“It’s alright.”
“No, it’s not.”
Ella kept quiet.
“I shouldn’t have lost my temper with you. I know you only want what’s best for me.”
“Always.”
“And I know you aren’t truly picking me apart. I’ve been too sensitive.”
She placed a hand on my arm. I shrank away from her touch.
“It’s alright. I understand.”
The trees rustled with a sudden gust of wind, chickadees swooping and twittering through the branches.
“I’ll think about what you said,” I murmured. “But we should get back to work.”
Ella nodded, her jaw set, and we got to our feet.
“Shall we tidy together today?” I asked.
She slipped her arm through mine. “Let’s.”
We strode back into the palace and lost ourselves in our duties. And perhaps it was because of the worries freshly stirred in my mind, or because fate itself had a message for me, that the premonitions I’d suppressed for so long resurfaced.
CHAPTER THREE
A slap. Stinging pain. A locked closet. A flash of blond curls. The tail of a golden thread.
Bile bit at my throat as images flooded my mind. My hand reached for the palace wall to steady myself, to keep from swaying on my feet. A few nobles glanced at me with concern, but none stopped to ask if I was alright.
Why would they?
The flickers of danger faded to black, and a sick weight settled in my chest.
Poor Ella.
I swallowed hard, even as the acid at the back of my mouth burned.
I have no troubles at home, she’d said. It’s what she always said.
How could I help someone who refused help? Who shut me out and hid her pain?
I lifted a trembling hand to my face, sore with the ghost of a slap I never received.
My gaze caught another’s down the hallway. Prince Thomas peered at me, head tilted, his deep green mage robes brushingagainst the floor. His spectacles glinted in the candlelight.
I hesitated.
And then I remembered his words from the pond. His dismissal of my fresh grief.
He most likely thought I was in his way again.
I huffed and whirled away, leaving him behind, even as the world tilted beneath me and my body begged to rest.
Even as my best friend in the world’s pain left me breathless and ill beyond measure.
