27 Dove
DOVE
Leave?” I heard myself say faintly.
Maerryl moved as if to come toward me, but stopped as I backed away farther.
Anguish tearing across her face, she said, “Dove, I know this doesn’t make any kind of sense.
And I promise to explain everything. But right now, we need to get out of this manor and into the forest until these guys leave.
They want something, I’m not sure what. So we’re getting you out of here.
Unless you know what it is? Some family treasure you have hidden here?
They might leave if we can give it to them. ”
I couldn’t feel my fingers, my toes. I said through numb lips, “No, nothing like that. I don’t know. I don’t know what it could be.”
Maerryl’s face fell, but then she nodded, jumping into action. Darting into the bedroom, she grabbed a couple knit sweaters and boots for me and threw them on the sofa before running to my armoire. “Put those on, quickly. I’ll find us coats. It’s cold outside. But fast, please.”
I drifted to the sofa and began to pull the sweaters over my nightgown and robe. Mind slowly starting to process everything that Mae had said. Had confessed to. I rewound everything, churning it over and over. Through my hurt, confusion, anger, one thing stuck out.
“You said you didn’t have a choice,” I murmured as I tugged on my boots.
Mae was cursing at a window, trying to undo the too-stiff lock that kept it secure.
A lock I’d seen her install myself days prior.
She half turned at my words, but didn’t say anything.
“You were doing this for Balfie, weren’t you? ”
A beat of silence, then, “Yes.”
I took a step toward her. “Would you have told me? If I hadn’t found out like this.” I searched her face, willing the words I needed to hear. She looked miserably back at me.
“I think so. I wanted to. But I guess we can’t know now,” she said.
With a wrench, she lifted the window and peered out, then gestured to me. “We have to go. C’mon, Dove.”
A fist pounded on the door once, then again, making us both jump.
“Last chance, ladies,” a deep voice said.
Mae waved me over frantically. I scurried to her side and slipped into the coat she held out for me. One foot on the window seat, about to pull myself up and out the open window, before a terrified shriek sounded from the hall.
I froze.
Muffled voices through the door, heated and loud. Another gasping shriek came, and we heard, “Stop, you’re hurting me!”
Mae’s shocked eyes found mine. “Petra,” I whispered. “They’ve got Petra.”
I turned and shot to the door, with Mae’s “Dove, wait!” behind me, but before she could reach me, I slammed a palm to the wood and released the charm.
It unsealed, and the knob turned.
I backed, stumbling, into Mae’s arms as a hulking green orc stepped inside, forcing us back toward the fireplace.
“Where is she?! You better not have hurt her!” I yelled, trying to inject ferocity into my quavering voice. The orc just crossed his arms, ignoring me. And following him through the door, looking the picture of health…
Petra.
“Good evening, Dovey.” Her lips curved as she bobbed a curtsy in my direction.
Mae’s sharp intake of breath behind me shook my mind out of its stupor. I stepped closer back into her, and she tightened her grip on my upper arm, grounding me.
“… Petra? Are you alright?” I said.
“Marvelous.” Shoulders tense, she shifted her weight from foot to foot even as she breezily flicked her long hair over a shoulder and said, “I just need one more thing, and my night will be perfect.”
A manic laugh burbled out of my mouth. “Okay, what the fuck is happening?”
Petra’s eyebrows raised, and her smile deepened. “Oh dear. I know you’re naive and ignorant, but I didn’t realize you’re dumb too. Poor thing.”
A gasp choked in my throat, and she just tutted pityingly.
“Why—why are you working with them?” I gestured toward the orc, who now leaned against the closed door as Petra moved to cover our window exit. “Are they bribing you?”
The young woman’s peal of laughter rang around the room, her wheat-blond head tipped back.
I felt Mae’s hand move slowly against my back, dropping a small weight that felt like a dagger into my coat pocket.
Looking at the orc’s massive bulk and the assortment of weapons strapped to his body, I didn’t think we could fight our way out of this. But I felt better having a blade.
“Oh, no, no, no. Silly, stupid Dovey,” Petra said, my stomach twisting at her words. “I was sent on this mission. Assigned. I have been—and always will be—one of the Takers Guild.
“The months I’ve spent wasting away here though—fuck!
Do you know how boring you are to be around all the time?
Day in, day out. Nothing but ‘Oh what should I wear today? Ooo, can you do my hair the way I like it? Petra, want to go for a walk? Petra, shall we be bad and skip dinner with Mummy and Daddy tonight?’ The pure DRUDGERY of it all, UGHH! ”
If she had reached over and clawed me across the face, it wouldn’t have hurt half as much.
Tears welling, my nose burned as I tried to force them down. I felt Mae’s angry breath on my neck. Despite myself, a couple plops of wetness streaked down my cheeks, and I brushed them away roughly.
“We were friends,” I heard myself say. “How could you—why would you do this??”
Something pained flashed across Petra’s expression for a split second before she smothered it.
Scathingly, she said, “I’m doing this because I have to.
It’s what I was hired for. You don’t deserve everything you have.
I know it. She knows it.” She jutted her chin at Mae, eyes hardening.
“Everyone sees it except for you nobles. Entitled, pompous asses. People waiting on you hand and foot, not a care in the world except your own ridiculous melodramas.”
She scoffed, taking a quick step closer to us. “Now I can finally get out of this nightmare of an assignment.”
The coldness in Petra’s eyes chilled me. I couldn’t see a hint of the sweet, kind friend I’d grown to care for at all. As if she’d never existed, and this cruel wolf of a woman had taken her place. But Mae snorted.
