“Just a couple of weeks.” I hesitate, but then the bitter realization sinks in—with Papa gone and Liam and Roan both knowing who I am, there’s little risk in being myself. “But my father worked here, when I was a child. I grew up at Everless.”
“I see.” Caro’s voice is even softer now; she seems to hear something amiss in my tone. “And why did you come back?”
The image of Papa’s face when I last saw him, alone in the dark cold of the root cellar, flashes through my mind, and for a moment I can’t breathe. Suddenly, I feel that I have to tell the truth, or I might suffocate with the weight of it.
“He died,” I say simply. “Recently.” I don’t think I can manage any more of an explanation. Caro just slows a little, looks into my eyes, and clasps my arm tighter.
“I’m sorry,” she says gently. “And your mother?”
My silence is its own answer.
Caro nods, grasps my arm again. “My parents, too, when I was younger. If you’d like to do this another time . . .”
I shake my head, grateful for the plain empathy in her words. “No. Thank you. I want to get my mind off it.”
“I think that’s the best thing to do in a time of loss,” Caro says. She smiles, the expression full of shared grief and understanding, and it feels as if an anvil has been lifted from my chest.
Genteel noises of soft music and murmured conversations float toward me as we make our way through the upper floors. It makes my skin prickle with nervousness—the quiet between Caro and me is suddenly deafening. What sparkling conversation can I hope to provide Lady Gold, if I bore her handmaiden? I hope she isn’t expecting someone else like Caro, collected and perfectly put together.
As if she can feel what I’m thinking, Caro fills the silence by humming a sweet, sad tune as we walk—it’s familiar, though I can’t place it. She starts to sing: “Your voice is an hour’s rose; your soul a loving thief. I’ll follow you through the fledgling woods, till your heart is mine to keep.”
“That song,” I ask. “What is it?”
“A very old one. The Queen’s favorite.”
The melody is a simple back-and-forth between only a few notes, though the words tell a story of loss, of love—of violence.
Soon, Caro stops at a door on the right and turns to me. Her lips part slightly, and her eyes widen in shock. “Jules, you’re crying.”
I bring my hand to one cheek, surprised when my fingers come away wet. My face flames. “It’s all right,” I assure her, and smile. “It was such a beautiful song.”
Caro smiles, nods. “The Queen had it written in honor of the Sorceress.”
“Is it true? That the Sorceress walked with the Queen?” I ask.
“Caro!” a voice calls from the other side of the door. “Have you found Roan’s friend?”
Roan’s friend. The words echo in my mind.
My heart beats quickly—one, two, three—and repeats, like the song’s melody, while Caro produces a key from her dress and opens the door. I cock my head, confused that Lady Gold should be locked in.
Caro sees my look and leans in close, speaking even more softly than normal. “Lady Gold’s guards were lost recently,” she tells me. “And she doesn’t like to be surrounded by strangers, so she refused to take any Everless guards. It made the Queen furious.”
She opens the door and leads me into a sumptuously decorated suite, all lush red carpets and gossamer curtains floating from huge windows. The space is flooded with the winter sun, but it’s warm, and suffused with the fragrance of rosewater.
One corner of the room is taken up with a massive, cloud-like bed, covered now in dresses of every color, flung there haphazardly as if tried on and discarded. By the bed, Lady Ina Gold stands in a silk shift and petticoat, her arms and calves bare except for a few simple metal bangles, and her short hair loose. She’s holding one dress—as shiny and liquid as molten emeralds—up to the light, examining it with a critical eye. When the door closes behind us she turns to face me and Caro.
Instinctively I cast my eyes down to avoid seeing her half-dressed. “My lady,” I hear Caro say in her carrying whisper. “This is Jules Ember.”
I look up, my cheeks burning, to meet Ina Gold’s eyes. She’s my height exactly, my age, but from a different world than me. The fact that she’s never had a care in the world seems to shine through in her face—her body. Her skin glows, free from even the suggestion of a scar or callus.
A stray thought sends a chill down my spine: someday, long after I’m dead and buried, this girl will be queen.
And another: she’ll spend all those years with Roan.
Ina smiles with no self-consciousness as she reaches out and clasps my free hand.
“Miss Ember,” she says. Her voice is rich, her vowels bell-like, with the strange accent that only the Queen, Caro, and she seem to have. “Thank you for coming. I’m so pleased you could join us. Roan said you were a treasure—I don’t know why he didn’t tell his mother that in the first place, before we wasted our time . . .”
Unsure how to react, I curtsy clumsily in response, keeping my eyes on the carpet. “Lord Gerling wasn’t aware I was at Everless until yesterday, Lady Gold. The pleasure is all mine.”
She turns toward the bed, sweeping her arm out over the array of dresses crumpled there. “Caro and I were just debating. It’s tradition that a bride wear the colors of her groom’s family, the family she’ll be joining. But green doesn’t suit me. And technically”—she raises her eyebrows—“I outrank Roan, don’t I?”
Despite her teasing words, there’s an undercurrent of wonder in her voice when she speaks about the wedding—about Roan—that makes me think she’s not just boasting. Her face shines like a little child who’s woken up to fresh snow.
Already, I know that she is in love with Roan Gerling. And from the way she’s smiling, he must love her back. Who wouldn’t?
My feelings twist and take a strange shape inside me. It’s easy to be jealous of the future queen, who might be marrying a Gerling for politics’ sake; it feels different with the girl in front of me, grinning and barefoot and obviously infatuated.
“Caro thinks I should wear green,” Lady Gold continues. She tosses the green silk gown on the bed, glorious even in its disheveled state. “But I like this one.” She holds up another dress to her body—red, the color of the Queen, with sleeves that drape artfully off her shoulders. “But is it too risqué for Everless?”
“Not at all,” I volunteer, surprising myself. “You haven’t seen it yet, but the Gerling ladies wear much more scandalous things on lesser occasions.”