24
THE TOWER
Sometimes, when Diana’s ring warmed her finger, it felt like a kiss.Temple’s kiss.And in those moments, despite the dim lighting, the dust, the inhospitable furnishings, and the bad food, she felt safe.She felt hope.
A rare commodity, that, when she’d been locked up and left alone, only a guard to keep her company.And he would not speak to her.She’d tried.Multiple times a day for all five days of her confinement.Sometimes she spoke to him simply to speak.
Mostly, she sat at the window, looking out at a world she might not ever rejoin and thought about lightning.
Had it been real?Or illusion?
What had been real?She’d called lightning from across the sky.She’d commanded it by drawing its light nearer and nearer.If the dukes and marquesses and earls knew how to do this, they would want everyone to know it.
They didn’t know.Or they couldn’t do it.
But she could.
Only she couldn’t think of how to use this particular trick to escape, to run and hide.
The question that truly plagued her was… Why could she do it if they could not?
Possibly because, unlike other transcendents, she’d been forced to learn to wield her talent, to figure out how it worked and how she could control it.The others had been trained by men who’d come before then, given advice on what to expect.If she’d been able to speak with Apollo, or anyone with the gift, or even allowed to read a book, her talent might have taken a much more predictable course—the course that had been hewn over centuries, like a drop of water carves a rivet into a rock, drip by drip over ages and ages of time.
She’d felt as if the lightning were in her skin, tingling and taut.She’d felt like the bolt that had struck with uncanny precision between Temple and Apollo had been her doing, and quite,quitereal.She grasped the bars on her window and looked up at the sky.So very blue, so very open and beyond her reach.She sighed.She couldn’t make lightning.She didn’t think.She needed a storm, then she could… guide it.
Likely, she should be more worried about that development.
She was more worried about Temple.He might… miss her.Now and… later.After.But he would have his family, and he could marry again.A woman who was not as complicated as herself.
She scowled, her hands itching to become fists, to punch that hypothetical bride.She did not want to share Temple.Even if she died.And she didn’t care if it was selfish.She loved him and wanted him to be hers.Always.
Life had given her so little, and she’d asked little of it in return.It could at least give her that.Temple never marrying again.
It would condemn him to a life of loneliness, though.Because even if she escaped, she would not go to him, would not ask him to leave the family he loved so dearly.If he ran away with her, he would never enjoy another evening at Nickleby House.Never introduce his parents to their grandchildren.Sybil would marry without her brother to fret about the groom.Ajax would become a man without another single soggy cookie laid upon Temple’s palm.Or Diana’s.
She leaned against a stone wall and sank down, down, down, until she sat upon the stone floor.She’d cried up all her tears days ago.None left.But she couldn’t shake the heavy dampness in her soul, the aching pain her chest.She’d found a family.And lost it.Would be wiser to feel grateful for the time she’d been given with them.But a greediness had claimed her.She wanted more.Of life, of Temple, of the Grants.She wanted to learn more about her talent and continue learning potions with Lady Guinevere.She wanted to help Temple break into the Alchemist Guild and steal more books and?—
Hopeless to want more.These stone walls were all she had for now.Perhaps forever.
And forever might not be that long for her.
The sound of the lock creaking shot Diana to her feet.The door opened.Had they allowed Temple to visit her?Oh, she hoped so.She would kiss him and hold him, and he might have to live there with her until the end because she would never let him go.
But it was not Temple who entered.Not even a man.
Diana sank into a deep, deep curtsy, her heart thumping madly.
“Rise,” Princess Victoria said.
Diana did but then had no idea where to look.She’d seen the princess from a distance a few times.She was, surprisingly, shorter than Diana, though they shared brown hair.The princess’s spine and shoulders were straight and serious, but something mischievous winked in her golden eyes.
“You are the lady I’ve heard so much about,” she said, hands folded primly over her belly.She wore a white gown with a blue shawl, her hair sleek and perfectly arranged in a coiffure of braids and loops.
Diana nervously smoothed a hand over her unwashed hair.It had been a chaos of knots and tangles for days, but she’d managed to braid it into something like messy submission.“I suppose I am, Your Highness.”
“You possess talent?”The princess raised a brow.
“Yes, ma’am.”
