Date: The Morning of the 3rd Day of the Month of Blossoms, Year 1107 of the Imperial Calendar.
Location: The "Rat's Nest," Deep Slums.
Hunger is a dull ache. Pain is a sharp shout. But the need to relieve oneself is a humiliating, unrelenting command.
Aanya sat curled on the straw pallet, her knees pressed tight together. She had been awake for an hour, watching the dust motes, terrified to move. But biology did not care about her fear. It did not care that she was a noblewoman who had never seen the inside of an outhouse, let alone... this.
Her bladder was full. Painfully full.
She looked at Veer. He was still asleep against the door, his head lolling on his chest, the iron rod resting across his knees.
She had to wake him. The thought made her nauseous. To wake a strange boy and ask him for a toilet? It was a breach of every etiquette lesson she had ever learned.
"Veer," she whispered.
He didn't stir.
"Veer?" she said a little louder.
His eyes didn't open, but his hand tightened on the iron rod. In a blur of motion, he snapped his head up, his eyes alert and scanning the room before he even took a breath.
"What?" he rasped. "Who's there?"
He saw her. The tension drained from his shoulders, replaced by the heavy slump of exhaustion.
"Oh," he rubbed his face with a dirty hand. "It's you. You're awake."
"I..." Aanya swallowed. Her throat was dry as parchment. "I need to... I need the retiring room."
Veer blinked at her. "The what?"
"The privy," Aanya clarified, her face burning. "The washroom."
Veer stared at her for a second, then he let out a short, dry laugh. He stood up, stretching his back until it cracked.
"We don't have rooms for that, Princess," he said.
He pointed to the far corner of the shack.
Hanging from a rusted nail was a piece of moth-eaten canvas, creating a pathetic partition barely two feet wide. Behind it sat a wooden bucket.
Aanya followed his finger. She stared at the bucket.
"No," she whispered.
"It has a lid," Veer offered helpfully. "And there's sawdust to cover the... smell."
"No," Aanya repeated, shaking her head. "I cannot. I cannot do that."
"Well, you can't go outside," Veer said, picking up a canteen of water and shaking it—empty. "It's daylight. If people see your face, they'll stone you. And if you go in the alley, the rats might bite you."
He gestured to the bucket again. "That's the throne, Your Highness."
Aanya looked at the bucket. It was stained. It was in the same room where they slept. There was no porcelain. There was no scented water. There was no maid to hold a towel.
It was just a bucket in the dirt.
Something inside Aanya broke.
Silas kicking her had broken her ribs. The Emperor rejecting her had broken her heart. But this? This broke her dignity.
It stripped away the last layer of illusion. She wasn't a fallen noble in a tragic story. She was an animal living in a cage.
Tears welled up in her eyes—hot, angry tears of humiliation.
"I can't," she sobbed, burying her face in her hands. "I can't live like this. It's disgusting. I'm disgusting."
Veer watched her crumble. He didn't mock her. He didn't tell her to toughen up. He knew what she was losing. He had lost it years ago.
He walked to the door. He slid the wooden bar back.
"Where are you going?" Aanya gasped, looking up in panic. "Don't leave me!"
"I'm not leaving," Veer said.
He opened the door. The gray light of the slums poured in, along with the damp smell of the alley.
"I'll stand right here," Veer said, stepping outside. "I'll turn my back. I'll hum a song. No one will come in."
He looked at her one last time, his dark eyes soft.
"Do what you need to do, Aanya. Dignity is expensive. Survival is free."
He closed the door, leaving her alone in the dim shack.
Aanya stared at the closed door. She heard Veer's boots squelch in the mud outside. She heard him start to hum a tuneless, off-key melody, loud enough to cover any sound she might make.
She crawled off the pallet. Her legs shook. She walked to the corner.
She used the bucket.
She wept the entire time. She cried for the porcelain chamber pot. She cried for the lavender oil. She cried because she was sixteen years old and she was squatting over a pail of sawdust in a thief's den.
When she was done, she covered it with the sawdust. She wiped her hands on her burlap sack because there was no water.
She felt hollowed out. Shame was a heavy coat, and she was wearing it tight.
She turned to go back to the pallet, but something caught her eye.
Nailed to the wall near the bucket was a piece of flattened tin. It had been polished with sand until it was somewhat reflective—Veer likely used it for shaving, or perhaps just to check for bruises.
Aanya froze.
She hadn't seen herself since she punched the shop window.
She stepped closer to the metal. The reflection was warped and grayish, but it was clear enough.
She saw the hair first. It was a bird's nest of tangles, matted with mud and dried leaf litter.
Then, the face.
The right side was swollen twice the size of the left. The skin was a angry, mottled purple and red. The Alchemist's resin was gone, but the chemical irritation remained, leaving the burn scar raw and weeping. Her lip was split and scabbed. Her eye was a slit in a puff of bruised flesh.
She looked at the reflection.
She remembered the beggars who used to sit by the temple gates. She used to throw them coins from her carriage, feeling a distant, safe pity. Poor things, she would think. How sad to be so dirty.
Now, the face in the tin looked worse than any beggar she had ever seen.
She raised a hand to touch her swollen cheek. The reflection mimicked the movement.
"I am the poor thing," she whispered.
The door creaked open.
Veer stepped back inside, shaking rain from his hair. He barred the door quickly.
He didn't look at the bucket. He looked at her.
"Done?" he asked.
Aanya turned away from the tin mirror. She walked back to the pallet and curled up, pulling the blanket over her head to hide the monster.
"Yes," came her muffled voice from under the wool. "I'm done."
Veer sighed. He sat down against the door again, picking up his iron rod.
"Good," he said. "Now we just need to find food. Because being a Queen on a bucket makes you hungry."
Aanya didn't answer. She lay in the dark, listening to the drip of the leak, wishing she could dissolve into the straw and disappear forever.