“This is ridiculous,” she said. “I see what’s happening here.
Even I was only expected to be here a handful of weeks, and I’m very new to the guild, low-ranking.
It was just a test. That I failed. Zephyra wouldn’t have sent you on this mission for months on end to play dutiful lady’s maid to an unconnected noble family, hours away from the city, if you hadn’t fucked up or pissed her off or something. ”
Stiv shifted awkwardly on his feet, betraying some truth to her words. Petra scowled. She said, “I am loyal to the guild, and I will prove my worth to her again.”
“Does she even know you’re doing this tonight? Or are you—oh.” Maerryl’s face cleared, and then she whistled. “Oh, you went rogue, didn’t you? A big swing to try and win back her favor. I’m right, aren’t I?”
Petra reddened, either in fury or frustration or some combination, I couldn’t tell. But she looked about to combust, grip tight on her knife. Stiv, who seemed like he had conveniently been underinformed about tonight’s activities, was now shaking his head, meaty hands on his hips.
“Is that true?” he asked Petra. “Dammit, we gotta get out of here. Now. She is not going to be happy.”
Sidestepping carefully in front of me, Mae went on, “And I bet you wanted to hurt Dove too. Isn’t that right?
Get back at her for all those months you felt stuck here?
Even though it was probably your own damn fault, for whatever you did to piss Z off.
But this seems personal. Taking everything she has—her family’s wealth, her own artwork, coming here to threaten her and stupidly flaunt your own betrayal.
You’re out of control. And Z probably knew it. ”
My breath caught at her words. My—she took my artwork too? From my studio?
I met Petra’s gaze, stricken, and saw that flash of emotion again.
“How could you?” I said.
Petra shrieked, a wild, animalistic sound, and we all startled.
But I didn’t break our eye contact. She looked back, flushed and furious, and said, “You had no one. Your friends abandoned you when your family went bankrupt. Your parents are a mess. They don’t even seem to care about you.
All your old servants gone, except that cook. ”
She swallowed, staring fiercely at me. “I did everything for you. I was your maid, your confidante, your closest friend. I soothed your worries and kept your spirits up. Fed, clothed, cleaned you. We were inseparable for months. I thought—I thought I’d finally found someplace where I could start over. I thought you cared about me.”
“I did care about you. I do. You’re my dearest friend, Petra,” I said earnestly.
Petra just shook her head, as if she couldn’t let herself believe me. Pointing her knife at Mae, she growled, “And then suddenly she shows up one day. And it’s like I didn’t exist. Maerryl this, and Maerryl that. Before I know it, you’re spending all your time with her.”
“Well, I am her bodyguard,” Mae said wryly.
“SHUT UP,” Petra shrieked again. “With the constant fucking annoying quips and the holier-than-thou air, GODS. I don’t know how you stand her, Dove. But ever since she arrived you’ve been obsessed.”
“Obsessed seems a bit much. We despised each other for quite a bit there at first,” Mae said.
I laid a hand on her arm, not liking the way Petra shook slightly, the white-knuckled grip on her knife’s handle.
“So,” I said, trying to rein things in. “You felt like I’d—what, dropped you for Mae? You… missed me. And now you’re lashing out by stealing the things my family and I love?”
Petra blinked, then swiped through the air with her blade, making me jump again.
“No, Dove. No. I just remembered what my priorities were.” She turned, slashing my large canvas on the wall—a blue one that Maerryl loved—and my heart ached.
“That’s all. I was sent here to do a job.
” Another quick slash of her knife, tearing through it. Destroying it.
“Petra, please! Stop!” I hurried over to my jewelry box, which held the few small baubles I’d bought in recent months. My hair clasps, a necklace, some earrings. “Take these, and let’s end this. Here, they’re—” I opened the wooden box to find nothing. It was empty.
I sighed and turned back to her slowly. “You already collected them, I see.”
Petra raised her chin, not even a flicker of guilt in her blue eyes. She seemed foreign to me, as if we hadn’t spent the past months together, talking, laughing, crying, gossiping. Doing each other’s hair and walking the grounds. Building a friendship—well, what I thought was a true friendship.
Every day. Every day she looked back at me, just plotting for the time she could pull my world out from under me.
Pain twisted in my chest, pressing against my lungs.
Dammit, Petra. Could I have prevented it?
Was I really as thoughtless as she described, so wrapped up in Maerryl that I’d abandoned her, pushed her to act?
Codswallop.
“Petra,” I said, steadying my voice. “You need to leave now. You’ve taken everything you can. Go.”
Her eyes flashed dangerously. “I’ll leave when I say it’s time. You are not in control of me, Dovey.”
“I never wanted to be! This is all in your head!”
“It is NOT!” She darted forward, putting me between her and Mae, and waved her knife heart-stoppingly close to my face. Mae came nearer but halted as Petra pressed the tip to the side of my neck. I froze.
We all stared at each other, breathing heavily.
Stiv, across the room, looking like he wanted nothing to do with this scene, was shaking his head again and glancing at the exit.
I strained to see Mae, her furious, stricken face nearly a match to Petra’s.
The cold metal kissed my neck, sharp and terrifying.
I didn’t know what to do, what to say that could reverse what was happening.
Suddenly, a large bird flew through the open window, flapping hideously until it perched on the top of my vanity mirror. I screamed. Petra startled. Metal bit into my skin, making me screech in pain.