The sickle came down like a verdict. Metal bit through skin, and pain exploded—sharp, hot, unreasoning. Celine's hands spasmed against the hay-strewn floor. The air smelled of iron and cow dung and something that tasted like a promise broken. She heard a man's laugh close to her ear and knew laughter because it belonged to the men who'd trailed her here, the men from Blackwood Creek who traded women the way other men traded cattle. "Move," one of them said. The word was blunt as a shovel. She was trying to breathe around the insistence in her chest—an ache she couldn't place until she remembered with a flash of mud and wet linen: the child. Her fingers found wet fabric between her legs and there, small and limp, the world had already gone still. Her stomach folded in on itself, betrayal and blood and new grief knotted tight. The child made no sound. The crowd of rough hands and cruel eyes made one. "No!" Her voice came out thin. It didn't matter. None of this mattered. "Shut her up," another man ordered. A boot connected with her ribs. Air left her like a thief. She rolled; hay raked her palms. The sickle glinted again—rust and promise—and came down. For a second the light was on the blade, and then darkness licked across the edges of her vision. She thought of the Davis Estate as a shape: long, cold, full of