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“Go way. Tired.” Rolling over, she stuffed her head under her pillow. Pretended she hadn’t heard her friend’s overly cheerful summons. Jane enjoyed annoying Sabrina far too much and had done so ever since they’d met.
Her pillow was yanked away. “Sister Brigh will be in here with the ice water if you’re not quick.”
Sabrina shivered, but even that threat didn’t pull her out of bed. She’d worked in the infirmary until two in the morning. Used the following hours to complete her unfinished journal entry. By the time she’d closed the book, she’d a fierce headache and a heart heavy as lead.
So much of what she’d forgotten about those days returned beneath her pen. Her initial shock and terror. The screaming and cursing that followed. Her mother’s wretched, furious weeping and the servants’ quiet treachery as they slunk like rats abandoning a sinking ship from a house and a family labeled cursed. Sabrina hadn’t known it could get worse until it did.
Her mother’s grief quickly gave way to a vacant, staring sorrow that ended in a grave beside her husband. Sabrina’s brother Aidan—the new Earl of Kilronan—retreated into surly silence behind the closed doors of her father’s study. And, Brendan, the brother she’d loved with slavish devotion, simply vanished without a word of explanation. No one knew where, though everyone hinted at why.
After that, the Sisters of High Danu became a place of safety. A refuge.
A home.
She’d been content. Never contemplated a life beyond the community of bandraoi. Not until this last endless season when change flourished everywhere but here. Aidan’s unexpected marriage. Her childhood friend and neighbor Elisabeth Fitzgerald’s letter announcing her recent betrothal. Even Jane would be leaving Sabrina behind when she was elevated to full priestess at the next festival. Only Sabrina remained in frustrating limbo.
Dissatisfaction crept beneath her guard and set up shop. Unshakable. Uncomfortable.
“Are you even listening to me?” Jane scolded.
Sabrina pulled the blankets over her head. “Tell them I’m sick.”
“You’re not sick.”
“Then tell them I’m dead. I don’t care. I need sleep.”
“You’ve slept for hours.”
“And I’d like to continue doing so if you’d be so kind,” she grumbled.
She disliked Jane in her perky, mothery mode. Especially since she could survive on a few snatched catnaps and didn’t understand why Sabrina couldn’t do the same.
“Can I borrow a clean pair of stockings? Mine have a great hole in the toe.” Jane had given up on Sabrina and directed her conversation to the third occupant of their chamber, privacy not being high on the sisters’ list of must-haves.
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“Only if I can borrow an extra petticoat,” Teresa bargained. “I almost froze in the library yesterday. Sister Ursula refuses to light a fire until icicles are hanging from my nose.”
“Try the kitchens. It’s hot as a bloody oven in there.”
“Jane! Your language.”
“Well it is. I almost fainted the day before yesterday.”
What Sabrina wouldn’t give for her lost bedchamber at Belfoyle. Sweet privacy. Space to toss her things about. Quiet when she needed it.
She clamped her pillow back over her head to drown out the others’ morning chatter; banging drawers, requests for assistance in buttoning or unbuttoning; the clink of pitchers and basins, the thump of sturdy boots across the floor. And always the relentless conversation. It seeped around the edges of her pillow, muffled but intelligible.
Jane’s excited voice penetrated like a cannon salvo. “Did you ever find out who the man is they brought in yesterday?”
The final reason for her exhaustion dragged at Sabrina like an anchor—the man.
She’d wished for change—any change—and been rewarded with a mysterious, glowering stranger who watched her as though he could pull the very thoughts from her head. No more wishes for her.
Unable to erase his intense, endless black gaze, she’d tossed and turned for hours.
“I heard he can’t remember anything,” Jane continued with relish.
Sabrina began to suffocate under her blankets. And a few escaping feathers made her nose itch.
