Page 5 of The Seeker

I bit my lip.

“If you read this aloud, to both of us, I think we can discuss you having your freedom to move about the keep and town⁠—”

My eyes widened, the corners of my lips turning up.

The change in my face didn’t go unnoticed by Leif. “With an escort, of course.”

It wasn’t exactly what I’d hoped for, but at this point, I would take anything I could. I reached out my hand for the book. “Can I see it?”

He handed it over, and I flipped through the pages. It didn’t have the same leather cover the other books with Seid magic had, but it was written in the Seid language. It wasn’t a book I recognized, and I knew it likely wouldn’t do what he wanted it to do, but I had a plan. “We can start tomorrow, after I have a little time to study it?”

“Sounds good, my heart. Now, how would you like to have dinner in the dining room tonight?”

I jumped off the bed, ecstatic at the prospect of seeing other people. “Yes!”

I felt like a child as Leif guided me through the halls, one hand on each of my shoulders.

Although I’d only been locked up in our quarters for a fortnight, everything had changed. I no longer recognized any of the guards or servants in the halls. Not that I’d known them well before, other than Ena, but I had been noticing patterns, recognizing certain faces.

All of that was gone now.

I wondered what Leif was doing. The only reason I could think of for changing guards at a time like this was that the original ones had been sent to the frontlines and hadn’t made it.

I gulped.

My mind drifted to another keep, across a barren plain, one where my weighted lived with Ena, and Astrid—two of my only allies in this world that I was desperate to see.

But he hadn’t come for me.

Leif guided me into a seat in the dining room, which was also the room where I had first encountered his father, and read to him. Now that he was gone, Leif took it upon himself to decorate the place. Most of the green tapestries and the beautiful wooden table stayed, but where there was once an altar for his Seid mother, it was now an altar to his non-Seid father. All of the live plants that once lived in decorative clay pots scattered about the room were gone. The room felt empty—less alive—than when I’d last been here. A thought that brought a frown to my lips.

Leif sank into the chair next to me, which was also the head of the table, carefully unfolding his napkin and laying it across his lap. I did the same.

I wasn’t accustomed to this level of dining, but I’d learned a little in the time before Leif locked me away. It bothered me that we ate such large meals when I knew there were families in Malheim who were likely struggling as I once had.

It also bothered me that only Leif and I ate at the table, leaving the majority of the chairs empty, even when I begged him to allow others to join us.

Leif was desperate to set us apart—no, above, the rest of his household.

Something which only served to increase my anger and the growing rift between us.

The servants set out plates in the center of the table filled with a variety of meats and vegetables. I allowed myself to be served a small portion of each, only so I could push the morsels around my plate. I didn’t feel hungry. Not when I glimpsed the ravenous glint in the eyes of the servants where they stood along the wall, hands clasped firmly behind their backs.

“Leif, the servants look a bit hungry, can’t they sit and eat with us? Or eat what is left over?” I suggested in a whisper, desperate to remedy a condition I had once been subjected to.

“They will eat when we are finished, my heart. They have their own food in the kitchen.”

I frowned. “But maybe it is not enough? They look awfully hungry.”

That was the wrong thing to say. Leif’s fork clattered on the plate. “Please turn away, all of you,” he demanded, the volume of his voice causing me to cower. Leif had never lifted a hand to me, beyond the branding, but suddenly I was worried he would.

There was shuffling as all the servants turned to face the stone wall, their backs to us.

“There you are, my heart. Now, eat.” He picked up his fork, stabbing the piece of roasted beef on his plate.

Sadness welled up in me. All I could see as the servants stood facing the wall was myself, in Adis’s care, given only a crust of bread daily to survive.

Leif had been there. He had seen me.