Chapter 25
Belle
I glared at the candlestick on my writing table. Move.
It stood in quiet defiance of my wishes. I tried again and again to no effect. Eventually, I cursed and slumped back in my chair—or tried to. The corseted dress had other plans.
I sighed. “This is useless.”
“You’re not focusing,” Locke mused from the settee. His head was tilted back, ankle resting on his knee, and as far as I could tell, he was contentedly inspecting the leering demons carved at the corners of the room.
“I’ve done nothing but focus for the past hour,” I muttered as I massaged my temples. I had a throbbing headache, the same as yesterday and the day before.
“The unseen touch is about mind over matter,” he lectured, not even bothering to look my way. “So far, matter is winning. You need to sharpen your will into iron and force your subject to do as you command. The only way to do that is practice.”
I’d been at it for the better part of a week, and so far, the only thing I’d accomplished was irritating my teacher.
He hounded me to focus and void my mind, belittling me when I failed.
I’d tried using my magic to manipulate candlesticks, chairs, my hairbrush, even The Book of Courtly Manners, but to no avail.
The only glimmer of hope had been yesterday, when I’d hurled a string of curses at a vase, and it plunged off the table and shattered.
I’d felt a little guilty about that, so I’d resolved to direct all future invectives at my so-called teacher.
Apparently done staring at the ceiling, the magister picked up The Book of Courtly Manners and began idly flipping through it. “Back to work. We still have half an hour left before I can be done with this charade.”
I’d been so hopeful at first. I had magic.
I’d imagined animated swords coming to my defense, or arrows flying true, straight through the king’s heart.
At this point, the only way that was going to happen was if I drew the bowstring myself, and that was unlikely, seeing as my bow was locked away somewhere in this castle, if it hadn’t been burned with all my other possessions.
Each session ended the same way: Locke leaving with a dismissive comment, me staring at an unmoving candlestick, wondering if the wardrobe had been a fluke.
“Why are you training me, anyway?” I asked, feeling utterly wretched. “Clearly, you don’t care whether I fail.”
Locke scoffed and flipped the page. “This barely counts as training. More of an ongoing assessment—and the assessment, if you would care to know, is grim.”
I twisted around in my seat. “But why? What do you get out of this? What does the king want from me?”
“Other than a continuous headache and relentless tedium?” He snapped the book shut and leaned forward. “You are an enemy. The king wants to know what you’re capable of, which, in contrast to initial impressions, seems to be nothing.”
“I slammed a wardrobe into him. That’s more than nothing.”
The high magister raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps I should summon him back, and he can threaten to rip your heart out. He and I would both enjoy that, I’m sure.”
I rose and stalked to the open window. “That would be better than this.”
I might be terrified out of my mind, but at least I would feel something—fury, desire, the flow of my magic seconds before I hurled the candlestick at him.
I loathed that my heart quickened at the thought of him barging through the door.
His wicked smile, the infuriating way my body responded each time he came close.
Why did he affect me this way?
“Your hate for the king is a crutch,” Locke said. “If you have any hope of mastering your magic, you will have to do it without the promise of imminent death.”
I leaned back against the windowsill and crossed my arms. “Well, sitting here and staring at candlesticks is clearly not working, so perhaps you can come up with something else. You are supposed to be teaching me something.”
Locke stared at me with dead eyes, then with a sigh, shoved himself up out of the chair. “Fine. Follow me.”
My heart leapt as he opened the door. I hadn’t been out of my gilded prison since I’d been hauled before the king. At this point, he could take me to gather night soil for the gardens, and I’d be overwhelmed with joy.
I followed on his heels, my ever-present guards trailing behind. The gloom hanging over the castle felt more chaotic than ever, as if the very stones themselves were clinging to unreleased fury. It was a haunting vibration, thrumming through everything around me.
Was it real? Or was I just projecting my pent-up frustration?
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see,” Locke said.
I sighed through my teeth in annoyance. Would it have hurt him to give me an answer? Locke could have picked any two other words and spent the same amount of energy. How about ‘the stables,’ or ‘the dungeon,’ or ‘to die’?
We wound through the corridors, then ducked into a broad hall with low ceilings. The sounds of voices rose, along with the clanking of pots and pans. The air grew laden with the pungent aromas of smoke and roasting meat, fresh bread and dried herbs. My mouth watered.
Locke gestured to a heavy wooden door, and I pushed through into the heart of the castle’s kitchens.
The head cook was bellowing orders this way and that, as scullions dashed here and there, one with an armful of tubers, another with a pair of plucked geese.
High on the wall, a curly-haired turnspit dog ran in his caged wheel as the contraption slowly turned the meat roasting over the hearth.
Scullery maids, their faces flushed with the heat of the cook fires, bent over the long prep tables in the center of the room, brushing fresh buns with a butter glaze.
Voices chattered and shouted, pans clanged, and the fires crackled.
My heart yearned for it all. I would’ve been glad to spend the rest of my days scrubbing pots in the stifling, smoky heat of the place, rather than spend another week locked in my extravagant rooms with nothing to do but fail.
The joyful cacophony ceased the moment Locke stepped into the room behind me. Two dozen faces looked up in dread, then the staff dropped to their knees as one.
“My lord,” the head cook stammered. “How may we serve you?”
The turnspit dog slowed and started yapping viciously.
