Chapter 5
Elysia walked with her chin held high and a cordial expression pasted onto her face, making sure to greet any servant or fellow Crown member as she passed.
Hello.
So good to see you.
No, no, I haven’t seen Beatriz lately.
She was no longer sure how much of it was an act. Maybe it had once been real as she streaked through these halls with Remy and Daphne, laughing as they hid behind heavy embroidered curtains and chased the castle hounds and cats. But now, she smiled to keep her parents’ questions away and to ensure that they would not rip away her life outside these walls. She smiled because she was in the business of procuring truth and lies, and should she fail, her father would not hesitate to ruin her.
She peeked her face around the archway into the kitchens and found them bustling, as expected. The smell of fresh bread had her mouth watering before she even took another step. Elysia liked living on her own. Really, she did. But soot and storms, did she miss the food here! The scent of roasting meat hit her nose and her stomach grumbled on cue, as if she hadn’t just eaten her weight in cookies at Fillie’s.
She stayed tucked out of sight for a moment longer, enjoying the familiar sight of the organized chaos that was Lynd’s kitchen. Pans clanging and shouts of behind you rang out. Never a dull or leisurely moment, that was for sure. The head chef was a culinary genius with mouths to feed and young women to train. The culinary arts were one of the few paths where a woman of any socioeconomic status could find herself elevated to a position of security if they were willing to leave Kava, and Lynd felt it her duty to equip as many women as she could with the skills to provide a life for themselves.
It wasn’t uncommon for the girls or women to arrive at her kitchens withdrawn or even bruised and broken. A few months or even years under her firm but caring guidance and you wouldn’t recognize them. They became precise and assertive miniatures of the woman who’d given them a chance.
Yes, Lynd would very well tear apart anyone who threatened her kitchens, or the young girls and women whom she trained. Elysia thought you’d have to be an idiot to threaten anyone who could handle a knife that well, but some people were just plain stupid, she supposed.
Lynd’s proteges went on to the finest kitchens and bakeries around the world. She sent them out to different countries, knowing they’d be better off there than scraping to get by here. It was almost impossible to secure a culinary position within Kava given how few restaurants still existed after the Fall. Importing the necessary ingredients was expensive and too few people could afford the experience.
Fish stew stands were the main market in Relaclave these days. All the more reason somewhere like Fillie’s was so special. It was the only café in the entire capital city.
“Whoever’s dawdling in my doorway, either get your ass in here and work, or get out.”
A smirk crossed Elysia’s face, but she listened, dropping down the steps into the kitchens. One of those days for everybody, I guess. Based on Lynd’s tone, she knew damn well not to interrupt. She stepped out of the way, waiting patiently, and watched Lynd carefully inspect a child’s pastry.
“More butter next time,” she critiqued, and then turned with floured hands already reaching for the next pastry to review.
Her sharp eyes caught on the dark-haired woman hiding quietly, almost invisible in the corner, and gave a shake of her head.
“Come to steal some cakes, have you?” She directed one of the girls to grab a basket and tea towel as she spoke.
Elysia walked up to Lynd with a little shrug, enjoying how the heat sucked her into the heart of the kitchen. In the dead of winter, she used to sneak in here not only for the snacks that filled her pockets when she left but also simply to bask in the warmth and camaraderie found within the kitchen’s walls. She’d found it odd at the time how they all interacted so honestly and with such good humor.
“Would you believe me if I said they aren’t really for me?” Elysia leaned against a counter, careful to not place her elbows on anything sticky or covered in flour.
Lynd grumbled goodheartedly. “We all know these cakes won’t escape without at least a few sliding into your belly.”
She glanced up and frowned as she took in Elysia’s slighter than usual frame. Too many angles. Too little curves. The thoughts were clear as day on Lynd’s face.
“A few more pastries as well,” she ordered the girls scurrying around like mice. “The meat ones too—yes, those.” She nodded approvingly before turning back to Elysia. “Not feeding yourself in that dingy wreck you call a flat?”
Elysia snorted a laugh and swiped a small chocolate hazelnut confection from a tray, popping it into her mouth. “It’s just a bit old is all. You know how the north side is—it has its charms and its faults.”
Lynd shook her head in the disgruntled way that only those who love you can. “You have proper rooms, my good food, and everything else you could possibly want here.”
