A gentle rapping on my door awakened me. The clouds were soft with gray morning light and thick with the promise of snow. I rubbed my head, as if that could scatter the lingering anxiety from my dream.
The rapping came again. I leaned up on my elbows. “Come in.”
The door opened a handbreadth. In popped the heart-shaped face of a girl maybe a year or two older than me. “I’ve brought your breakfast, Sovereign Auraseer.”
I sat up completely. My nightgown was a mess of wrinkles from all my writhing last night. “My name is Sonya.” I couldn’t bear the custom of everyone addressing me by my title. The girl curtsied in assent. I studied her, the way her eyes drooped in the corners, not with fatigue, but in a way that spoke kindness. I took an immediate liking to her.
She opened the door wider, and her bowed lips curved in a timid smile, but I knew better. Vitality surged through my limbs, my back. The kink in my spine from a night spent on the floor was forgotten, as was my sorrow. This girl was brimming with life. I drank it in like I’d just crossed the desert sands of Abdara.
“I’m Pia,” she said, stepping into the room. “Your serving maid,” she added, and then rolled her eyes. “But I’m sure you already knew that.”
I released a small laugh. I couldn’t help it. Her happiness bubbled through me. “I can only feel your aura, not your station.”
She giggled back. “I meant my uniform.” She gestured to it like the evidence it must be to anyone with a noble upbringing—to anyone who had ever been served before. But to my eyes, all that differentiated Pia’s clothes from my personal maids’ was that the skirt beneath her apron was blue, not dark gray, and her hair kerchief was tied back in a different fashion.
“I’m afraid I don’t know much about palace life,” I admitted, “let alone which maid does what or the colors she wears. Lenka nearly bit off my head last night when I requested something particular about my food.”
“Well, I can help you with that.” Pia rocked back on her heels. “And never mind Lenka. She’s all salt and sour milk. I gave up trying to make her smile ages ago.” She slid back a loose pin holding her kerchief in place.
I watched everything Pia did with fascination. Something about her reminded me of Yuliya, but I couldn’t place it. Perhaps it was simply my hope of having a friend at the palace. One friend had been enough at the convent. One had been enough with the Romska.
Pia smoothed her apron, growing a little self-conscious under my stare. “There’s tea in your sitting room and a sweet bun.” She bobbed her head over her shoulder to nudge me toward it. “Lenka will come in a quarter hour.”
I stood and untwisted myself from my blanket.
“Did you really sleep down there?” She raised her brows.
I frowned at the box bed and gave her a dark look. “Wouldn’t you?”
She snorted, then walked over and picked up my blankets and pillow. “Well, let’s at least hide the trail. Lenka thinks it’s a great honor to sleep in that bed.” Pia stuffed her load past the bed’s small door. “We don’t want her forcing you into a corset today out of vengeance.”
“You know about that?” I followed her into my antechamber where a samovar of tea and the promised bun were waiting on a lacquered tray inlaid with mother-of-pearl.
“Rumor spreads fast here. It isn’t every day we get a new Auraseer, or a girl who would dare present herself to the emperor without pinching in her waist and pushing up her curves.” She chuckled. “I couldn’t wait to meet you.”
I felt color stain my cheeks. I appreciated Pia’s open attitude toward me, but I doubted anyone else in the palace found my eccentricities so endearing. I sat on the couch and bit into my bun as she went to pour my tea. “What else have you heard?”
Pia tipped back the samovar when my cup was half full and glanced at the door leading to the hallway, as if Lenka might walk in at any moment. She bit the corner of her lip. “Is it true Prince Anton brought you here on a white stallion?”
“Yes,” I said carefully, “though it was a mare.”
She sighed and sank beside me on the couch, obliterating what small level of formality remained between us. “Was it very romantic?”
“What do you mean?”
“I was told you rode together on the horse.” Her eyes searched mine. “He’s handsome, don’t you think? And his story is so tragic.”
“Tragic?” I lifted my cup. Did she mean the loss of his mother?
“You know . . . how he was raised thinking he would rule Riaznin one day.”
I choked on my tea. “Oh?”
Pia’s brow creased. “You really don’t know?”
I shook my head and clutched my throat so I wouldn’t cough again. “Isn’t Valko the older brother?”
She scooted in closer. “Yes, but the boys grew up separately. There was always someone trying to assassinate or usurp Emperor Izia. So to protect his dynasty, he sent the princes to live far apart from each other—and from Torchev. Valko was only six when he left the palace, and Anton just five.”