He already paid her handsomely for her work—not that she had any time to spend it. She had a staggering amount of gold already in her vault, just lying there and collecting dust. He provided room and board and food, any other essentials she might need, and never took the expenses from her pay. Sometimes she’d wondered why he bothered paying her so highly if she never had the opportunity to spend it. If her service was for life, she was no better than a slave here really—he deposited the gold into her account to give the illusion that this really was a great position, as if he didn’t work her to the bone and subject her to horrors beyond most people’s comprehension.