Elysia bit down a smile at her fussing.
Lynd wiped her hands on her apron and leaned forward to pick out a bit of ashy soot from Elysia’s hair. “What difference does a couple of blocks make? She rang your bell and you’re still here, aren’t you? Just had to walk farther in the cursed rain.”
Elysia felt her weariness lock down around her, heavy and unforgiving. Lynd was not wrong. In spite of being grown and moved out, when her mother or father called, she answered. But she was not without her reasons.
Lynd sighed, taking in her stillness and smudgy, tired eyes. She tucked the beautiful pastry basket into her hands and pressed a rough kiss to her head. She then looked at Elysia with all the seriousness of a man standing trial. “I’m going to start sending you dinner once a week, and you will eat it, do you understand? And don’t you dare leave this castle without saying goodbye.”
Dampness lined Elysia’s eyes, and she choked back the discomfort that grew in her throat. She managed one sharp nod before turning heel with the basket clutched tight in bone-white fingers.
She walked away from the sweet kitchen heat and the keen eyes of Lynd before hurriedly slipping into a curtain-covered alcove. She breathed steadily in and out, one hand rubbing against her breastbone until the brisk air emanating from the glass window beside her soothed the lingering ache in her chest. Between the lack of sleep, a tongue in a box, and meeting with the girls, her feelings were brimming to the top instead of staying down where they belonged.
She could never quite say why Lynd’s brusque love hurt so much. But it did, and for that she was glad.
Elysia closed her eyes and buried that love away. Caring for someone was a dangerous thing. Someone was always watching here in the castle walls. Always reporting back to her parents. That was why she limited her visits to the kitchens. Her mother had commented about how often the servants found her perched on the kitchen counters. Eating, enjoying. She’d stopped visiting after that. Lynd didn’t deserve to be collateral.
She’d found that love inspired a fear deeper than any other. A fear that caused an instinctive, irrational desire to protect. She sometimes wondered if that was the force behind her parents’ actions. Love soured by the need to protect. You’re too old for such thinking, she chastised herself . Whether they experienced love’s poison or not, the people in her life were experts at wielding it against others. That much she knew for sure.
Love is a liability and an affliction. A crushing insight from one Parker sister to another. She’d carried Beatriz’s words with her ever since.
Elysia strained her ears. When she didn’t hear any footsteps or other sounds, she slid back into the hallway, setting off to see her old friend.
The Relaclave library was not technically part of the castle, but it was connected if you knew where to go. Basket in one hand and an oil lantern in the other, Elysia walked leisurely through the corridors beneath the castle.
She could have marched through the front doors of the great Relaclave library as she did any other day of the week. It was not unusual for her to while away her hours amongst the dusty tomes, but the friend she was to meet was peculiar, to say the least. He would not be found in the warm, cushy reading nooks above her, but rather below .
Long forgotten by the librarians and even the Crown itself were the levels of tunnels and rooms that ran far below the servants’ corridors. The tunnels had called to her when she was a child, much like all the hidden things did, and soon she knew their secrets just the same.
Elysia stared at the small hole in the middle of the servants’ path and regretted her choice of stockings and skirt. Lantern tucked into the basket, she stuck her lower half through the clay covered hole and balanced precariously upon its timeworn edge.
And then she slipped like liquid silk down into the lower tunnels that she hoped held answers to her questions.
She landed softly on the balls of her feet and brought the lantern back out before her. The light barely made a dent against the dark. She prayed Rollie was in his usual haunt. She had no desire to disturb anything or anyone else that may live down here. Why does it always smell like someone shit in these tunnels? She grimaced. She had a love-hate relationship with the tunnels.
She crept along the dirt-crusted paths, ducking to keep her head clean. No matter what, she’d need a solid scouring after this. The sound of shoes scuffling in the distance had her pausing.
Elysia smiled. Some things never change.
She called out into the darkness before he could scuttle off into the shadows where she’d never find him. “Rollie, I brought you food from Lynd.”
The shuffling paused. And then a head with erratic white-blonde hair popped out of the dark. “Maple cakes?”
Elysia held the basket out like she was luring a feral creature. “And her meat pies. A whole meal, right fresh from her kitchen.”
His eyes squinted in a glare from behind his thick glasses. “Fine.”
