Ours were housed in the Servant Quarters, set up like all the other Houses. Within the quarters was the Servants’ Hall, where they all gathered and ate. A commons room where they could watch TV or a movie or simply sit and read. Single servants resided in dormitories split between the sexes, but families lived together. Dormitories were cramped, I realized, as I stared through the ceiling-to-floor glass wall and inside the apartment. Back home, they slept in small bedrooms, sharing with others, and even sharing a bathroom with the adjacent room. When I thought about it more, it dawned on me that they had no privacy. There was hardly any place for a servant to be alone.
It was a strange concept for someone who rambled alone for most of her day.
But the world of servants wasn’t anything that I’d properly considered before. They simply existed to serve my House.
And when I considered it further, I realized the Servants’ Quarters were situated in the dimmest part of our mansion, where natural light barely reached. Their living space wasmodest, even though my home had a great many rooms that were hardly used. There to look pretty or briefly sit in as one drifted throughout the day or for guests to spill into when we entertained. All that wasted space that could have been utilized better. Should have been.
Yet the Crowthers had gone beyond what any of us had done and set their staff up with proper homes. Shame heated my cheeks.
Behind me, Graysen’s voice still held its bored note, but his tone was a little faraway. “My mother dreamed of what she wanted for the world of servants when she was younger and working for the Deniauds as a Between Maid. Changes that my father began to implement, and she took on and expanded upon when they married.”
To shore myself up against the sting of hearing about his mother, I patted Sage’s head, my fingers curling through his misty fur.
In the next apartment over, the gate suddenly creaked open. A man in his thirties with curly brown hair and dressed in a crisp black suit, left his residence with a briefcase held in one hand. He looked surprised to see us at first, then a broad smile lit his blunt features as his blue eyes landed on Graysen, then widened when they fell upon my wraith-wolf, who bristled and growled lowly.
“Sage,” I whispered, warning him to keep his cool.
My wraith-wolf huffed but complied.
“Do you mind if we have a look around your home, Bryant?” Graysen asked the other man as we approached.
Bryant shrugged. “Sure.” He looked at me as everyone else had done, with open curiosity, and after a moment of hesitation, he bowed.
I rolled my eyes. It seemed like an insincere gesture now I was here and trapped.
“I was heading back to my duties anyway,” he said to Graysen, holding the gate open as we stepped through. It shut behind us with a loudclank,and then he was gone.
“Bryant’s mother used to work with my mother at your grandparents.”
Sanela and Romain, my gruff and aloof grandparents, I rarely spent time with. Their estate was in the Hemmlok Forest, shared by two other estates, the Lyons and the Szarvases. My father’s fear of my secret being discovered meant I’d been cloistered away from them as well.
Inside the private patio were potted roses and boxed shrubs and plants climbing up the timber fence separating the apartments from one another. There was even a barbecue and a teak table ringed with deck chairs in bright navy and white stripes, shaded by a matching sun umbrella. An empty teacup sat on the table along with a book.
“It’s really nice,” I said, because it was. “It’s a thoughtful thing to do.” I wondered what else Tabitha Crowther had done for the servants.
“Yeah, well, that was my mother.” Graysen rolled back on his heels, raising a brow at me and tilting his chin at the front door.
I walked inside to find the apartment modestly spacious, with a bedroom, a kitchen, and a bathroom. It was nicely appointed, and my stomach fell to see how big it was compared to the servants’ rooms at home. Bryant had six times as much space all to himself in contrast to my family’s servants.
Bookshelves lined the wall along with a media center, all livened with lush, bold potted plants. There were also paintings by Salvador Dali and Andy Warhol amongst photographs of Bryant sitting on the edge of a mountain; trekking through a jungle; an arm wound around an elderly woman, his mother judging by the similar features, here in this very living room.
Right at the back of the apartment and the kitchen, where I imagined the dwelling met the outer wall of the Keep, it should have been dark and cave-like with no other windows apart from the ones out front. But in the far corner, a sealed glass chamber stretched from ceiling to floor, continuing through the many levels of the apartment block. Morning sunlight funneled down from above, spilling into the space, washing it in a soft, golden glow and brightening the room.
“Why didn’t you just cut windows into the outer wall?” I asked, turning back to Graysen, who stood in the middle of the living room.
“It is a Keep,” he drawled, still emotionless, stepping closer. “At the end of the day, it is, as you like to call it, a fortress. This is the most fortified home within the Houses. Something we’d prefer to remain as such.”
When I took a keener look at all the furnishings, it stunned me to see how many old pieces furnished the room. “These are priceless antiques,” I gasped. And the servants were using them as our ancestors had once done as dining tables, couches, and armchairs padded for comfort with modern cushions and rugs. There were leafy shrubs in antique urns and teapots, and silver dishes as a place to store pens and knickknacks.
Graysen shrugged a powerful shoulder, chewing through the remaining distance so we stood flush, close enough to almost touch, close enough to feel the air stir with the hyperawareness of one another. “They’d only be gathering dust. What’s the use of that? Nice to look at and show off to other Houses,” he said with a sidelong glance. That was a dig at me, at my family. At every other House too.
Indeed, what was the use?
I tipped my head sideways to glance up at him. “Did your mother like being a servant?”
He toed the tiled floor with the tip of his sparkly boot, thinking for a moment before bringing his gaze back to mine. “Strangely, yes, she did. She didn’t appreciate certain parts of it. The strictness of her world has an established order much like ours, perhaps worse, and one that’s hard to break. But here, she could.”
“So easily too,” I murmured, wondering if my father would have broken tradition if my mother had asked him to. And Varen Crowther had married a servant, not caring at all what the other Houses thought. “You’d think your family would have protested your father marrying a servant.” I couldn’t imagine my father taking a housemaid as a bride.
