I stare at her, terrified.
“Well?” she demands.
“I–I came about a job. The woman on the train told me to come. Her sister is Carys.”
The woman sighs. “Carys’s sister will be the death of me. Can you actually work? You look like a breath of wind might blow you away.”
I blink at her, confused.
She clarifies: “Can you clean things? Wash dishes and boil laundry and scrub floors?”
“Yes,” I say, though I do not have even the slightest idea what that means.
“It pays room, board, and meals but nothing else. Does that suit you?”
I nod.
“Well then. It’s not like I have a lot of applicants, so you’re hired, I suppose.” She sighs. “I’m Heledd, which is what you will call me. Now, first things first.” She grabs a length of blue and white cloth that was draped over a chair, and hands it to me. “Put this on. You look like a wild creature in that thing you’re wearing.”
I obey, though stripping the dress I bought with my brothers’ money feels somehow like shedding the last of my skin.
I pull the blue dress awkwardly over my head. The fabric is rough. It scratches.
Heledd fastens the back of the dress. “I’ll go and find you some shoes—can’t have you trotting about the kitchens with bloody feet. Back in a tick.” She disappears through the doorway.
I sink onto the cushioned stool, tugging at the collar of the dress.
I breathe slowly, in and out, eyeing the fire with distaste.
I shut my eyes and reach out for the threads of Owen’s soul—I will be easier when I know exactly where he is.
But I feel nothing, because I am human now.
I do not have the power of my monstrous body.
Heledd is back the next moment, with horrible black shoes she makes me put on, no matter how much I tell her they hurt.
She says dismissively: “You’ll get used to them. Now follow me. You’re needed in the laundry this morning.”
She beckons me through the door.
I step into a narrow corridor in the Soul Eater’s palace.
Heledd leads me down the hall. “What did you say your name was?”
I have thought of this. I cannot call myself Seren—Owen cannot know I am here.
So I give her another word he taught me instead.
“My name is Bedwyn.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
OWEN
“YOU AGAIN,” SIGHS THE NURSE IN THE MEDICAL TENT. “I didn’t expect to see you back so soon.” She spreads healing salve on my shoulders, but even her gentle fingers exacerbate the pain of the lash marks. My whole back feels like it’s on fire—I had to be carried in here. “What did you do, anyway?”
“Snuck into the palace,” I mutter into the cushion of the healer’s bed. My throat is raw from screaming. “Got caught.” And I’m no closer to Awela than before.
She laughs a little, but not at all unkindly, finishing with the salve and unwinding a length of white bandage. She wraps it carefully over one shoulder, across my chest, then crosses it in an X and does the other shoulder. “Why were you sneaking around the palace?”
I focus on breathing. “Looking for my sister.” Awela’s absence pinches at my insides. I haven’t even tried to see my father.
“I hope they put you on kitchen duty tomorrow,” she grumbles. “It’s not like you can attend any of your training sessions now.” She ties off the bandage and helps me ease into a sitting position.
I duck my head to hide the tear stains streaking my face.
“Nothing to be ashamed of.” She smiles and taps my nose. “I have literally seen it all. Now. What do they have you doing tomorrow?”
“I’m on stable duty.”
She rolls her eyes. “Not very efficient of them, but good luck to you.” She presses a steaming mug into my hands, and I sip slowly. The tea is bitter, and I make a face.
“Willow bark,” she says, “for the pain. Get some rest, now. I’ll change your bandages in the morning. You’ll feel a little better, then.” She kisses my forehead like I’m her child, and helps me lie back down again.
I sleep fitfully in the healer’s tent, unused to the shadows and noises. The healer wakes me in the morning, changes my bandages, and apologetically helps me to my feet. She hands me a packet of more willow bark. “Chew some if the pain gets too bad. Come again this evening for fresh bandages. If it were up to me, you’d stay.”
