<<Or stop picking fights you cannot win>>, the cook meant.

I smiled at that but followed it with a grimace, for I had not realized how deeply the inside of my mouth had been sliced when Royce backhanded me to the ground.

Sylvie’s sharp eyes shot up as I dabbed the blood dripping from my bottom lip. She hurried to me, taking my face gently in both of her hands. Her palms were warm and cool all at once, and her touch alone soothed my pain.

<<Who has done this>>?

I would have mentioned Royce, but I could not. Sylvie studied me so intently, though, that I soon realized she was not meaning Royce at all but was making an inquiry of a past event and a distant culprit.

<<Who drank from you? Who gave you this way of knowing>>? She touched the trickle of my blood with delicate precision and put her finger to her tongue. She hissed then, pulling away from me.

<<You went to him>>.

How could Sylvie know such a thing? How could she make a connection between me and a pyre I had found in a dungeon so many worlds away from here?

But Sylvie’s face was drawn in concern, her hands smoothing her spotless but worn apron.

<<He will come to you>>.

Episode 55: The Window Leading To Wanderings

Niall wisely suggested that I hide myself for the rest of the day due to the probability that his older brother might wake and seek retribution or that Isther would bind me to some needlepointing ceremony for which I was clearly not suited. Why women thought it pleasurable to pull thread through cloth and chitter on about all the nothingness in their lives was beyond my comprehension.

He did assure me that his brother, Royce, while sorely tempered, was also swift to become bored and would not aggress or pester me once he found something more interesting to fill his time. Thus, going to my chambers and becoming invisible to the Renningtons for a day would make me rather uninteresting and less of a target.

I paced around my small quarters, wishing I had a book of some grand adventure that would swallow me into its pages. How else would I survive the stifling boredom? The only thing present to occupy my wandering mind were thoughts that led to madness. Where was my father, who held my heart in place of his? And my Rosemary, whose hair I would braid before I wandered into the cold nights of the South, secretly hoping to trip over some snapping, sharp-toothed speleothem or a grasping grippling. I remembered my horse, Vagabond, and my head ached as I thought of how the Towers might have sold him to the first bidder and how I could never say goodbye to the beast who had carried me, as I’d said goodby to Vincent, my love.