Despite the tone being hard to determine through text, Cyrus’ letter felt…desperate. Pleading.
Urgent.
Though, I can’t help the irritation spiking in me that he’s requesting me so late after such a taxing day. As if the trials weren’t enough—an elimination and a ball, all within the same day?
It has to be important. Cyrus isn’t a man who is selfish or unthinking.
Slowly, I slip out of my room, quietly closing the door behind me. Freezing underneath the pull toward both directions. After a moment I take a step down the hall toward Lyra’s room.
A high-pitched ring sounds in the distance. So light at first, I have to pause and wait for it to ring again. Three strikes of a bell, growing louder and louder.
The dinner bell?
The bell builds into a distant echo coming from the direction of where I’d need to take to get to Lyra’sroom.
Lady Bethany will have my head if she catches me out so late. Especially unaccompanied.She knows I’m here to spy on the other women, but it doesn’t mean she likes me.
Abandoning my plan of visiting Lyra first, I slip off in the opposite direction. Down the halls toward Cyrus’ office. The light ring of the dinner bell fades into the distance. I’m grateful for the rugs to keep my feet warm as I stalk about barefooted. Perhaps I ought to ask Cyrus for a pair of shoes that aren’t heels for instances such as tonight.
I get to his office, but when I turn the handle, the door doesn’t budge. Tossing a look over my shoulder, I try with a bit more force.
It’s locked.
I press my ear up to the door, listening for Cyrus or anyone else on the other side. But when there’s nothing, I slink back, brows pinched.
Why summon me and not wait? Perhaps he thought I wouldn’t show?
A thought slithers into my mind.
Go in. Go in, now.
Staring at the details carved into the wood, I want to fight against it. But the pull for answers to questions I might not yet know urges me forward. Taking the hairpin from behind my ear, I insert it into the lock. Twist and wiggle it, until eventually…
Click.
The lock springs free.
I glance over my shoulder one last time before slipping into the dark office and quietly close the door.
Immediately there’s a rush of anxiety that pulses over me. Like I shouldn’t be here. Alone, anyway. As I walk closer to the window until my eyes adjust to the darkness, I scan his desk. Tons of papers, letters, and books are scattered across it. I don’t know what I’m looking for. Only that there’s something here—something that beckons me like an unseen hand.
I should feel guilty about going through his things. Yet…my guilt has been bled dry after the trials.
Ineedanswers.
There’s one folded letter in the center of his desk. Positioned right in front of his chair. A spill of dark ink stretches out away from it, staining some of the other papers, with a quill sitting in the pool.
I grab the letter, and within the first bend I unfold, the top of the letter that it’s addressed to makes me pause.
Marcella,
I open it the rest of the way and loosen a breath.
It’s blank. A small line where the first paragraph is started before it wavers. Like he began to writesomethingbefore he stopped.
I toss it back onto the desk with a sigh.
Then begin to rummage among the rest of the letters and books on his desk. As I brush some of them around, my fingertips glide against something rugged. When I shift the clutter out of the way, my heart slows.
