Nobody's Goddess (Never Veil #1)(54)

I burned with the stupid idea that this was more proof I’d met the lord in the past. In a past so long ago no one else even remembered it.

Not that it mattered. I wasn’t allowed to leave the castle.

As soon as I slipped into the dress, the specters swooped into the room and took the dress I’d worn to the castle from the floor. I nearly screamed upon their sudden entrance.

The dress was given back to me later the same day, washed and folded.

For some reason, it felt like I had lost in a game I hadn’t intended to play.



***



When I woke up one morning, a surge of warmth hit my face. I lay in bed for a moment, picturing myself having risen from a nap on the hilltop where I’d often picnicked with Jurij. But I couldn’t feel grass and dirt beneath my fingers, only cold silken plush.

I remembered where I was. My eyes opened reluctantly.

A sunbeam trickled onto my bed from the window. It actually warmed me, and I felt a stirring in my heart. Cautiously, I sat up and then took the few steps over to the window. I peered out and my heart soared, if but for a brief moment. The snow had melted. A gentle haze permeated the horizon, but I could still make out the village below. Perhaps spring had finally come.

Before I could be summoned for breakfast, I dressed, this time in the worn-down dress that I often wore when I’d been carving. It had been cleaned before it was presented to me and was cleaned every time I wore it since, but I still imagined it carried the scent of sawdust.

I bypassed the untouched vanity and the white hairbrush I knew would be lying out for me. Although I didn’t brush my hair myself, the specters had started brushing it for me before meals. All the better reason to leave before they got there. Perhaps I would find a knife with which to chop it all off and leave them with nothing to make pretty.

Gently, I pushed the door open a crack. I sucked in my abdomen and squeezed through, quietly pushing the door shut behind me. No one was in the hallway, but I stood still for a moment anyway to see if anyone stirred. I knew from the “tour” that the lord’s chambers were located on the floor above mine, but I wouldn’t put it past the specters to be on guard. But no one came.

I slipped across the hallway to the staircase and took one step down at a time, cautiously peering through the banister for signs of the specters. There was no one.

I came upon the grand entryway and my heart skipped a beat. This was where I’d had my first encounter with the lord, more than a year prior. I could picture myself now, bathed in a moonbeam, following it to its source.

A sunbeam had replaced that moonbeam. The rays of dawn were peeking through the cracks in the door that led to the inner courtyard. I shuffled quietly over to it and peered through the space in the door as I had the first night I’d foolishly ventured to the castle. A garden. When I’d been shown the place on the “tour,” it was but a drab collection of stone and branches. Now, almost overnight, the sun had breathed life into the place.

Feeling suffocated inside, I grabbed hold of both handles on the wide double door and pulled. I stood still for a moment and closed my eyes. They couldn’t adjust to the brightness, and I felt blind, but the light that seeped in through my closed eyelids was enough to make my heart race and my mind come to life.

My thoughts flew instantly to the field of flowers that covered the hills near my home in the spring and how I’d run as a child, giggling with Jurij, Darwyn, and my other friends as we kicked up petals and rolled down the hills. I remembered looking up one day and seeing Elfriede sitting quietly atop the hill as she looked after us, careful not to disturb the passionate purple of the flowers that framed her peaceful little body. She weaved together lilies into a circlet for my hair, crowning me “the little elf queen.” She’d first named me that, taking a title from one of Mother’s stories, although I’m sure she didn’t remember. There was no mistaking the vivacity of those hilltop blossoms, flowers that could both robustly cushion a tribe of lively little adventurers and still yield to the gentle movements of a weaver girl’s fingers.

The garden in the castle featured only white roses on carefully manicured bright green bushes. Save for the large space immediately in front of the two large wooden doors that led back into the castle, the rose bushes linked together in an unbroken circle framing the entire garden. Cobblestones lined the rest of the garden ground, and there was sign of neither dirt nor grass.

It was no hilltop, but it would have to do.

I shivered. The winter air was retreating, but there was still a nip of cold in the spring morning. The closest thing I could find to a comfortable seat was on one of the two benches on either side of a stone table to the left of the entrance. I sat down on the bench that would give me a full view of the garden and stared again at the odd water fountain at the middle. Two streams of water still spurted from the eyes of the pointed-eared child, his arms outstretched towards the skies. My heart ached for his torment. He seemed to be reaching for something—and weeping because it would never be within his grasp. He and I, we shared much of the same feeling.

A tray with food appeared on the table before me.

I started. A specter stood next to me after dropping off the tray on the stone table, but I hadn’t noticed him enter. Despite my best efforts, my movements in the castle hadn’t gone unnoticed.

I felt ill.

But the specter soon retreated, leaving me alone in the garden. The empty feeling in my head and the rumbling in my stomach won out. I picked up the spoon on the tray and began eating. No one disturbed me. The sun rose ever farther over the horizon and the light made the water pouring from the child’s eyes sparkle a brilliant blue. It was the first meal I’d enjoyed since my stay began.