Rip.
The parchment wouldn’t budge.
I pursed my lips. He’d clearly given me an impossible task, but why? What point did the prince have in tormenting me so?
Unless he considered it part of the fun.
His appearance silhouetted by the moon flashed across my mind, turning my stomach.
Torment was one word for what he was doing to me.
“Are you finished up in here?” Anna’s voice made me jump. She lingered in the doorway, a basket of clothing on her hip.
“Yes.” I stood and raised my arms, relishing the pops of my spine, the stretch of my lower back. I’d been hunched over Papa’s journal all morning, and now I was behind on my chores.
Again.
When I’d first begun lessons with Prince Thomas, I told myself I was allowed to study magic as long as it didn’t interfere with myduties. But the long evenings had begun to wear on me, and the nights spent studying Papa’s scrawled writing didn’t help, either. Yet I couldn’t stop myself. A desperate hunger had awoken inside me, never satiated despite hours spent pouring over texts, practicing spells, and memorizing potions.
I blinked. Anna had disappeared while I’d been lost in my thoughts yet again. I sighed, patting my thighs in hopes of awakening the numb muscles, and limped after her toward the young princes’ chambers.
Their rooms were silent when I entered. A chilly draft caused goosebumps to skitter up my arms. I walked into Stephen’s room and froze.
All of his weaponry was missing from the hooks on the walls. His knight figurines, the ones I’d organized only yesterday, were all gone, the shelves clean and lifeless. His blankets lay folded on the bed, his drawers empty, his stuffed dragon having vanished.
My blood ran cold.
What happened?
I slammed the door behind me, grabbed my cleaning supplies, and ran. My footsteps pounded down corridors, servants and irritated nobles ducking out of my way. I arrived breathless outside of the palace library, several rags and a half-filled bucket digging into my palm. The guard outside the room nodded, and I poked my head in, relieved to see Thom on a ladder. His finger trailed over a collection of old, dusty tomes.
“Where’s Stephen?”
He started, clutching the ladder tightly. When he looked down at me, his expression eased. “Oh, it’s you.”
“Yes, it’s me.” I dropped my supplies with a clatter and planted my hands on my hips. “Where’s Stephen?”
He descended the rungs until the hem of his emerald mage robes brushed the floor. “He’s left.”
I waited.
“He’s gone to stay with our aunt.”
“For what reason?”
Thom squinted. “Why do you care?”
I bristled. “Because—” I stopped myself.
One side of his lip pulled upward. “Lyra…”
“What? I’m his maid.”
“Then you should have gone to the housekeeper. Why did you come to me?” His eyes studied my face. “Why are you breathless?”
I pressed my lips together, my lungs still desperate to recover from my sprint down the hallway.
Why had I run? And why had I run tohim?
