Heart of Iron (Heart of Iron #1)(58)
“What are you doing, Your Grace?”
She glanced up. It was a servant girl.
“How did you get in here?” Ana asked, perplexed.
The servant girl waved toward a panel in the door that was still cracked open—a servants’ entrance. She’d heard Di read about them in his books about the palace. There was an entire network of secret corridors within the very walls of the palace. Maybe . . . maybe she could escape that way?
The girl was fourteen, maybe fifteen, with spun-gold hair pinned up behind her head, her dress the deep, deep purple of the royal family.
Ana had begun to loop her other leg over when the bushes rustled in the garden below her, and as if called by some remote dog whistle, a Messier came to stand underneath her. Its blue eyes watched patiently.
Frustrated, she climbed back over the rail and cleared her throat. “What do you want?”
The girl curtsied. “Your Grace, I was assigned to be your handmaiden. My name is Mellifare. I will see to your personal needs for the immediate future.”
“I don’t—I don’t need anyone to help me dress or anything.”
“Then I can assist you with other daily matters. Altering your clothes, deciding what to wear, bathing—”
“I don’t need that kind of help, either.”
“It is my job,” the servant girl replied, her dark eyes flickering down the length of Ana, making her keenly aware of just how filthy she looked. Dried blood stained the knees of her trousers, her braid half fallen out of its tight coil. “The Grand Duchess has asked me to see to your needs. Is there anything you would like?”
To leave—to get as far away from here as she could. To change clothes and—
“A bath,” she heard herself saying, feeling the dried blood beneath her nails. “A warm bath.”
“Of course, Your Grace.”
With a bow, Mellifare left through the far door.
The moment she was gone, Ana peeked over to the balcony again, but the Messier was still below, watching her with its vacant gaze.
So she’d have to find some other way to escape.
There was another way, wasn’t there?
The strangeness of the day was wearing thin, unveiling an itchy panic in her chest. From her balcony, she could see the stars and the other moons and Eros—but it didn’t quell the uneasiness broiling inside. If she couldn’t escape, she’d be trapped here—forever. In rich silks and beautiful petticoats and marble hallways—
She’d rather be in a Cercian mine. At least that looked like a prison. This wasn’t the Dossier, and she missed the ship so much.
But all these years, Siege had lied to her. What if the rest of the crew had, too? And Di?
He wouldn’t lie to me, she reminded herself, but she hadn’t thought Siege would lie to her, either. Jax couldn’t, but she didn’t remember ever talking about family with Jax. It wasn’t something that mattered.
Family was the Dossier.
And family had lied.
“Your Grace?” her handmaiden called, and she followed Mellifare’s voice into the far room, to a bath made of marble and ornate golden carvings, a tub that was more like a pool, bubbling and hissing, pouring the aroma of moonlilies into the air.
When Mellifare left, Ana undressed herself, peeling off her clothes, hearing the crackle of Wick’s dried blood, her eyes burning with tears. He was dead. The fact sank in, like an anchor into the sea. He was dead, and Barger was dead, and Di was dead—
Stop thinking, she told herself, dipping her foot into the bath. It was so hot it tore the thoughts right out of her.
Slowly, she sank beneath the water and stayed under for a long time letting the hot water sting her cuts and wet her curly hair. She stayed under for so long, her pulse leaped into her throat, but the sound calmed her. It was the same one she’d heard since the Tsarina.
A broken heart beating on.
She didn’t know who she was anymore. She wasn’t that orphan girl from the stars. She wasn’t the girl who Siege raised, who shot beer bottles out of the air and knew every word to Wick’s drunken lullabies. That girl was part of a lie that no longer existed, a ship that sailed across her memories like a phantom, leaving a cold room in its wake.
But she was not an Armorov either.
Her lungs shuddered, so she pushed out of the water, sucking in a breath. The air tasted sweet—like moonlilies. She washed the blood from under her nails, and the stains from her skin, scrubbing until she was raw, and finally stepped out of the bath, pulling her hair over her shoulder. Her scalp still ached from when that Royal Captain had grabbed her.
She still remembered the patient way Di took hold of her hair, cool fingers twining each lock, as if he was built of all the things she lacked.
Di would never braid her hair again.
Her fingers fell away from her damp hair. It hadn’t hit her until that very moment. All the things they would never do again. All the moments she would miss. All the ones he would never again be part of.
She stared into the steamed bathroom mirror, at the blurry image of a girl with warm bronze skin and golden-brown eyes and black hair that fell in tangled curls across her bare, muscular shoulders. She didn’t have the body of someone dainty—fit for royal balls and beautiful dresses. She was hard, and strong, her hands covered in calluses and her fingernails bitten to the quick. She had always wondered where she came from, but now she picked herself apart, trying to find which parts were Valerio, and which were Armorov.