Vitruvion paused and smiled. "Ah the ones who died when you were very young? Twins, I believe?"

Avis nodded with a sigh, feeling now very uncomfortable and wanting this conversation to be over with, for him to be gone, gone, gone!

"And you learnt how to get through a locked door how?"

"I grew up with the children of thieves and murderers," Avis spoke fast, her voice becoming tinged with anxiety and irritation. Why he couldn't just go and let her deal with the issue she had almost ed someone she didn't know. "They taught me things, how to pick locks, how to move around a building silently, stuff like that, alright?!"

Her last word hung in the air. It was bitter and hating and harsh. It was the mixture of emotions she felt right now - hate for herself and him, sung into stress.

His next tone was fiercely disapproving. "Stare. I don't wish to be spoken to in that way currently. I am asking you questions and you are answering them, this is not an interrogation."

"Well it bloody hell feels like one," she retorted.

A destinctive chill in the air. The underfeathers on the back of Avis' neck stood on end. She didn't look, but she could feel Vitruvion's glare burning into her features, using the full strength of his authority and glory to strike her down where she stood.

"Stare," he said in the harshest, darkest of tones. "You will not talk to me in that way. I know I take kindly to your fervour and your passion. These are things I delight in seeing you have, and retain. But I do not appreciate your consistent lack of respect for me. You seem to regularly forget the fact that it is I who keep you fed and clean, it is I who provides you with this room, and it is I who own you." His eyes burnt into her skull. His words were livid scolds. "I am not as incessant in that fact as others, Stare, and I have never required you to call me so, but it is I who is your master. Your future is here, under my roof, in my chambers, to do with as I please. Not as you please, not as Raevin please, but as I please. I pay Raevin, I pay the stewards, but I do not pay you. I require and you give. You can fight, that is fine, but if you are constantly biligerant about it, if you constantly disobey my orders, if you constantly try to do things such as escape ... That, I have had enough of. Four months you have been here, and the only times I have managed to get you to fully adhere to my will I have had to threaten you. Repetitively. A language you comprehend, at least, but a language I should not have to go into every single time. You know the consequences of your actions, you know what I need of you, the services I require and what I will provide in return for these. So you should be able to understand your position here!"

He cut off, his face a firm look of dislike and disgust. Her own face was downcast, heart beating wildly, hands curled into light fists. She sat on the bed, still, her mind a mixture of emotions as she still tried to deal with the brought up grief over her brothers, the guilt of having almost killed someone, and now the fear of what words he was using.

His jaw tightened. "Stare, you will look at me right now."

A shiver ran up her spine, as his words echoed around her head. 'I own you.' 'You know the consequences.' 'Services I require.'