had for years. She had learned to ignore the pain.
But that was not what pained her on this day; as she dragged her rake along the earth, she thought not of her shackles, her scars—but of Darius. She felt awful for having brushed him off the way she had, for not having bee