I thank her and shuffle from the tent. Every step sends shooting pain up and down my back, but I make my stiff, slow way to the stables, where I am given a pitchfork and shovel and instructed to muck twelve stalls.
In my current condition, the work is agonizing. Blood and sweat seep through my bandages. Blisters begin to form on my hands. I chew strips of willow bark until the bitterness overwhelms me and I spit them out again.
I’ve only gotten through one stall when there’s a step behind me, a light voice calling my name.
I turn to find Bedwyn there, holding a tray of food. Strands of pale gold hair slip out from underneath her maid’s cap, curling slightly on her neck. Her eyes are green, I note, with flecks of sliver.
“Lunch,” she says, nodding at the tray. “For you,” she adds when I don’t answer.
I recollect myself, accept the tray, and sink gingerly to a seat in the main aisle of the stable. “Thank you.”
She doesn’t slip away like I’m expecting, just watches as I eat. I inhale the food: a cheese and chicken sandwich, a glass of icy milk. Maybe being away from the mess hall on stable duty with my back torn to shreds isn’t the worst thing after all.
I hand the tray back when I’m done, but she still doesn’t leave. “Do you need some help? You helped me with the potatoes the other night.”
“I’m supposed to do it myself.”
Her eyes flit to my blood-soaked shirt. “You won’t be able to finish.”
She is not exactly wrong. “Won’t they miss you in the kitchens?”
She shrugs and sets the tray down in the aisle again. “I don’t think so. I’m new here and known for being quite stupid.”
I smile. “You’re not stupid.”
“Oh, I am. The cook has told me I’m almost entirely useless. I have been banned from the kitchen and the laundry, and this morning I dropped a bucket of wash-water on a priceless rug. I only bring people things now. It’s all I’m trusted with, and even then only just.” She tilts her head and smiles at me. Her eyes dance as she gestures at the stalls. “So you’ll have to tell me exactly what to do.”
Bedwyn cleans the rest of the stalls herself—she doesn’t even let me get up. She’s surprisingly strong for a slip of a girl, and I find myself admiring her in a way that startles me.
She slides down beside me when she’s finished, grimy and caked in sweat, but she smells faintly sweet. Like wildflowers opening in the sun.
“Do I know you?” I ask her, without meaning to.
Her smile falters a little. She shakes her head. “Only from the potatoes.” Gentle fingers skim across the bandages on my shoulders. “I am sorry for your pain. They had no right.”
I start to shrug, and wince. “They can do whatever they want.”
“Did you find whoever it was you were looking for the other night?”
“No. And they caught me sneaking around, so I don’t know how I’ll even keep looking.”
Her face pinches. “Who are you looking for? Not … not the Soul Ea—I mean the king?”
I look at her strangely. “I’ve had one meeting with the king, and that was quite enough for me.”
She shudders, goes even paler than she already is. “I hate being so close to him. He frightens me.”
“I’m not exactly fond of him anymore either, but why does he frighten you?”
“He’s a monster,” she says simply. Her voice wavers on that word.
My insides clench up. “I thought the only monsters were the ones in the wood.”
&n
bsp; It’s the wrong thing to say. She jerks away from me, snatches the tray, hugs it to her chest. “The housekeeper will be missing me. I had better go now.” Her gaze darts everywhere but to me.
I’m not sure how to make her feel at ease again. “Thank you for helping me. I couldn’t have managed on my own.”
Her eyes flit to mine. “I can search the palace for you,” she offers. “I am only supposed to go where I am sent—” Her face tightens—something else she’s clearly been reprimanded for. “But everyone thinks me stupid enough to keep getting myself lost. Who are you looking for?”
“My little sister. She’s only two, and I think the king is keeping her shut up somewhere in the palace. I have to find her.”
Bedwyn nods. “I’ll look,” she promises. She stares at me for a moment more, then quirks a little smile at me and is gone.
For a moment I just sit there, staring after her, and then I drag my aching body up and go report to Carys that I’ve finished with the stables.
