She ran her fingers across the bobbles on the shelf and wrapped her hand around a roughly whittled bear perched upon the space. Her first impulse was to shove it in her pocket and bring it back to Nox. She loosened her hold on the figurine, realizing she had no one to give it to.

There was a quick, light knock in the door, followed by a pause to the count of five, before the door eased open as it had three times each day. A visitor was a welcome relief after she had endured suffocating loneliness. Despite her enthusiasm at his arrival, the boy, several years her junior, made it clear that they would not be speaking.

Three times a day he’d enter, and thrice daily she’d try to ask the child his name, ask of the weather, ask about the food, or ask his favorite color. He remained resolute in his polite silence. Every time the small boy came and vanished, she felt as if she had been abandoned again.

Eating was one of her few joys.

Amaris always had an appetite, but she refrained from devouring the food. Instead, she stretched her meals throughout the day, making each dish last for hours, just to give her something to do. The food was quite different from the porridges and stews commonly served at Farleigh. Everything she’d been served had been enjoyable. If she ate her split barley, corn cakes, meat pies, stewed apples, mushrooms, or whatever else he’d delivered too quickly, she’d have little else to entertain herself.

Amaris brought a small, coarse loaf of brown bread onto her bed and stretched across the fur coverings, slowly picking at the loaf while she paged through one of the dustier books. This one was a particularly dry text of histories of the continent’s battles, heavily focusing on names of the deceased and locations of the conflicts. A few illustrations of weapons decorated the pages from time to time as a special treat. Boredom aside, it was a luxury to read something other than the limited selection filtered and permitted by the matrons.