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Shaking her head, she sighs, “What will I do with you two girls?”
Over Hilda’s shoulder, Terry shoots me a wide-eyed glance. Her mouth is set into a flat line to trap a smile from breaking out. She thrives off the trouble we cause Hilda.
On the other hand, I let the bud of guilt inside my chest creep onto my expression as I bow my head. Wet curls fall over my face.
“Neither of you are fit to be seen,” Hilda huffs, dropping her hands to her sides.
She turns to shoot a look back at Gary who’s sat on the stool in the corner, picking at the pocket on his beige shirt.
“You and Archer will serve,” she orders him.
Gary’s face turns to moody stone. He and his pal Archer are used to being the top dogs of the slaves. The butler’s favourites. So their duties pretty much only extend to serving in the Hall and the parlour room, sometimes the guards too, whereas Terry and I get the earlier duties as well as the later ones. I do the most since I’m the newest and Hilda’s favourite—she thinks it’s some sort of reward to serve more than the others. I suspect she’s been in slavery her whole life, or at least most of it. It’s all she knows.
There is some sense to her method, though. The longer the prince is gone, the more tedious the moments become, the slower time drags by.
So that’s how I explain the bolt of excitement that’s buzzing through me at the prince’s return.
Hilda turns her attention on Gary, while calling out for Archer, and Terry takes the moment to steal my arm and drag me out of the kitchen. She’s wearing that twinkle in her eye and that familiar wicked smile on her plump lips. She has mischief on her mind.
“Where are we going?” I ask, already out of breath as she rushes me through the corridors.
Excitement is wrapped tight around her voice. “Prince Elden is with him. They are distracted.”
“So?” I struggle to keep up, struggle to fight back the growing pain in my chest. Tendrils of dizziness are unwinding over me like prickled vines.
“So we can slip past them and get to the stables before they put the steeds away.”
My face twists into a grimace. “What?” I stagger to a stop behind her, my wrist still firm in her grip. “You want to see those things?”
“Those things,” she sighs, turning to face me, “have character. Trust me, you’ll love them once you get over their ... well, their appearances.”
The grimace on my face remains.
That doesn’t stop Terry, though.
Tightening her hold on my wrist, she hauls me through the corridor towards the front of the castle. We only slow down—finally!—when we reach the last stretch of a hallway, beyond which the main atrium stands in all its glory.
Since I first arrived, I’ve only seen the main atrium three times, and I appreciate its beauty much more now—the blue moss that gathers on the floor around the sparkling pond; the twilight trees that climb up the pillared arches; silver and gold flecks of paint running through the cracks of marble.
Terry wanders up to the thick, heavy vine-curtains that hide the slave’s corridor from atrium view. Folding her arms over her full chest, she leans back against a ribbed pillar and crosses her ankles. She waits.
I perch myself between two candlesticks on the edge of a wall-table.
A quick rest is what I need. Hands on the side of the table, I slump over—damp hair falling over my face—and let my eyes close on the warping floor. Those tendrils of dizziness are buried too deep behind my eyes. Feels like everything is moving.
But I don’t get to rest for a second longer.
A furious shout rages through the atrium, bouncing off the walls. It tears through the slave’s corridor, too, loud enough that I slap my hands to my ears and wince.
Terry shoots away from the pillar, panic widening her eyes, and stiffens. We both stiffen, turned to statues.
Stomping bootsteps are storming into the atrium, just beyond the curtain.
Elden’s voice booms through the castle, the ferocity of it enough to frost-over my bones, “You will write to her! No, you willrideto her now and revoke your decision!”
Daein’s voice is a low growl, rage in a brewing storm cloud, “I will do no such thing. I apologise Elden, but I won’t wed myself to someone I will never come to care for. I have had lovers I have cared for more than her.”
“Do you understand what you have done by denying her?” Elden shouts.
