The Hanover girl never objected to anything, including Matilda’s ongoing abuse. She wilted and stayed still, not moving until Matilda was gone. Despite knowing she should never empathize with someone she was supposed to murder one day, Aveline pitied the girl trapped in her room and treated like an animal by the one woman who should love her. She tried to tell herself it did not matter, that none of this was her concern, without success. As each day passed, Aveline grew more restless without the ability to train or spar and angrier with Matilda’s visits and Tiana’s submissive reactions. She had nothing to do but sit, stew and miss her father. Tiana read and sewed all day long, hobbies that left Aveline almost crying from boredom. In all Aveline’s fantasizing about becoming an assassin, she had never once considered there were lulls between action and danger or long periods of … nothing. She had grown up listening to her father’s tales, to those of Karl and other assassins, with wonder and envy and never bothered to ask what happened when they were not on an adventure.
