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Setting the tray down on the windowsill, I give another search of the castle on the map. Guards everywhere, the slaves dotted around the gardens and the stables, Sira in the prince’s parlour room, likely tidying up and prepping the room for his later use.
But he’s not here.
And that’s confirmed when the butler’s dot moves along the nearest corridor and he finds me tucked in the corner at the map.
“The prince left for the Royal Court with Prince Elden early before the Warmth came.”
It could my imagination, but there looks to be suspicion in his slitted eyes that watch me too closely.
“Where’s Hilda?” I ask.
The butler’s face twitches into a near-grimace at my village accent. I’ve picked up on that more and more over the weeks. He, I suspect, judges me for where I am from. I’m a villager. Not a seasoned slave like most of the others around here. I don't come from the kuris that were first plucked out of my world when the dark fae invaded us. I’m not a slave taken from the light lands when they stormed there.
Just an ordinary village girl serving a short sentence.
“The map has that answer,” he says darkly, then clicks his fingers at the face of a nearby kitchen hand. He gestures to the tray on the windowsill, making sure it’s taken into the cook’s custody for the loot to be divvied up later.
I look forward to when the Breeze comes and we can eat our lunch—the leftovers from the prince’s forgotten meal. I don’t care much about the wild bird eggs or the toasted bread. I have my eye on his pot of untouched coffee.
Before coming to this land, I’d never had coffee before. I’d never even heard of it.
Now, with the beans’ infusion with oak tree bark shavings and cinnamon, it’s fast becoming a favourite of mine.
Turning my back on the coffee pot, I eye the map again, this time in search of Hilda.
I spot her dot moving around the bowels of the east wing—she must be using the basement corridors, and those only lead one place. The spiralling labyrinth called the ‘library’.
I don’t like that maze, so I hunt for Terry instead. She’s in the south gardens, the ones further down the hill, where a crystal-white lake sits.
I know she’s swimming in it since the prince is gone from the castle. Our duties are mostly on hold until he returns.
I leave the kitchen to join her. It’s how we spend the hours to come, playing in the fresh water.
5
For days after the prince kissed my neck and threatened me with a dagger, he’s been gone from the castle. And when he returns, it is late into the Breeze and he has brought back with him two guests, Caspan and Vale.
Caspan, I quickly learned from Terry’s rundown as we prepared for their meal in the Hall, is a brutal General in the army, and his wife Vale is a kuri he met in the human lands during the invasion.
I can’t imagine howthathappened.
Then I’m flooded with flashbacks. The prince’s mouth hot on my neck, his hand roaming my curves, fingers curling as though he wants to bunch up my skirt.
Is that how this marriage bloomed in those times of invasion and war?
Still, I can’t summon an image of how that came to be.
And I can’t focus on them too much during this meal.
My mind is a tangled buzz throughout service in the Hall. All I can think about is the prince and the iciness that radiates off of him each time I come close. Whenever I fill his chalice of wine, swap out his used cutlery and plates, bring him the next dish, he stiffens in his chair and, without looking at me, somehow manages to spear me through with icicles from his aura.
I try not to let it bother me as I serve dessert, then join Terry at the wall beside the trolley. But it’s a hard sensation to put out of mind. Something about the prince’s reception of me has an odd, hollow feeling twisting inside my gut. Yet I have little choice other than to bear it.
Back against the wall, I tune out the harpest who plays on the podium at the far end of the Hall, and I focus in on the conversation at the table.
It’s Vale who speaks, the human—the kuri. And even though she is married to a great war General, it startles me that she speaks so freely in front of the prince.
As Vale, after one too many wines, complains about someone named Coralee managing to bear a child naturally, I find that I can’t take my eyes off of her.
