When she heard me she yanked her sleeves down over her arms, fast, a reflex worn smooth by practice.

That reflex told me more than the bruises had.

The bruises could still, if I’d wanted to lie to myself, have been the clumsiness Ottavia described.

But the reflex — the instant, practiced, unthinking speed with which Yvaine covered her arms the moment another person appeared — that could not be explained away.

You do not develop that reflex from falling down.

You develop it from being hurt, repeatedly, by people who must not be allowed to see that you know you’ve been hurt; from a hundred moments of a sleeve being pulled down before a guest could notice, a smile assembled over pain, a body trained to hide itself.