“Your bisque is burning,” Locke said as he shut the door. “Tend to it and ignore that we’re here, and do not be afraid of what you may see and hear.”
“Yes, my lord.” The cook rose and gestured at the kitchen staff. “Back to work.”
They flew into motion, but the joyful chatter from earlier was gone, replaced by soft muttering and wary glances in our direction. The fear and anxiety in the room were palpable.
“Why are we here?” I whispered to Locke.
He gestured at a mop and bucket. “Clean the floors.”
I stared, then shrugged and took a hesitant step forward.
“With your magic, you dolt,” he grated.
“Right,” I muttered, biting the inside of my cheek. Did he have to be such an ass?
Locke went to lean against a counter, then pulled back as his gaze dropped to the mess of oil and grime. He crossed his arms. “I thought that given your previous station in life, this might be a task more familiar. Focus your will on the mop. Make it clean.”
I tried to focus, but there were too many eyes on my back. I couldn’t quiet the barking dog or the low murmurs of conversation from my mind. Were they whispering about me? I glanced over my shoulder. “Everyone is watching us.”
“They have their orders not to,” Locke said, forcefully enough to make the peeping scullery maids jump and quickly turn back to their work. “Now, clean the floor.”
Was he enjoying this? There was certainly a light in his eyes I hadn’t seen for days.
It didn’t matter. Let him revel in my misery. I turned my attention back to the mop and tried to reach for it with a force I knew I possessed but didn’t know how to find.
The mop rested there obstinately in defiance of my efforts.
“Focus,” Locke chided.
Sweat pooled on my skin. The yapping dog and muttering voices faded, along with the clanking pans, as my attention bored into the mop. I could almost feel it before me, like the presence of a candle flickering just beyond reach.
That’s new. I squeezed my eyes shut, and instead of imposing my will, I concentrated that sensation.
It was more than just the mop. With my eyes closed, an awareness of all the things around me seeped into my mind—the pots on their hooks, jars of spices on the shelf, a spoon beside a bowl.
There was a palpable presence to each of them, something I could almost touch, if I only knew how to grasp it.
Sweep, I thought at the mop, yet it didn’t budge.
“You’re embarrassing us both,” Locke muttered.
My neck burned with shame and anger, and then I felt it: the cold flow of my magic. Yet it wasn’t just my magic. There was an energy pulsing around us, something angry and violent, shaking through the kitchens, as if it lived in each of the objects here.
I pushed my power toward the mop, straining to connect with its faint presence. “Come on,” I pleaded. “Just clean the damn floor!”
Like a bowstring snapping, something in my chest leapt out and latched onto the mop. My skin pebbled with cold as my strength flowed out.
The mop smacked against the wall, then leapt forward. It plunged into a bucket of water and then began aggressively scrubbing at the greasy stone floor.
“I’m doing it!” I breathed.
Or, more accurately, the mop was doing it. Other than feeding it my magic, I wasn’t doing a thing. The mop whipped left and right, splattering water over Locke’s boots.
He jumped back. “Watch it! Control that thing.”
Excited and frightened voices rose behind me.
The mop dunked itself in the bucket again, knocking it over in its obvious enthusiasm, before it continued its task with frightful gusto.
“I don’t think I’m in control…it’s got a mind of its own!”
“Nonsense. You’re its master. Take control.”
I hurried after the mop, trying to control it with my thoughts or power. It was like grasping at air.
One of the scullery maids screamed as the mop shot past her, and I ran after, mumbling apologies. One of the cooks tripped over its handle and landed sprawled on the ground. The staff scattered away from the possessed thing, scullions shouting in surprise as the turnspit dog yowled.
“I didn’t give you permission to leave,” Locke bellowed as a baker bolted through the door. “I said to ignore us!”
Everyone cowered, frozen in place by the force of his words—except the mop. It crashed off the corner of a table, then vigorously started scrubbing a pile of flour that someone had spilled, creating a frothy white streak across the dark stone. I tried to grab it, but it deftly dodged my hands.
“You’re useless,” Locke snapped as he strode up behind me.
The mop flipped over and slapped him across the face with its sodden strands.
He staggered backward into the table, his furious expression dripping with greasy wet flour. “Godsdamnit, Belle!”
I grasped for the thread of power linking me to the mop, but it slipped through my fingers. There was too much chaos in my mind, a chorus of anger and frustration that seemed to be reverberating off the walls of the room, jumbling my sense of the objects around me.
“Someone help me catch it,” I pleaded, my voice edged with panic and desperation.
My skin went icy cold as a new connection formed. The cage door on the turnspit wheel clanged open.
The little curly-haired dog leapt down and charged the mop, snapping and barking.
He seized it by the strings with his sharp little teeth and shook his head, growling.
The mop shook violently, whipping back and forth, and the dog tumbled free.
He scrambled to his feet, and the mop gave him a sharp swat as he scampered away and dove beneath the legs of the butcher’s block.
I lunged to grab it, but it zipped past and glided to the far side of the room.
Locke’s furious expression cut to me. “Do something.”
I reached out with my mind, grasping blindly with my magic. “Help me!”
Frost spread through my chest and fingers, and a dozen connections ignited all at once as the furious energy lurking in the kitchen erupted through me.
The kitchen came alive, and the world around me dissolved into chaos.