“It’s four,” he said.

“I know that,” I lied, digging the cup they’d used to measure into the bag. “If you know so much, why don’t you come and help me?”

“Because it’s more fun to watch you struggle, obviously.”

I huffed, picking up my bowl and taking it back to the table. I stood there, looking at the other ingredients and trying to remember what I was supposed to get next. Water? Eggs? I found myself standing still in a room of activity. Even Scarlet, whose dough looked worse than mine, was getting patient instruction from one of the under cooks.

Etan’s words told me what everyone else’s actions already had: I wasn’t welcome here. It didn’t matter if our goal was to feed people who had nothing, my contributions weren’t wanted. When I looked to people for help, our eyes only met briefly before they returned to their task, ignoring me.

I set the bowl down and wordlessly backed toward the stairs. The only person who might have noticed was Etan, but it didn’t matter; no one came after me.

I tried not to cry as I scraped the wet flour from my arms into the washing bowl in my room. I’d been able to accept that I was going to be seen as other by the people of Isolte. What was unexpected was the aggression that came along with how that otherness was perceived. I hated it.

The tears came as I felt the Isoltens’ distaste for me hit my heart over and over and over. Despite being with my only living family, I felt lonelier than I’d ever thought I could. It was a unique and unnecessary cruelty added on top of what everyone in the house knew: I’d lost everything.

But then another wave of tears came, flooding into the first, for a different reason.

Yes, I’d come to love a man from Isolte. I loved his family. I loved their queen. But I only loved them because I knew them. I’d laughed at Scarlet’s clothes the first day she walked into the Great Room, and I’d disliked Valentina for being as typically standoffish as I knew Isoltens to be. I loved them now, but I’d judged them on first sight. I’d thought myself more stylish, wiser. I’d thought myself better.

I was only receiving what I’d happily handed out. Maybe they didn’t know about it, and maybe it wasn’t as blunt as this, but it was just as shameful.

And when I thought about it all, one of two things was absolutely true: either I deserved to be treated this way, or no one did. Ever.

I wished I had Silas to talk to. Ever the peacemaker, ever the thinker, Silas would have known what to do. I wiped at my tears and closed my eyes.

“What would you say?” I whispered to the air. “How would you patch this together?”

There was no answer, but I knew with a strange certainty that he wouldn’t want me to hide. I lifted my chin and walked the long path back down the servants’ stairs. I could feel the heat of the kitchen long before I arrived, inhaling the delicious scent of baking bread.