CHAPTER FOUR
I sat back on my haunches and wiped my brow with the back of my sleeve. Beneath me, the palace floor was a soapy mirror, and in it I could see frizzy strands falling around my face, dirt smudged across my chin. I blew a strand aside and leaned down once more to scrub the marble’s scuffed surface.
In the distance, excited chatter began to echo down the corridors. Guards and maids alike murmured as they hastened down the halls, a few muffled giggles slipping through the gathering crowd. I rose to my feet and picked up my bucket to follow.
Near the palace’s back doors, Ella caught my eye, similarly disheveled after scrubbing the foyer. We exchanged smiles.
“What’s all this?” I asked her.
We were swept along with the other servants into the palace gardens. A stray foot stepped on my own. I winced as my toes began throbbing.
Ella’s eyes twinkled as she dodged a child weaving through the throng. “I overheard a few of the kitchen staff whispering as they passed. There’s going to be a demonstration.”
My eyebrows lifted. “Oh?”
“It’s Prince Thomas. Theodore has asked him to perform for some of the nobles.”
“Aren’t we going to get in trouble for spying like this?”
She scoffed. “If Teddy and Prince Thomas didn’t want an audience, they wouldn’t be doing it in such a public place. Besides, we’ll duck behind some bushes.”
I laughed. With so much of the palace staff tripping over themselves to see the magic on display, any hope of hiding was naïve.
By the time the crowd settled, the sun bored down on our heads and shoulders. Rising on my tiptoes, I caught sight of Prince Thomas standing before a pond, the very pond I loved most on the palace lawn. A thrill shot through me.
What would advanced magic look like? What could so much raw power accomplish, funneled through practiced hands?
Prince Theodore cleared his throat, which caused Ella to squeak softly and grab my elbow.
“Thank you for coming,” the crown prince announced to the gathered nobility. “My father has been pestering Thom for weeks to demonstrate his latest achievements for the court. He hasfinallyobliged.”
“Any chance to preen and posture,” I murmured. Ella’s nails pressed sharply into my upper arm.
“Thom, you may begin when you’re ready.”
Rather than the grandiose speech I expected, Thom remained silent. Although it was hard to make out his exact movements—us servants were spying at a respectable distance from the courtiers—I could tell his arms were outstretched before him, his head bowed in earnest.
“He’s quite the dramatic, no?” I whispered, and Ella shushed meagain.
After a few seconds of silence, the water’s surface began quivering. Shifting, small waves tossed over the sides of the pond. Reeds shook from the magic’s force. A column of water rose from the middle, its sides falling in a loud thunder. The pillar blasted ten feet in the air and we craned our heads to the top. Our eyes squinted into the spring sun as it gravitated in a spectacle unlike anything I’d seen before.
My mouth fell open. The air was filled with gasps and hushed shrieks from the servants around me.
Thunder cracked, shattering our reverie. The pillar began to fall, sending a foot of water flooding the area around the pond. Servants and nobles alike screamed in fear at the violent force with which it crashed back to earth.
Ella let go of my arm to flee, but my feet refused to move. The cascading water splashed against my calves, and I relished how the wave flooded my slippers and cooled my body. I turned to Ella, delight written across my face.
Her own was transformed by fear.
“Ella?” I said, unsure.
“That wasterrifying,” she said.
A surge of energy raced through me. “It was glorious! To think that one person can have so much power…”
I stopped rambling when I noticed her trembling. “Oh, Ella.” I offered her a hand.
“I’m fine,” she said, clenching her dress with both fists.
