Her father’s voice seemed louder too as he said, “I have to meet with my council now, Lynet. Will you be all right on your own? Or perhaps you’d like to come with me? It would be good for you to see a council meeting.”
Mina had told her about those council meetings—a group of old men and women gossiping or else arguing over how much money to spend, while the king waited for them to make up their minds, and how they usually decided to do nothing at all. “No, thank you,” she said, “I’d like to go for a walk. Although … I wouldn’t mind going on your next hunting trip.”
He smiled at her in amusement. “Enjoy your walk, then. But don’t be late for your lessons,” he said, before heading back toward the courtyard.
When he was gone, Lynet practically threw herself at the nearest wall and started to climb. She didn’t even have anywhere to go, but she needed to climb up, away from the crypt, away from the bones and the stench of death. She found a jutting piece of stone as a foothold and found a ledge to bring herself up on top of the low, arched roof. She climbed up over the arch and then started down, toward the central courtyard. She almost slipped as she made her way across, and she relished the way her pulse sped in response—it was proof that she was alive, and that she was not the dead queen in her coffin. How could anyone mistake her for the late queen when she was scaling the walls of a castle? Would someone so delicate be able to climb these heights? Would someone so delicate risk her safety in such a way?
Lynet was overlooking the courtyard now, but she still felt like she was running away from something, and that if she stopped, it would catch her. It was a restless feeling, an itch that made her feel like her skin didn’t fit over her bones correctly. She thought she might leap out of herself and become someone new, and then she’d be at peace.
Leap. The thought appealed to her, made her heart race faster. The juniper tree was about five feet away from the edge of the roof, its branches inviting her. I can make that jump, she told herself. It was a farther distance than she had ever jumped before, and there was a voice in her head telling her that she was doing something pointlessly dangerous, but every muscle in her body ached to take that leap, to release whatever strange energy was building up inside of her. Her muscles tensed in preparation, and she relished the feeling of fear and elation that flooded her.
Lynet targeted the nearest juniper branch, its leaves covered in snow. She crouched lower, took a breath, and jumped.
One of her hands found the branch—and lost it again, her skin scraping painfully against the sharp bark as she tumbled down. She barely had time to absorb what had happened before her back hit the ground, her fall thankfully blunted by several inches of snow.
I knew I couldn’t make that jump.
She lay there for a moment, eyes closed, and even though she had missed the tree, she did still feel a kind of peace come over her. That feeling of something moving under her skin was gone, replaced by a stinging pain in her left palm. She took deep breaths as her pulse began to slow.
And then she heard an amused voice from above: “What’s this? A bird fallen from her perch?”
“I’m not a bird,” Lynet shot back immediately. She opened her eyes and then inhaled sharply as she looked up at a face that had become familiar to her.
The girl from the courtyard. The surgeon she had been following. Nadia.
Lynet seemed to be familiar to her, too, because Nadia was staring at her, wide-eyed, from above. “No, not a bird, a princess,” she said. “I apologize, my lady. I didn’t recognize you at first.”
Lynet rushed to her feet and tried to brush the snow off her skirt, hoping also to brush off the indignity of having been found falling from a tree. But the juniper branch had scraped a layer of skin off her left palm—the source of the pain she’d felt earlier—and she winced when her hand met the rough fabric.
“Did you hurt yourself, my lady?” Nadia said, reaching for Lynet’s hand. As she examined Lynet’s palm, Lynet took the opportunity to observe Nadia up close. After weeks of peering through windows and running after her over rooftops, Lynet’s mind was reeling with new details. Nadia’s hair wasn’t black, as Lynet had previously believed, but a deep, dark brown. Her heavy eyelids were lined with long eyelashes. And her eyes—her eyes were staring back at Lynet.
“It’s fine,” Lynet said, snatching her hand back. “Just a scrape.”
“I can put something on it to help it heal, if you come with me. I’m the new court surgeon.”
I know, she nearly said. “If you insist. But just … just call me Lynet, as if I weren’t a princess.” She couldn’t bear such formalities from her, not when Lynet felt so familiar with her already.
Nadia seemed surprised by the request, her head tilting slightly, but she nodded and began to lead the way across the courtyard. Lynet paused for a moment, and then she did what she had done the first time she’d seen Nadia walk across this same courtyard.
Lynet followed her.
5
LYNET
The surgeon’s workroom was much more vivid in person than from behind a dirty window. Lynet paused at the threshold, feeling like she was about to walk into a dream—or like she was waking from a dream only to find that reality was even stranger. Along one fragrant wall were shelves carrying a variety of potions and herbs, along with the occasional bowl of leeches. The jars and vials on the shelves reflected the light from the window, sending shards of sunlight and shadow throughout the room.
Hanging on another wall was a drawing of a bloody man pierced all over his body by different weapons. Underneath it was a low table of knives, scalpels, and other steel surgical tools, some of which Lynet recognized from watching Nadia work over the past few weeks. Strewn throughout the entire room were piles of books and bottles of ink and loose sheets of paper, which Nadia hurried to tuck away as soon as she set foot in the room.
Lynet took a moment just to absorb it all. Ignoring the mess on the table, since Nadia seemed so embarrassed by it, she walked slowly along the edge of the room, observing it from new angles with each step. From the corner of her eye, she saw that Nadia was watching her now with the focus she usually reserved for surgical procedures, waiting until Lynet had come full circle back to the doorway.
“This is where you work?” Lynet said, though she already knew the answer.
Nadia nodded. “Also where I sleep.” She gestured to a dark room in the back.
That was something new, something Lynet hadn’t known from watching her. She had never seen Nadia sleep, not even for a moment over her books. She wondered how it would feel to sleep in a room like this. She wondered what kind of dreams Nadia had.
“I have an ointment for your hand,” Nadia said. In one smooth motion, she turned to one of her shelves and reached up for the jar without even needing to look for it. “My name is Nadia, by the way.”