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Sometimes, I wanted to march right up to him and ask, but of course I didn’t dare. I recognized that I had been very lucky to land where I was. I wasn’t about to rock the boat for anything.
Eagerly, I slipped inside the bedroom, but when I opened the heavy wood door leading into the single room of my quad, I found an envelope on the floor. Hesitating, I glanced at Jaylen, but for once, he stared straight ahead as I turned the blank paper over in my hand. I parted my lips to ask him where it had come from, but thought better of it.
He hadn’t been watching my room. His job was to watch me when he was on shift.
Someone had slid this beneath the door when I’d been at work, and no one had been monitoring the door.
Still, I could feel Jaylen’s eyes on me as I retreated back into the bedroom, securing the door behind me, the lock of the door clicking before I moved to open the letter.
My first guess was that it was from Endora, but if she wanted to meet up for another fruitless memory-purging session, she wouldn’t slip a note under my door. She would just pop into the greenhouse in a whirl of blue smoke and banter with Lacroix, half-flirting, half-irritating the old botanist until they were both sick of each other and she disappeared the same way.
No, this was something else.
I sat at the desk, shoving aside the remote control for the television and tablet that hadn’t been connected to Wi-Fi as far as I knew.
Unsealing the envelope, I unfolded the page inside. My heart fluttered when I saw the kingdom letterhead, a small sweat breaking out over my forehead, the regal wolf emblem glaring at me from the page. My eyes dropped to the signature, but I’d already known it was from him without even reading the note.
Honestly, I’d thought that King Zen had forgotten about me.
Mirielle, the note began.I take my breakfast at six a.m. in the main dining hall. Please join me in the morning.
Z
It was not a request or a question. He was just used to others doing as he instructed, and I was no different. Not that I was in any position to protest such an invitation.
What did he want?
I sat at the small writing desk under the skinny window that overlooked the Bellewoods where I had first met the king a week earlier. It looked different, depending on the time of day, the nighttime casting the plethora of trees in an eerie light beneath the moon.
But here in twilight, the oranges and pinks enveloped the lush foliage. The forest looked inviting, tempting me to shift just as I knew the king did almost daily and scamper off to explore the soft mulch beneath mouse paws. Now that I’d had time to myself, I realized that it was true—I was capable of shifting into a miniscule woodland creature—but I hadn’t ventured to try it yet.
I wondered if that would burn off the nervous energy coursing through my veins in that moment, but I doubted it. It would likely land me in more danger, the night predators eager to find a quick, easy meal in the likes of me in my rodent body.
I was stuck in the castle with my own thoughts, mulling over what King Zen could possibly want to see me about.
For a week, I’d done my best not to think about the king and his intense, steely eyes, staring down at me when I had regained consciousness in the cave. I’d thrown myself into the apprenticeship, never blinking about the hours or routine because I really was enjoying it, but also, it kept me from thinking thoughts about someone I had absolutely no right to think about.
I caught whiffs of his scent with spicy undertones in the hallways everywhere, the castle ingrained in his masculinity.
But I had trained myself to be grateful that King Zen had permitted me to stay alive first and then remain on his property, even if I was under close observation all the time. It beat the alternative of being sent out into the world where I had absolutely nothing at all. There was obviously no future between us, a fact made clear by the way he had forgotten about me, and yet here was this letter, slipped covertly under my door, inviting me to an early-morning breakfast… so that no one else might see?
Warmth and anticipation washed through me as I set the page on the desk and stood to find my towel and make my way toward the common bathroom, shared by the staff members in our dorm quad. I longed to tell one of the other maids about the secret invitation, Millie or Tavia, with whom I split the quad, but I didn’t dare.
There was a reason the king had been so hush-hush about this, and I wasn’t going to blow his cover.
That wasn’t what I wanted to blow.
* * *
Needless to say,I got no sleep at all that night, and by five thirty the following morning, I was fully dressed in a clean work uniform, heading out of my room. I hated the idea of wearing my uniform to meet with King Zen, but I still had my apprenticeship at seven, and I’d never hear the end of it from Lacroix if I was late. I also didn’t want to seem presumptuous, appearing at the table in something other than my uniform—not that I had anything much else to wear but a pair of blue jeans for my off times and a couple of nighties that Endora had scrounged up for me.
But embarrassment snaked up my spine as I made my way down the main hallway and into the common areas in which I had spent very little time.
This area of the castle was for the king and princess—who I had yet to set eyes on. Millie and Tavia talked about the rooms on that side of the castle, but my work kept me in a different section. I felt out of place in my gardening gear, padding across the marble flooring in my tennis shoes.
In my excitement, I almost forgot about my personal guard until I had located the main dining hall, and the only reason I noticed my day guard almost a full corridor away was because there was no one else around. I’d never seen the building so still.
“Good morning.”
