Page 114 of Wings of Destruction

Twenty-Four

Morgan

I’m doomed.

I thrust my hand toward the bottom of the bucket, the water quickly tapering from hot to tepid.

I’m so doomed.

My teeth have chattered hard enough to lodge a permanent headache at the base of my neck. It spreads tentacles up through my temples until the vice threatens to implode me.

Royally, massively, no way out of it.

The worst part is admitting it’s my fault, and Faye was right. The girl who hadn’t said more than a handful of words, modestly given, at a time had ripped me a new one, three nights ago. And I’d needed to hear it, but it was too little, too late.

I’d sealed myself in this fate irrevocably.

Drawing my hand up, I wring out the towel and smear the cloth in circles over the wavy glass. Window washing.

Daisy practically threw the bucket in my hand this morning. I’ve never seen a woman with such savage glee.

And she’d taken great pains to tell me she wasn’t going to help me this time. Wash all the outside windows on the ground floor, and when I finished… fresh torture waited.

It’s the job I’d wanted the other day, an offhanded commentary on my life and my future that I’d get to do now.

And yet I’ll take this a thousand times over being sent to the mines. Especially with the delightful pictures both Milkin and Faye had painted for me.

I’d been blind thinking I had the remotest chance of making it out of that place alive, let alone intact.

No more studying, no more attempts to get my mother’s sapphire back from the bony-necked Druella. No more anything.

The last streaky lines of soot disappear underneath the edges of the cloth, and I throw the towel back into the bucket, heaving it over the side of the terrace and sending the water away. It splashes out in an arc, and the thirsty stone sucks it up.

I’ll need new water.

Milkin wants me in the dining hall.

My knuckles dig into the small of my back and I stretch, face to the sky.

No fresh air in the mines, either. If they decide to work me in the pit, it’s worse.

The clouds are shaped like animals today. A great fluffy white pile thins out under the careful brush of wind and becomes a snake. A little further down, the sharp edges of a raven wing float lazily across the blue.

A shadow falls and I wince at the plaintive roar of the dragon zipping into the aerie. No more dragons, not for a long time. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to see or hear one without thinking the worst.

My blood, torn between freezing and boiling, turns sluggish in my veins. I wrap numb fingers around the bucket handle and haul it around to the outside spigot to refill. There’s plenty of soap stocked in discreet closets throughout the castle.

The water reaches the uppermost line, the appropriate line, if you’re Daisy, before I twitch off the spigot. Then, in will go a healthy dose of lye.

I’m careful not to spill a drop on the way to the closet.

The paneled door is open slightly when I get there. A familiar black-haired girl ducks down to the bottom shelf.

I open my mouth to greet Faye, but nothing comes out. She eyes me up and down slowly, and I’m probably mistaking the flash of sympathy in her gaze. She dips her head in a curt acknowledgement before scurrying off with a feather duster.

At least it’s not pity. Or glee.

The girls love their glee, especially because today I’ll be handling the dining room. It’s another one of those jobs better made for multiple people and handed off only to one as a punishment. But it’s got to be better than the basilisk den.