Page 115 of Wings of Destruction

Milkin is a sadist with a lot of years under her belt. She’s honed her craft with precision. I wonder if she truly understands what she’s done by giving me until the end of the week before booting me into the pit.

The clock’s ticking down before my departure but I have time to think, to figure out how to be useful. I’ll do anything to fix this.

The heavy bucket permanently bends my bones into arches to accommodate its weight. I slog it along the hallway without a single drop spilled on the black and gold marble floor.

Faye was right. I’m desperate to stay. Now that there is almost no way for me to accomplish it, my tune has changed, and I’m ready to sing like a trapped songbird.

Give me a task and I’ll manage it.

I can’t save anyone or honor my mother if I’m gone. Doing so makes her sacrifice nothing but a waste, which is outrageous.

Why had I let it get so far?

I’d been blinded by grief. Somehow even that feels like a cop out or some sort of victim mentality, which Elspeth would have beaten out of me if she’d heard. The one thing my sister hated most in this world was someone who played the martyr.

Someone like me.

Several other maids quietly snake past me with their gazes averted. They don’t hide their under-the-breath snickers—they think I’m one of the most ridiculous women they’ve ever seen, and at this point…

They’re absolutely right.

The side hallway opens up into the grandiose entrance hall. There’s no conspicuous trail of water behind me this time. This bucket doesn’t leak.

It’s a small win.

I’ll take everything I can get but somehow I can’t make my mind interpret the fraying smile as something genuine. Despite my best efforts, of course.

I step into the dining hall, and breath catches in my throat, bucket in hand instead of a school satchel. The gothic arches above stretch like cathedral bones, elegant and cold, too grand for someone like me now. Rows of long wooden tables stretch across the room like battalions ready for a feast.

Now, the golden tablecloths glimmer mockingly, as if the tables are dressed for a ball I’ll never be invited to. Each one is crowned with a black candelabra, its curved arms arching like the claws of something ancient, the flames casting romantic light across emptied plates and ghosted dreams. Even the chandelier overhead gleams with a kind of cruel beauty, a jeweled spiderweb, its crystals catching firelight as if winking at my fall from grace.

My steps echo—soft, careful, unwelcome. This room wasn’t made for servants. It was made for heirs, for the chosen. For the powerful. For alliances, rivalries, and whispered truths traded over silver goblets.

And here I am. Soon I’ll be sweeping crumbs beneath golden cloths and erasing traces of a world I was never allowed to join.

I draw in a breath scented with burned sugar and something heady, like roast beef. My stomach growls and my mouth instantly waters in the worst kind of way. I’d kill for a slab of roast beef.

None of those things ever trickle down to us. The maids are fed well, Faye was right again, but that doesn’t mean we eat like the royalty we serve in the floors above.

Hearty peasant fare, Elspeth would have called it. She’d hate this room on principle.

The dining hall is large enough to host an entire battalion with space to spare. Not one but two fireplaces stretch across the east and the west walls, stocked with neat pyramids of logs in preparation for tonight’s dinner.

The mess left behind from lunch makes my eyes water.

Be useful.

My hands ache and I set the bucket down delicately before I make an even bigger mess of things. The students are nothing but slobs. Deliberately? I’m not sure whether it’s intentional cruelty, deliberate chaos, or the sort of offhanded lack of care that comes when you are too busy to notice there is anything, or anyone, beneath you.

The underside of every table is decorated with debris and food, the detritus of a good meal. Several goblets are overturned and leaking the last of their contents through the cracks in the wood, staining the tablecloths.

It’s hopeless. My stomach sinks lower and lower.

“How can I be useful this way?” I glance at the ceiling, agonized. “How am I going to save myself here?”

The beams have no answers for me, clearly.

The only way to prove my usefulness would be to do the best job cleaning anyone has ever seen, which essentially amounts to working miracles. I’ve got no magic. No one does. Which means miracles aren’t a part of my wheelhouse and finding one now will take an act of some benevolent god or goddess.