Chapter 12
I wake to daylight streaming in. There are large windows to my left, with glass doors that lead to a small balcony. It takes a moment to reorient myself. I’m in Arastos, in the room Alaris brought me to last night.
That was the deepest sleep I’ve had in weeks, and I was spared from the midnight terror of waking up choking on phantom blood.
The back of my neck prickles. Someone else is here.
I thrust my hand under the pillow and grab the knife, swinging it toward the figure. My pointer finger catches on the edge as I scramble to flip it open.
Alaris stands near the table with a tray balanced in one hand and a jug in the other. The chair is still wedged under the door handle, exactly where I left it.
“Good afternoon.” His eyes fall on the knife. “I apologize for not knocking, but I can’t be seen in the halls. I’m supposed to be in a carriage traveling through Delvos right now.”
He sets his offerings on the table while I scramble to fold the knife and hide my sliced finger in my skirts.
“I wanted to let you sleep, but I thought we should speak before the sun starts to go down.”
“It’s that late?”
“As I said, first travel with the voidstone can be taxing. Especially so far.”
He pours water from the jug into a glass and walks over to me with it.
I scramble up and untwist my dress, glad I didn’t even think about stripping down to my nightgown. I can only assume my unwashed face is puffy.
Meanwhile, Alaris looks fresh, his dark hair only unruly enough to frame his perfect face. His shirt is a deep plum, open at the throat, sleeves pushed to his elbows. His earring catches the light as he hands me the glass.
I accept the water and greedily gulp it. It’s flavored with hints of mint and orange.
“There was quite a riot at Lord Norville’s manor this morning. There is a search for a governess who attacked the lord and fled during the night.” His sharp eyes stay on me as I wipe my mouth. “What is your name?”
“Ly…” I clamp my lips shut.
“Ly?”
“…ra. Lyra,” I finish, landing on the feminine name for a musical instrument. Clearly I am drowsy; I almost gave him my real name.
“That’s interesting, because Norville’s governess is named Portia.” His dark eyes glitter. “Or so I hear.”
I flush at having been caught using a fake name. “Then I’ll be glad not to share a name with her. Lyra is my name.”
He tilts his head. “I think I’ll call you Ly, considering how we met. Under the cover of a lie.”
I scoff. “You’d call me a liar for hiding my identity on Somnus?”
“You employed a bit more trickery than most,” he says with an incredulous look. He gestures at the tray. “You should eat.”
His eyes land on the chair holding the door. He frees it, drags it to the table, and sits.
My appetite leading the way, I approach the table too.
I stop as soon as I see what’s on it. A small vase of dead flowers adds macabre ambiance to a plate of spoiled food.
A roll with spots of mold sits next to cheese so covered in black it looks like it was thrown in the grate of a fireplace.
A smaller plate holds slices of rotted persimmon, its skin a wrinkled gray and its soft flesh turned inky purple.
My empty stomach twists. “I’m not sure what this is, but I’ll pass.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Travel through the gates takes a toll. You should eat to rebuild your strength.”
I glare at him, not taking another step toward the ruined food. “Is this your way of showing me my place?”
“Your place?”
I ball my hands in my rumpled skirts. “You thought I was a lady. Now you know I’m a servant.”
“And?”
I raise my chin higher. “Even in Lord Norville’s house, the staff ate fresh food.”
He looks down at the plate and chuckles.
He takes his thumb and runs it over the bread, lifting away a spot of mold. He licks it, his tongue curving around his thumb.
“It’s just black salt. And flour. The food here doesn’t pull enough minerals from the soil. So we add a lot of this.”
I examine the thin slices of cheese and bread again, reinterpreting the coating on both. “Ah.”
“And this”—he picks up a slice of the fruit, the outside gray and wrinkled instead of the orange I’m used to, and the center a purple so deep and shiny it looks like it will fall apart before it makes it to his mouth—“is murkfruit. It’s a bit messy, but this color means it’s perfectly ripe.”
His deep voice rumbles over the sentence, making it sound like the words are indecent. He takes a bite. He wipes some of the juice off the corner of his mouth with his thumb. My eyes stick to his lips.
I remember how those lips felt on mine…how his body caged mine as he held me against the wall, how hard the muscles of his torso were…
I swallow. I really need to stop watching him eat.
He waves the plate in front of me. “Still don’t trust it? I can lick every piece, if you’d like…”
“No!” I snatch the plate and place it in front of me. I try hard to ignore how he smiles at me, clearly satisfied with himself. My hands are shaking with hunger. I look around for utensils, or a napkin to put over my lap.
Why am I trying to impress this man with the manners of a princess? I’m starving. And I don’t care what he thinks of me.
So I do as he did and use my fingers. I put bread and cheese in my mouth together, trying not to moan.
The taste of the salt adds the perfect tang to the nutty cheese, and the bread is crisp on the outside and chewy at the center.
I wonder why I’ve never had cheese with salt before.
I down half the plate before I get to the murkfruit.
It’s so soft it’s practically already jam, but sweet and tart like no fruit I’ve ever tasted. I shove two more pieces in my mouth.
He chuckles and moves the glass closer. “Easy now. Don’t choke.”
I chug the water to clear my throat, not even stopping when it dribbles down my chin. I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, staring up at him in challenge. I would think he’d be disgusted by my ravenous display, but his eyes are alight.
How strange.
I break the contact and study my lap. My hands are still shaking, my body not yet caught up with the food I just consumed. But my stomach is full enough to pause before eating the last piece of cheese and crust of bread.
