Chapter 6 #3
“This way.” He leads me down the corridor and slows our pace when he hears voices.
I follow at arm’s reach distance. He reroutes us up several flights of stairs, down a long hall, and through a collection of small, empty rooms with tidy beds.
Servant quarters, I’d guess, with everyone working now.
We descend on the far end of the hall, down the palace’s sunset side.
When we reach the ground floor, we enter a large room with a raised dais and stop.
“You didn’t tell me your name,” he says.
“And I won’t.”
His eyes narrow. He strokes his cheek before inhaling sharply through his nostrils. “Well, we should hurry, stranger.”
A throng of people enters the throne room, and he urges me to follow him out into the shaded corner of the corridor.
He reaches across the distance I’m determined to keep between us as he takes my gloved hand and wraps it around the handle on his bucket.
I stiffen at his touch—even through my gloves it’s startling.
“Look occupied.”
I drag the rag down the walls, pretending to wash it, dunking it back in the bucket once and wringing it out, reminding myself that this will work.
I will get out of this place. My nerves are frayed as the crowd’s voices grow louder.
One look at me directly, one question face-to-face, and I am ruined.
Someone in the palace knows the girl being dragged to the cells got away.
And if they don’t know yet, they will know soon.
To my relief, the crowd passes, their voices growing quieter in the distance.
We step out of the shaded corner, and I can breathe again.
“What kind of trouble are you in?”
“Who said I was in trouble?”
He laughs, creases wrinkling around his eyes.
I create more distance between us. But I can’t help but look at him. And he doesn’t seem to mind.
“I can’t say. But the prince knows what I’m up to, and he’s fine with it.”
That commandeers his attention, his brow quirked. “The prince?”
“Yes.”
“He knows you?”
Of me. “Yes.”
He knows I smuggle, Lucent said. My tongue pokes my cheek. And yet he never turned me in…
The servant’s chin rises in challenge.
“What about you?” I ask. “You’re the happiest floor scrubber I’ve ever met. And I know plenty who scrub floors.”
“Things are very monotonous here. Your audacity is entertaining.” A smile plays at the corner of his lips.
The natural curve of them is interesting.
Almost satisfying to look at. They are bow-shaped, round, full, and blushed.
The bottom lip is perfectly symmetrical with the top one, with no metal between them.
The back of my neck heats suddenly, and he says something I miss.
“What was that?”
“I asked what brought you to Skyhaven today.”
“The less you know the better.”
“Right.” His mouth purses. He doesn’t wince in pain, and I have to stop myself from staring.
“This way.” He leads me past the throne room, where windows of smoked glass line the chamber, darkening the view of the world outside.
Dark floors stretch out beneath granite pillars and a few decaying stone statues around the room.
An ornamented chair sits on a raised dais shrouded in jagged shards of crystals.
Above the seat is another portrait of the Benevolent framed in intricately carved wood.
We hurry across the room to a narrow hall that dead-ends into a servant dining area, where a maid sits alone, finishing a cup of tea.
We stick to the shadows and out of earshot, waiting for her to finish.
Every few moments, he gazes around the corner at the woman drinking.
“What kind of work pays a Saltblood so well?” he whispers.
“Trade.”
“Mmm. If you’ve met the prince, you’ve met the Benevolent as well, then?”
“I never said I met the prince,” I say quietly. “I’ve met the prince’s cousin, Lucent.” It feels wrong saying his name, knowing what’s happened to him.
When the dining area is empty, we pad through it into the kitchens, which are thankfully empty. The servants must be between shifts.
“Just through there”—he points across the kitchen to a pair of double doors—“is the servants’ delivery entrance.
” He opens his hand. I gather all the gold I have, trying to slow the thud of my heart.
Everything I’ve saved. All I’ve worked for.
Serafina’s medicine. The ship. All my plans.
Gone. I glare at the double wooden doors, sunlight shining between its seams. All to save my life. And then there’s Lucent.
“I didn’t do what they think I did. I-I’m sorry about what happened to Lucent.”
He steps in front of me, cutting off my path to the exit. “What’s happened to him?” His mirth is gone.
My gut lurches. “Thank you for helping.” I offer him the gold. I shouldn’t have said anything.
“No. You will answer.” He glares, and it unsettles me with familiarity.
He won’t take the gold, so I set it on a table before starting toward the doors, but he sidesteps, blocking my way.
A silver signet ring I hadn’t noticed before, too distracted by the storm in his eyes, shines on his fourth left finger. A ring only the royal family wears.
His resemblance is uncannily familiar to the Benevolent…
“I should have given you my name. I’m Caelus Altair.”
The prince.