He disappeared into whatever room he had been squatting in, and Elysia hurried along in his trail.
The room was awash with soft candles lighting its edges. The glow of the candles let her see just how much of the walls and ceilings had crumbled, and not for the first time, Elysia felt uneasy creeping this deep beneath the city. She never did quite trust all of this old dirt. Maybe it's because you’re not a rodent.
But this was where Rollie could be found, so this is where she went on the rare occasion that she demanded his services.
Rollie had already begun carefully inspecting the cakes within the basket. He finally selected what must have been deemed a worthy maple cake and took an untrusting sniff before taking an equally cautious bite.
Rollie, also known as Rollickus Timmons, was not the social sort. He was possibly the only Crown kid who had truly made his own life away from the court. He spent his time like a mole beneath the city, and Elysia sometimes wondered if he might be the only person in Kava who knew more secrets than her.
Then again, most folks found him a bit mad, which was exactly why they never would believe a word he said, anyway.
He was undeniably one of the most intelligent people she had ever met, though. She chased the secrets of Kava. Rollie chased the secrets of the universe itself.
It did help, of course, that she could tell him anything and no matter who he told, they would not believe him. A secret’s best friend was an unreliable source.
Elysia carefully weaved through the room and perched on the edge of an ancient table. She crossed her ankles and watched Rollie heartily tuck into the maple cake. He ignored her until he ate the last morsel of the cake.
Elysia cleared her throat to talk, and he held out a finger.
She huffed at the silencing gesture, but Rollie continued as though he had not even heard her, and pulled out a cloth napkin, dipped it into the water glass beside him, and proceeded to clean his fingers slowly and thoroughly of any sticky maple residue.
He finally set the napkin down and looked at her with a tilted head. “Well?”
Elysia folded her fingers. “There is a mystery that I seek your help in solving.”
She had to be careful, so very careful, even with Rollickus. Every fiber of her being was screaming to keep her secrets and to find another way, but she'd made her decision. Rollie was her best shot at finding an actual solution and fixing her life. Whatever magic drove her into the arms of Kava’s secrets had steered her down to him, and she was banking on him being able to help.
She continued, her eyes drifting to the ceiling as she spoke. “What would you make of someone who, instead of falling into slumber, perhaps they fell into another world? Another place?”
Rollie sat up straighter, his fingers pausing right above the pile of pastries. “A dream you mean?”
She gripped the table’s edge. “No, not a dream. This person leaves their body, but also takes it with them to this new place.”
The fizzing eccentricity that kept others at an arm’s length from Mr. Timmons seemed to die in that moment, and only the cold, stark clarity of his brilliance shone through his deep blue eyes.
He leaned back against the table and mulled over her words, mulled over what knowledge he felt safe enough to share.
He stared at her unflinchingly and finally spoke. “Elysia Parker, swear upon the undead gods that Kava denies. Swear upon the lives of everyone you hold close to your wretched, beating heart that this conversation does not leave this room.”
Elysia had heard conversations that could ruin a kingdom flung into the world with drunken frivolity. She’d heard them delivered with vengeance. But never had she heard such a demand for protecting hidden words.
The death moths with their pretty red-lined throats danced behind her eyes as she returned Rollie’s fierce gaze. “I swear it.”
He clipped his chin in a nod and tugged on his already disheveled hair, beginning to pace.
He stopped abruptly and faced her. “There are people who may be able to answer your questions. It’s better that you bring your claims to them. It’s not my knowledge to share.” His face turned shrewd, but his voice was free from condemnation. “This is about you, isn’t it? You wouldn’t be here for anyone but yourself. Maybe Beatriz, but we both know this isn’t about her.”
Unease and dread filled her gut. People were nothing more than behavioral patterns to some extent, and unfortunately, Rollie was extremely good with patterns. He called it like he saw it, knowing that Elysia needed him and wouldn’t do anything to harm him in spite of him now knowing her secret.
“Rollie, I don’t want to meet with other people.” He has no idea what he’s asking.
She remembered all the people she had accidentally brought to death’s gate without meaning to as a child, and her stomach clenched. People she’d been drawn to because their secrets flared brighter than all the rest. It’d taken her years to control her curse well enough that heads stopped rolling in her wake, years before her father quit tailing her every move, knowing that she would somehow inevitably end up on the doorstep of someone who’d managed to cling to some wisp of magic.
