“Yes, Mistress.” Xenia bobbed a curtsy and Mistress Ostere hustled out of the room.
Xenia lingered to examine the trays. Searching for one in particular.
When she found it, she peered into the kitchen, seeing if any of the staff had noticed her. They were all occupied wiping down appliances and cleaning dishes.
She plucked a pen from a cup, snatched the card with Cael’s name, and wrote a message on the other side.
She snickered to herself, wishing she could be there to see Cael’s face when he read it.
She returned the card to his tray and the pen to the cup, then smiled as she left the kitchen and headed to the upper floors to begin her first official day as a servant of Stoneridge.
The lingeringscent of lethaphyll smoke crept up Xenia’s nostrils as she paused before Arran Zephyrus’s office.
She re-adjusted her bucket of cleaning supplies and pushed through the heavy oak doors.
Murky light spilled through the wall-spanning, two-story window, through which she spied a small army of servants landscaping the mist-covered meadow behind the lodge.
Preparing it for the wedding.
Xenia swallowed her deadline-inspired panic, placed her bucket by the door, and walked over to Arran’s desk. It had been organized since last night, the piles of documents now corralled into mesh bins.
After a swift glance toward the doors, she began rifling through drawers.
When she found the golden pistol with the long, needle-like spout, she reflexively smoothed a palm over the tiny scar on her neck.
Next to the pistol was a small cardboard box full of what looked like translucent grains of rice.
She pinched one between her fingers and held it up to the light. There was a trace of orange in the center, but the device was cold, lifeless. Nothing like the faint sub-dermal heat in her neck.
She wondered what activated the devices. A living body, perhaps?
She slipped the grain into her apron and shut the drawer.
Suddenly, the door swung open, spilling her bucket of supplies.
“Oh! Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize—” A beautiful Beastrunner female with golden-bronze hair stepped into the room, freezing as she caught sight of Xenia.
Elodie.
Cael’sfiancée.
The polite shock on Elodie’s face melted into haughtiness. “What are you doing in here?”
Xenia wanted to throw her shoulders back and interrogate. Elodie had even less of a reason to be in here.
Xenia rounded the desk, eyes cemented to the floor. “Are you searching for Master Zephyrus, Mistress?” she asked in a meek voice. “I’m afraid he’s left for the day.”
Elodie scoffed, then crossed her arms. “Yes, of course I was looking for him. Why else would I be in here?” Xenia lifted her chin enough to note the unmistakable hint of panic in Elodie’s hazel eyes.
“Would you like me to let him know you were?—”
“No!” Elodie shouted. “No.” She turned on her heel and rushed from the room, stumbling over Xenia’s bucket. “And don’t leave your things just laying anywhere!” She shouted as she scrambled, red-faced, out of the office.
Xenia ruminated on the odd exchange while she dusted bookshelves, polished the leather furniture, cleaned the window, and emptied the trash bin.
It was only as she was leaving the office, about to shut the door, that she realized what had thrown her.
Elodie hadn’t knocked.
