Elysia snorted a laugh and swiped a small chocolate hazelnut confection from a tray, popping it into her mouth. “It’s just a bit old is all. You know how the north side is—it has its charms and its faults.”
Lynd shook her head in the disgruntled way that only those who love you can. “You have proper rooms, my good food, and everything else you could possibly want here.”
Elysia bit down a smile at her fussing.
Lynd wiped her hands on her apron and leaned forward to pick out a bit of ashy soot from Elysia’s hair. “What difference does a couple of blocks make? She rang your bell and you’re still here, aren’t you? Just had to walk farther in the cursed rain.”
Elysia felt her weariness lock down around her, heavy and unforgiving. Lynd was not wrong. In spite of being grown and moved out, when her mother or father called, she answered. But she was not without her reasons.
Lynd sighed, taking in her stillness and smudgy, tired eyes. She tucked the beautiful pastry basket into her hands and pressed a rough kiss to her head. She then looked at Elysia with all the seriousness of a man standing trial. “I’m going to start sending you dinner once a week, and you will eat it, do you understand? And don’t you dare leave this castle without saying goodbye.”
Dampness lined Elysia’s eyes, and she choked back the discomfort that grew in her throat. She managed one sharp nod before turning heel with the basket clutched tight in bone-white fingers.
She walked away from the sweet kitchen heat and the keen eyes of Lynd before hurriedly slipping into a curtain-covered alcove. She breathed steadily in and out, one hand rubbing against her breastbone until the brisk air emanating from the glass window beside her soothed the lingering ache in her chest. Between the lack of sleep, a tongue in a box, and meetingwith the girls, her feelings were brimming to the top instead of staying down where they belonged.
She could never quite say why Lynd’s brusque love hurt so much. But it did, and for that she was glad.
Elysia closed her eyes and buried that love away. Caring for someone was a dangerous thing. Someone was always watching here in the castle walls. Always reporting back to her parents. That was why she limited her visits to the kitchens. Her mother had commented about how often the servants found her perched on the kitchen counters. Eating, enjoying. She’d stopped visiting after that. Lynd didn’t deserve to be collateral.
She’d found that love inspired a fear deeper than any other. A fear that caused an instinctive, irrational desire to protect. She sometimes wondered if that was the force behind her parents’ actions. Love soured by the need to protect.You’re too old for such thinking,she chastised herself.Whether they experienced love’s poison or not, the people in her life were experts at wielding it against others. That much she knew for sure.
Love is a liability and an affliction.A crushing insight from one Parker sister to another. She’d carried Beatriz’s words with her ever since.
Elysia strained her ears. When she didn’t hear any footsteps or other sounds, she slid back into the hallway, setting off to see her old friend.
The Relaclave library was nottechnicallypart of the castle, but it was connected if you knew where to go. Basket in one hand and an oil lantern in the other, Elysia walked leisurely through the corridors beneath the castle.
She could have marched through the front doors of the great Relaclave library as she did any other day of the week. It was not unusual for her to while away her hours amongst the dusty tomes, but the friend she was to meet was peculiar, to say theleast. He would not be foundinthe warm, cushy reading nooks above her, but ratherbelow.
Long forgotten by the librarians and even the Crown itself were the levels of tunnels and rooms that ran far below the servants’ corridors. The tunnels had called to her when she was a child, much like all the hidden things did, and soon she knew their secrets just the same.
Elysia stared at the small hole in the middle of the servants’ path and regretted her choice of stockings and skirt. Lantern tucked into the basket, she stuck her lower half through the clay covered hole and balanced precariously upon its timeworn edge.
And then she slipped like liquid silk down into the lower tunnels that she hoped held answers to her questions.
She landed softly on the balls of her feet and brought the lantern back out before her. The light barely made a dent against the dark. She prayed Rollie was in his usual haunt. She had no desire to disturb anything or anyone else that may live down here.Why does it always smell like someone shit in these tunnels?She grimaced. She had a love-hate relationship with the tunnels.
She crept along the dirt-crusted paths, ducking to keep her head clean. No matter what, she’d need a solid scouring after this. The sound of shoes scuffling in the distance had her pausing.
Elysia smiled.Some things never change.
She called out into the darkness before he could scuttle off into the shadows where she’d never find him. “Rollie, I brought you food from Lynd.”
The shuffling paused. And then a head with erratic white-blonde hair popped out of the dark. “Maple cakes?”
Elysia held the basket out like she was luring a feral creature. “And her meat pies. A whole meal, right fresh from her kitchen.”
His eyes squinted in a glare from behind his thick glasses. “Fine.”
He disappeared into whatever room he had been squatting in, and Elysia hurried along in his trail.
The room was awash with soft candles lighting its edges. The glow of the candles let her see just how much of the walls and ceilings had crumbled, and not for the first time, Elysia felt uneasy creeping this deep beneath the city. She never did quite trust all of this old dirt.Maybe it's because you’re not a rodent.
But this was where Rollie could be found, so this is where she went on the rare occasion that she demanded his services.
Rollie had already begun carefully inspecting the cakes within the basket. He finally selected what must have been deemed a worthy maple cake and took an untrusting sniff before taking an equally cautious bite.
Rollie, also known as Rollickus Timmons, was not the social sort. He was possibly the only Crown kid who had truly made his own life away from the court. He spent his time like a mole beneath the city, and Elysia sometimes wondered if he might be the only person in Kava who knew more secrets than her.
