“Is…everything okay?”
“Yes,” she whispers. “I think there’s a hidden room—at the center of it all. I just don’t know what’s inside it.”
Goosebumps pinch my skin.A secret,I think.Follow this secret. It may be useful.
I observe the map once more, the very center of the Pith, unknown even to a faerie who’s lived here all her life. “How do you figure?”
“For one, Reign has no inner gardens.”
It was one of the first differences I had noticed—that the rooms had no windows, the only natural light pouring in through glass squares in the roof. I’d assumed it was the trade-off for the privacy of the Pith, its placement as the core of power.
“But maybe they do. Maybe a garden exists, but even the servants aren’t allowed to enter.” Lila’s expression brims with a naked curiosity that brings extra color to her cheeks and a spark into her eye—something she rarely shows beneath the armor of laughs and smiles.
“That’s not all, is it?” I ask.
A grin splits her face. “One time on a cleaning shift with my father, I noticed that the wall in the king and queen’s bathing suite curves into the space, cutting down the size of the bathing pool by half. It’s not a smooth curve, either. It’s as if the chambers are builtaroundsomething.”
But nothing in Versara is built around nature, for the entire point of the palace is to dominate the elements—the gardens of trees sheared into unnatural shapes, the right angles of the archways and columns, even the tapestries and painted ceilings. All of it designed to say thatwe render our world and everything in it.
“And what is important enough to cut into the space of the king and queen?”
“Part of the old building?” I guess.
Lila shakes her head. “King Gregor—may he wander well—used to gut and rebuild rooms with the change of the seasons. My father called him the Bored General. He’s redone every part of House of Reign, even the servants’ quarters, except for the royal bathing chambers, which are even smaller than ours. Why allow something to be inconvenient? The High Fae never do that, especially not House Reign.”
My finger drifts to the two southern apartments for the royal children. “And the Salon of Stars?”
“Their shared bath also curves into the space. As if it’s a mirror of the parental suite.”
I glance up at her. “And the two half-moon walls form a circle. A giant, empty space at the center of the Pith.”
“Yet there are no doors into it, and it’s not an Illusion.” Then she shrugs. “I asked my father and his generation what it could mean, but they all say the Pith is the oldest part of the palace. It’s bound to have a few odd walls.”
“But it does seem a bit strange for the royal family to give up space in a palace as sprawling as Versara, and then not to correct that oversight. Most faerie servants only ever see one House’s wing. That’s why the coronation was such a large event for the staff.”
Lila nods vigorously. “We know it’s not for lack of wealth or resources. And that’s not all,” she says, scooching closer. “Why is House Reign nicknamed ‘the Pith’? No faerie today is old enough to remember why, but we all call it that because my father’s generation did. But they didn’t remember, either.”
“Why would a palace of stone and gold be called a pith? If youpry apart a stem in some plants, it’s the central tissue inside. That’s what it’s called.”
“Wow, okay,” she breathes. “Do you know what to pith an animal means? Fern told me once that it’s an old term that describes killing an animal by severing their spinal cord.”
Perhaps we fixate on a detail that means nothing. But again, why must onlynight servantstake oaths of silence? Day Crests experience their fair share of terror at the hands of High Fae. What secrets are they afraid we’ll discover during the twilight intimacy that forms when helping a High Fae to bed and hearing their nightmares?
“I believe you,” I say.
“But you haven’t seen the curved walls.”
“But you have.”
“Perhaps it’s something they perceive as more important than themselves. Though I don’t think their egos would ever allow that.”
I snort, then think on this. “You’re saying it could be a relic? Something sacred?”
“Yes!” she whispers. “For if it were a resource, they would send faeries to mine it. If it were favorable with the other Houses, Reign would show it off in ceremonies. If it were unimportant, they would destroy it.”
We lapse into silence. Lila takes the parchment, folds it, and slides it under her pillow. Climbing to my feet, I reach the window on the back wall, the spring air warming this time of year. My eyes scan the concentric buildings that ripple outward like water, rendering the Pith as the point of contact. The spine of the palace, the central nervous system.
I’d spent so much time looking at the barren state gardens from my room, I forgot to look beyond. From Lila’s room I can see the peaks of the northern mountain range, and perhaps at night, she can even spot the city lights of Cont to the north. I learned, secondhand, that there is a river to the north and another to the south of us, but even from this distance, I cannot see them through trees and rolling hills.