She informs me I’ll be back to my regular drills tomorrow, and then unexpectedly sends me straight up to the kitchen for dish-washing duty. I’m not expecting to be elbow-deep in soap suds when Bedwyn comes in, carrying a tray piled precariously with dirty dishes.
She’s not expecting to see me, either.
She drops the tray.
Chapter Forty
SEREN
BEING HUMAN IS THE STRANGEST THING THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED to me. My body grows hungry and weary. My hands grow chapped and rough with work. My feet and back and arms ache from standing and walking and carrying. My mind is dizzy with remembering the layout of the palace, the instructions of the cook and the housekeeper, the names of the other maids, the names of things.
And every time I see Owen, I ache. That first night, when he helped me peel potatoes. This afternoon in the stables, his bloody back making me want to strangle the Soul Eater with my own two hands. I know it is the Soul Eater’s fault. It has to be.
Now he is here in the dish room, on his knees, scrambling to pick up pieces of broken plates while I gape at him like a fish drowning in air on a riverbank. He’s changed his shirt, but red still seeps through.
I force my body to move, to act. I kneel with him, minding the jagged edges.
“Do you have a broom?” he asks when we’ve collected all the larger pieces.
I nod to the closet in the corner, and he goes to fetch it, bending and sweeping up the rest of the mess, though I know it pains him. He winces with every movement.
“I have to get back to the dishes or my commanding officer will kill me,” he says when he’s finished.
“I was supposed to wash all that,” I admit, staring helplessly at the dustbin.
He laughs. “Less work for both of us, then.”
I join him at the sink, plunging my arms into the scalding soapy water. We work companionably side by side for some moments, him washing, me rinsing and then stacking the dishes neatly in their racks to dry.
“Why are you here?” I blurt after a while.
He looks at me. “My father was arrested on charges of treason. Both him and my sister were taken here. I’m trying to work out a way to free them.”
Unease twists through me. I think of his sister. I am afraid I know why the Soul Eater wants her.
I want to tell Owen everything—confess who I am and why I am here. I want him to look into my eyes and see me for myself, and not revile me. I want him to dance with me again, like he did on our hill in the wood.
But I cannot tell him. I cannot ever tell him. Because the last time I saw him, his mother tore out her own heart and died on the ground like an animal. Because of my mother.
Because of me.
I will never forgive you for what you did to my mother. If I ever see you again, I will kill you.
So instead I tell him I will look for his sister as soon as I can slip away. I tell him to wait for me in the kitchen courtyard when the moon is high, and if I have news of her, I will meet him there.
He looks into my eyes. He smiles at me. Thanks me.
But only because he does not know who I am.
There are moments when I sense my power, lurking just beneath my skin, moments when I can reach the threads of my old life, remember the spark and pull of a human’s soul. I can sense Owen’s again. I have to concentrate, stand very still and reach in a way I did not have to when I was wholly my mother’s monster. But I can feel it. I do not know if that means my human skin is already fraying around the edges, or if I have simply gotten used to this form.
Whatever it is, it will help me find Awela. When I slip from the kitchen with a tray of food meant to be brought up to a nobleman’s sick wife, I stop in an out-of-the-way corridor, press my shoulders up against the wall, and reach for her. At first I do not feel anything, but I reach deeper, further. And there—the glimmer of her soul. She is here, somewhere. Owen was right.
Uneasiness worms through me. I grip the tray tighter, and take the servants’ stair to the next floor. The feel of Awela’s soul is still faint, but it seems a little stronger. I climb to the next floor, then the next. The pull of her soul grows bright and strong.
I am on the top level of the palace, a many-paned window at the end of the corridor looking west over the plains far, far below. There are no trees up here, like there are on every other floor; the walls are painted with birds and bright flowers. Violets spill out of tall clay pots. There is only one door, and the tug of Awela’s soul pulses strongly behind it.
