“And my room is up there?”
“As is mine,” he says.
“Oh.” There’s no way that we are going to share a room. Royalty doesn’t do that. And I don’t know him.
“You have a separate room,” I say.
He chuckles. “Yes. Of course. As is fitting.”
I feel mollified by this.
But my thighs are burning, and the backs of my calves are weeping for relief. There must be five hundred stairs. And I’m dizzy from the tight spiral.
“This is medieval.”
“You are such a small thing. I would think carrying yourself up the stairs would be easy.”
“I’m more of a…reader. Than a person who climbs.”
“I see. And what do you like to read?”
“Science textbooks.”
He makes a noise in the back of his throat. It sounds disappointed.
“I don’t like nonfiction very much. I prefer the classics. Romantic literature.”
“You do?”
“Yes,” he says. “Why is that a surprise?”
“Because. You’re…”
“I’m kidding,” he says. “I know exactly why it’s a surprise. But don’t believe everything that you’ve heard about me, sparrow. Most of it isn’t true.”
“Why would people lie about you?”
“They aren’t lying on purpose. I’m like God, in many ways. People invent stories about me to feel closer to me, to demystify me. To know me. But they don’t know me. No one does.”
“No one?”
“No one,” he repeats.
And just then, we reach the top of the stairs. “Our rooms are the only rooms here.”
“Does your poor staff have to climb all those stairs to bring things to you?”
He laughed. “There is a service elevator. I lied to you.”
“You… You…”
“Come,” he says, taking me down the short hallway, and to an ornate gold door.
There is a tree embossed on the door, apples hanging from the branches. Beneath it is a serpent, and a woman.
“Well, that is a bit on the nose,” I say.
“You see, when I found your sister I thought it was amusing. I think this is better.”
