Helplessly, we follow the Queen into a sparsely decorated side chamber, just a table and a few chairs where Ina can take meals when she doesn’t feel like going down to the dining hall. But when the Queen sits in one of the chairs and levels her gaze up at us, she looks as regal and terrifying as if she were on the throne in the seaside palace. She directs her fiery gaze at Ina first.
“To atone for your nonsense, you and Lord Roan will travel with me to the statue of the Sorceress in Tilden tomorrow, and beg her forgiveness.” I shudder, reminded of the statue in my vision. “And you two”—I shrink back as her eyes land on me like two beams of fire—“you’ll not leave Everless tomorrow. I’ll deal with you when I return.”
Caro and Ina are bowing their heads, so I follow suit. “Yes, Your Majesty,” Caro says in her softest whisper.
“We’ll do better,” Ina adds. I can feel her tremble.
When the Queen has left us, we undress quietly, wash our faces, and change into nightgowns. Shame has burned away the last vestiges of drunkenness, leaving me hollow and wrung out, and looking at Caro and Ina, I can tell from their sallow faces and sunken eyes that they feel the same way.
Ina, between Caro and me, falls asleep almost as soon as her head hits the pillow, but I hear Caro’s shallow, wakeful breathing on the other side of the bed for what seems like a long time. I still have the notebook hidden beneath my nightgown, and despite my exhaustion, I’m aching to take it out and read more of the strange stories within. But for some reason the words on the page feel secret, too close even for Caro.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth about my father,” I say, soft as I can. She doesn’t answer right away, but her breathing changes slightly, so I know she hears.
“It’s all right,” she answers eventually. “It’s your secret to share. I shouldn’t have been so upset by it.” She trails into silence, and I almost think she’s fallen asleep, but then she speaks again.
“I’m sorry to get you wrapped up in this,” she says. In what, I want to ask, but don’t. “The guards will be relaxed tomorrow, with the Queen gone,” she continues. “We’ll go to the vault and look for your father’s things.”
“I’ve told you,” I protest softly. “We really mustn’t. I should never have said anything about it.”
“We’ll discuss it tomorrow, then. We have a long day ahead of us,” she says, her voice heavy with sleep. She reaches across Ina’s body, interlaces her fingers with mine. “Tomorrow, Jules.”
She turns over and pulls the blankets up. As soon as I’m sure of her deep breathing, I slide out the notebook and hold it in the scant moonlight that pours over the bed through a small window, trying to make out Liam’s words. But the first few pages I turn to are Everless business, figures and charts and mundane notes on the amount of taxes brought in or debts paid, and I feel my eyelids sliding earthward. Every few pages, I catch a snippet of something—a fox, a snake—before sleep closes in on me.
I wake to the sound of bells. It takes me a moment to remember where I am—alone in Ina’s huge bed, with late-morning sunlight pouring in through the window. The notes of the bells are sweet, but the melody sends a low thrum of alarm through me.
I sit upright, take in a sharp breath.
I’d heard it before—not in the past weeks, but as a child. It’s the group of tones played to summon the servants together for punishments.
I leap out of bed, ignoring the dull pain that clamors inside my skull, and strip off the nightdress. Quickly, I find the servants’ clothes I abandoned here last night, and stuff Liam’s notebook, which was tucked partway under my pillow, into my apron pocket.
In the refectory, an uneasy mood hangs over the servants. Although we fill the room, there is little chatter. I fall in with a group of kitchen servants in our kerchiefs and aprons, and for the first time wish I was still one of them.
My heart sinks as soon as I see who stands at the front of the room. Of course, there is Ivan, looking out over the gathering crowd with a leering smirk on his face. He’s in uniform, a dark green cloak swinging down over a leather tunic. Two more Everless guards flank him. And behind them is Liam Gerling, looking grim.
A few feet in front of me, Lora looks anxious—when I glance down, I can see her worrying at the hem of the apron she still wears.
When everyone seems accounted for, Ivan steps forward. “Good afternoon,” he calls, his jovial voice, as ever, making my skin crawl. “It’s my unfortunate duty this afternoon to announce a punishment of one of your own. One who was found to be tampering with, no less, the ancient vault of the Gerlings, the family who feeds and shelters you all.”
My body goes rigid. The vault. Ivan looks over us with a threatening scowl, but his voice is languid. He’s enjoying himself—savoring the terror in the room. I notice a handful of guards in royal maroon—but they are outnumbered and stand back from Ivan and the Everless guards. They have their arms crossed, and look unhappy.
Before I can think what this means, Ivan steps aside, and a door behind him opens. The two guards who enter haul in a crying girl by the arm, a girl with freckled skin and pale green eyes . . .
No.
“Caro Elysia was found in the hall outside the vault, tampering with the door.” Ivan says, reading off something in his hand. “As punishment for violating this most important of places, as an officer of the family Gerling, I impose the maximum penalty of forty years—to be withdrawn from the blood immediately.” He looks over his shoulder at Liam. And Liam—acting as representative of the Gerlings, I realize—gives a tight nod. An assent.
Caro struggles weakly against the guards holding her, tears streaming down her face. A soft no escapes my lips.
Forty years? Even from Ivan, it’s barbaric.
And it’s my fault.
I push my way through the crowd of servants. They stare and whisper as I pass, but I don’t let it slow my feet. I was the one who wanted to see inside the vault, and Caro is going to lose forty years of her life for it. She was only trying to help me regain something of my father’s. Because she cares.
“Wait!” Without knowing what I’m doing, I lunge forward as Ivan passes and catch at his cloak.
He looks at me, eyebrows raised in mild amusement, like I’m a pet that has done a new trick. “What do you want?”
“You . . . you can’t take forty years,” I say breathlessly, miserably. “It’s too much at once.” Horrible memories flood my mind of Papa coming home from the time lender in Crofton, pale and sick and staggering after having a few months withdrawn. Could a person even survive losing that much time, if she even has that much?
And that’s when the real weight of it sinks in. Because what are the chances that a servant girl has forty years at all?
This punishment may kill her.
Ivan plucks his cloak away from my hands. “That’s not my concern,” he drawls. “If you’re so worried, you can get yourself down to the time lender and withdraw some of your own time to give this thief.”
A hand appears on his shoulder. He turns, and I see that Liam has come up behind him, silent as a ghost.