And then there were all the lives she had taken later. When Jack Parker said it was time for another sweep. That he needed another feather in his hat. She lost sight of Rollie and the tunnels, feeling only the hollowness inside her. It could be worse, she reminded herself. She could be working for the king. Searching every day through the whole kingdom. She could just be dead.
You would think any magic in their land would be a blessing, but the people had been spurned once by the fickleness of fate, and what was once a gift was now a curse. Illegal and to be rooted out at all costs lest they find themselves reliant on a force outside themselves once more.
She stared pointedly at Rollie, her eyes imploring him. “Isn’t this, just between us, unsafe enough? You know how dangerous this is. Or you would not have asked for such an oath.”
The pacing resumed, but he shook his head, looking pained. “Elysia, you don’t understand. What affects one could affect all. It is not my place to answer your questions.”
He paused. “Does anyone know? Has that over-pressed royal Crown squinch noticed yet?”
Elysia blinked, her voice going flat. “Royal Crown squinch. Really , Rollie?”
He shrugged. “You knew who I was talking about, didn’t you?”
She scowled. “No, Topp hasn’t noticed. I think I threw Remy and Daphne off for now, but if I don’t start controlling it, then I’m going to have a problem. I already have a problem.” Gods knew how long she could hold Gage off, she thought to herself. It’s a miracle I’ve lasted this long.
“What kind of boyfriend doesn’t realize their girlfriend has become an insomniac who is projecting out of her body every night?” His brow creased in disbelief.
This was the Rollie she knew from childhood. Smart-mouthed and unfailingly without a filter. A bit odd, but never mad. Sure, he didn’t see the point of social niceties and was far more at home with his books than stuck chattering with court members, but he had always been perfectly sane. More than competent. It was as if she’d woken up one day and her uncouth but gifted friend had become a paranoid hermit that she had to bribe in order to see. But standing here now, she took in how unfazed he was by her story and wondered if there was one more person in her life hiding in plain sight. She wondered if perhaps he was not unhinged at all, but merely protecting himself the best way he knew how—by keeping everyone and everything he loved far, far away.
The thought pressed down on her, but she brushed it aside, knowing he would not want her sympathies. “Mind your business, Rollickus.”
He blew out half a laugh, but his gaze went dark. “You’re out of your mind if you’re still sleeping with him. Never mind that he’s an old squinch.” His eyes demanded her to see reason. “He would have you killed without even blinking, Elysia. He will always choose the Crown because he is the Crown .”
His words cut to the quick, severing the tenuous leash she held on her fear. The same fear that coated her insides each and every night as she snuck away from the prince’s bed.
Her response was immediate and sharp. “You don’t even know him.”
Internally, she cringed. Gods, did she hear herself? If another woman spoke like that, she’d be rolling her eyes so hard it’d hurt.
But the prickle of fear that zipped up her spine and had her fisting her hands told the truth. She slept beside the Crown Prince of Kava, and she played a most dangerous game.
It was a game she had been born into, and there never had been any chance of winning.
Survival had always been her aim.
She let the air slowly hiss out of her nose and tried to calm her stuttering heart.
When she spoke, her teeth barely came apart. “I am handling it. Now either tell me what you know, or connect me with those who can.”
She could’ve sworn a flash of pity crossed his pale features, but then it was gone, and he was digging in his pockets. He held up an old, worn out coin and flipped it a few times before extending it to Elysia.
She gingerly plucked the coin from between his two index fingers and examined the etchings still present beneath the heavy layer of grime. Families, businesses—they often had coins which matched their seals. The one in her hand boasted a spray of sparks with a small key set in the center. She ran her thumb over the marks and looked back up at Rollie.
“And what do I do with it?”
He shoved a hand into his pocket and pushed up his glasses. “Nothing for now.”
Her head snapped up. “What?”
“I’ll talk to who I can and see if they’re willing to meet you. If they are, and it is an if , Elysia”—he stared at her unblinkingly—“then you’ll need the coin.”
Rollie grabbed a few more pastries and began walking back into the dark halls of the underground. He called out, knowing she could still hear, “Don’t follow me, Elysia Parker, we’ll know.”
Elysia stood in the dark clutching the coin, praying to the undead gods that no one prayed to any longer, that Rollickus Timmons could help her.