“Better?” he asks, as I sit back in my chair, resting my hands on my middle. He cocks his head. “Hmm.”
I follow his eyes to the cut on my pointer finger. I hide it in my palm, ignoring the way bits of salt dig in and sting.
He comes around to my side of the table and puts out his hand. “May I see?”
“What for?” I hesitate, then place it in his. “It’s just a scrape.”
It’s worse than that, now that I see it, but my lobellum will make short work of it.
Alaris reaches over to the vase of shriveled gray blossoms clinging to dried black twigs. He waves his fingers over them and they transform, petals enlivening and unfurling into deep purple blooms, shriveled black stems untwisting as leaves peel free.
“Night-blooming lavender,” he says before I can ask. “I picked these this morning. Good for soothing the mind and flesh. Makes healing easier.”
He plucks off a few of the vibrant flowers and presses them to my cut.
I open my mouth to tell him I don’t need it, but as soon as my hand is engulfed in his, I quiet.
A soft and pleasant buzz radiates from his touch, the lavender a cool point on the tip of my finger.
Whether it’s the lavender or him, I can’t be sure.
It washes over my head, quieting all thought and stealing whatever I was going to say next from my lips.
I don’t want to move. I just want to sit here and feel this calm.
All too soon, he lets go, and I’m left with my hand hovering there, tingling.
“Better?” he asks again, softly.
The red cut is barely noticeable. The wound isn’t closed like it would be if I used lobellum, but it seems smaller, paler, the skin soothed. I nod and rub it gently with my thumb.
I clear my throat. “Now what?”
“That’s up to you.” He crosses his arms. “As I said, you are free to leave. I’ll help you travel wherever you want to go.”
“I want to go back to Delvos.” Now that I know how easy travel is for Alaris, a prophecy still seems like the best way to protect myself.
“I would not recommend that. Norville is Kalgasari’s cousin. And it seemed like he intends to involve him.”
“Ah.” Kalgasari is the Sovereign of Delvos.
It would be one thing to evade a minor lord, but with Kalgasari involved, every noble in Delvos could be on alert for a servant matching my description.
Unless I can drastically change my appearance again, I shouldn’t go back and try to join another household.
“Based on how incensed he seemed, I would at least give the situation some time to cool down.”
Which means I need a new plan, and somewhere safe to stay until I can come up with it. Being this far from the palace is the safest I can be. I pull myself up straighter, finding it hard to look him in the eye. “Then I need work.”
“Work?”
“Well, as you may recall, up until you knocked out Norville last night, I was employed.” After my sheltered life in the palace, I have no right to scold this lord on the necessity of wages.
If he hadn’t intervened, I would have lost more than my job…
but right now, I need him to feel every ounce of indebtedness I can conjure in him.
I can’t tell if my strategy is working, his expression smooth and his dark eyes even.
“What kind of work?”
“I was most recently a governess. Do you have children?”
“No.”
That you know of, I want to say. With so many ladies across the land clamoring for his attention, and his reputation for indulging them, it seems likely there are little Lord Alarises running around somewhere.
“I will take any kind of work I can do.”
He pauses for a long moment. I fidget. Should I beg?
Otherwise, I will have to go back on the road and keep traveling aimlessly.
I survived on the river better than I could have imagined, but I don’t know where we are, or how far I might have to walk to get to another estate that could feed and house me.
Then he nods. “I can give you work.”
I exhale heavily. It’s something, at least until I come up with a better plan. “Thank you, Lord Alaris.”
“Alaris is fine.”
The familiarity should put me at ease, but instead, I tense.
This man has a reputation. He was a gentleman to me last night, but I know well enough that the way men treat noble ladies does not always match the way they treat servants. Not to mention, we already crossed certain lines. It is easy to imagine he might feel entitled to again.
“Grateful as I am, before I accept, I’d like to clear something up. Do you…” My words stall, but I press on. “Do you envision my job responsibilities extending to your bedroom?”
His dark eyes narrow. “What?”
I may have been too na?ve to believe what Norville was capable of, but I am not going to make that mistake again. Better to address this in the daylight, when there is still time to leave if he doesn’t give an answer I like.
“You may have been the one to inform me about Norville’s reputation, but I’ve also heard about yours.”
His scowl is enough to make me want to retreat. I know it’s unfair to compare him to someone who forced his way into my room, someone he saved me from. But I won’t let embarrassment intimidate me out of getting direct confirmation.
I rush through the words. “I just need to know if you’re giving me a job expecting anything like what happened between us the other night to continue.”
I brace myself to lose the job only minutes after I was offered it. Lords like deference, not confrontation.
“I don’t sleep with members of my staff,” he says, low and dangerous. “I promise you, nothing that happened between us the other night will happen again.”
I exhale. “Good. If you try, I’ll happily leave you in worse shape than Lord Norville and disappear just as quickly.”
“As I would deserve. But trust goes both ways. This is the second time you’ve alluded to disappearing. Since I won’t give you any reason to run, I want your promise that you won’t.”
“You can’t keep me here…”
He raises a hand to still my objections.
“You are free to quit at any time. Since I’m partly responsible for your present…
job loss…I will help you travel where you want to go.
But as a member of my staff, you are also my responsibility.
The woods outside this castle are dangerous.
If you disappear, I’ll have to launch a search party. It will be very inconvenient.”
It’s a fair request. “Alright.”
“Then we have an agreement. Come, I’ll show you to your wards.”
I glance up at him. “I thought you said you don’t have children.”
He smiles. “I don’t.”