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Letting out a whooshing breath, I turn back to Sira who stands under a low hanging golden chandelier whose candle wax will be cleaned by her tomorrow before dinner. Luckily for her and our schedules, the prince takes his first meal of the day in his chambers.
“No noises,” Sira repeats, her tone wound up tight with exasperation. “No slamming or hitting or moaning—no sounds. You are invisible. A ghost.Nothing.”
I throw her a sweet smile. “You sure know how to make a gal feel special.”
Her hollow face darkens. She takes a step closer to me, shifting the air between us into something thick and tense.
“Do you know what it is to feel special here?” She lifts her finger and presses it deep into a dotted scar at the corner of her mouth.
My face twists with a grimace.
“Trust me,” she adds, “you want to be invisible. I was, until one of the guards noticed me. Then he got his hands on me,” she pauses and lets the truth of what happened linger between us, unspoken. I can chance a guess, making my gut churn.
Her scars aren’t difficult to make out. Ivory dots speckled around her mouth, wide and deep enough to twist her lips into something wretched. Definitely looks as though something—or someone—bit right into her.
I shudder, drawing my arms up around myself.
“Avoid them,” Sira warns me, her tone softer as a haunted look mists her eyes. “The guards—all of them. Use the slave stairs and corridors, check the map before you go anywhere, anddon’tdawdle.”
Is that what she was doing when the guard attacked her? Dawdling out in the open? Perhaps admiring for too long the detailed paintings on the ceilings, blue (like the prince’s piercing eyes) and gold to match the rest of the castle’s theme. Maybe pausing to drink in the soft curves to the marble statues down the rear atrium, how smooth the surfaces of them are, the gentle strokes of paintbrushes forever stained into the texture of the statues’ hair.
Whatever she was doing, it makes me realise that I myself have been dawdling too much around here. It’s hard not to steal a moment during the Quiet to admire the beauty all around.
But now I know better.
So I vow to stick to the slave quarters and areas as much as my duties will allow.
Even now in the Hall, I stop myself from glancing at the velveteen curtains parted at the two entrance doors, the head-tall vases that are wedged between the marble pillars against the walls, and even the grand painting of the prince that looms over the rear of his throne-like seat at the head of the table, overlooking the rows of at least twenty settings on each side. And it’s simply torture not to look up in awe at the golden details of figures I can’t quite make out on the ceiling above me.
Still, I force myself to focus only on Sira and the information she spews out at me for the rest of the Quiet, and pay no attention to the beauty around me.
With a new sense of wavering confidence, I finally shadow Sira out of the Hall and into the slave’s door with me hot on her heels.
We make it safely to the kitchen, and that’s when I’m delivered a blow that renders me speechless.
Hilda is waiting for us, her chubby arms wrapped firmly around her large bosom. Her eyes shift between us as though we are a pair of troublesome children she must keep her beady eyes on at all times, reeking with suspicion.
Instead of the chiding I’m expecting, she says, “You’re up, girl.”
April, I want to correct her. But I’ve already told her my name three times now, and she’s pretty set on calling me ‘girl’.
“Up?” Sira echoes, her voice as faint as her face looks.
I frown between them.
“The prince has rung the bell,” Hilda says and gestures to the row of silver bells latched onto the wall behind her. “You will be delivering his first meal.”
Now, I’m just as pale as the sickly-looking Sira.
“I’m not ready for that,” I gush urgently. “I haven’t learned how to serve up his breakfast. I won’t know what to do—”
Hilda cuts me off with a sharp wave of her meaty hand. “Well you better learn fast, girl. Terry is out with a bad a cold, and I have no one else to deliver it.”
Terry is another house girl—a stunningly gorgeous one at that with yellow waves that glide down her back like a river of sunshine and eyes a deeper blue than the prince’s, and whose heart shaped face is the source of a bounty of unjust envy within me.
Maybe I’m a smidge glad she’s taken ill.
But that’s just the jealousy talking. Of course I don’t wish any ill upon her.