I am still carrying the dinner tray, and so I step up to the door and knock. A pale, white-haired old woman opens it. Beyond her a dark-haired child plays with toys scattered on the rug, her soul burning bright.
The old woman moves to block my view of Awela. “I didn’t send for food,” she says coldly. “And you’re not the usual maid. What are you doing up here?”
“I took the wrong stair.” I duck my head. “Forgive me.”
She frowns and shuts the door in my face.
I go and deliver the food to the nobleman’s wife, who shouts at me because I took so long and her dinner’s gone cold. Then it is back down to the kitchen, where I expect Owen to still be washing dishes, but he is not—one of the regular girls is at the sink.
The remainder of the day passes slowly. Heledd gives me real tasks again, because I have not done anything too disastrous today, and there is no one else to do them. So I scrub floors and deliver food and polish silver with a stinking paste that lingers even when I have washed my hands four times.
At last I am given my own dinner, and when I am finished, I step into the courtyard to dump the potato peels in the slop bin to be brought to the pigs in the morning. Owen is there, leaning against the wall. I yelp when I see him, and drop the bucket of peels.
He laughs as he bends down to help me pick them up. “I’m not trying to scare you, you know.”
My face warms as I scoop peels back into my bucket. “The moon is not even out yet.”
The sun hangs low on the horizon, the last orange rays slanting through the courtyard. Owen shrugs. “If I had crawled into my bunk I would have fallen asleep and not come at all. Did you find her?”
I dump the rest of the peels into the slop bin. “How do you even know I had a chance to look?”
“Just a feeling.”
The setting sun swathes him in orange light. He is so beautiful it makes me ache. “She is shut in a room on the top floor. There is a woman with her.”
“Can you bring me there?”
“I can, but the woman will not like it. She won’t let us in—she will probably call the guards and—” My eyes flick to his shoulders. He’s wearing another clean shirt, and there is no red seeping through anymore.
Owen waves his hand like he is batting a fly. “We’ll find some way around her. Can we go now?”
“Now?”
“Might not have another chance.”
He is right. The woman might be suspicious of me; if she tells the Soul E
ater, he might move Awela somewhere else—or worse. Fear pulses sharp beneath my breastbone. “Come with me.”
I lead him through the kitchen, then up the servants’ staircase to the main floor of the palace. We duck behind a wall to avoid another maid, then skitter up a staircase.
Two staircases later, and we have to dart into a random room when we hear footsteps coming toward us down the hall. The footsteps approach the room, and we exchange frantic glances and dive under the couch on the back wall.
We stare at each other in the musty semi-darkness. I take quick, shallow breaths. I am suffocating, too far from the earth and the sky. I shake. I swallow a scream. Owen takes my hand, his fingers warm overtop of mine. Our mingled heartbeats pound together in the soft underside of my wrist.
The nobleman sinks into a chair opposite the couch, a book in one hand, a glass of wine in the other. He drinks and reads, and does both things maddeningly slow. I grow stiff and sore as we wait for him to leave. Owen never lets go of my hand. His presence calms me, keeps me tethered to my human form.
Beyond the palace the last of the sunlight fades. Shadows swallow the room piece by piece. At last, the nobleman lays down his book and goes back out into the hall.
We wait one heartbeat, two, three. Then Owen squeezes my hand, and we crawl out from under the couch. He pulls me to my feet. We wait by the door another excruciating moment, but we do not hear anything outside of it. We leave the room behind us and barrel on down the hall and up the last few floors.
Owen is laughing again, a wheezy, breathless noise. But it is choked off when he sees the violets, spilling from their pots. Anger tightens his face. “He would have these cursed flowers up here.”
My pulse throbs in my throat. I have no answer for him. “What now?” I say quietly.
He takes a breath, tears his eyes away from the violets. “We have to get the woman to leave. Can you tell her she’s wanted downstairs? Or that you were sent to relieve her?”
I nod. “But there is nowhere for you to hide.”
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