In the Shadow of the Palace by Eliza Andrews

Author:Eliza Andrews [Andrews, Eliza]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-09-22T16:00:00+00:00

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Cara left the princess to her rest and began on Bri’s work. It had fallen to her because Prince Albin wasn’t the only one who’d died the day before—Bri had passed while Cara and Fin were in Port Lorsin. Alys of Harthing died later that evening, hours after the prince.

But no bells had tolled for the chambermaids.

When news of Alys’s death had come, those well enough to mourn had gathered into the kitchens. Stery produced a dusty bottle of a strong Adessian liquor he called rum.

Heavily, not talking much, and only softly when they did, the cooks and chambermaids shared the bottle in memory of Bri and Alys, and in memory of all the others who had lived, and then died, in the bowels of the palace. They passed the bottle around until it was gone. Cara had awoken with the first hangover of her life, which might have explained why she’d spent the morning thinking of the cruel indifference of the sun.

Cara stayed busy the rest of the day, and after the eventide meal, there was no impromptu memorial, no second bottle of rum. Everyone was either too tired, too sick, or too sad to even lift their gazes to one another.

Cara hadn’t visited the stables the night before due to her drunken condition. Anxious to see Fin, now she ate swiftly and headed over well before the sun set. But when Cara arrived, Fin was nowhere to be found. She wasn’t waiting for Cara with a book in hand beside the entrance. Neither was she mucking any stables. She wasn’t brushing down a horse, and when Cara walked down the hill to the pigpens, she wasn’t at the compost piles.

She’s probably with her da, Cara thought, comforting herself. She considered going to the cottage that Fin had once pointed out as hers, but it would probably be intrusive to show up there uninvited.

Cara waited at the stables for over an hour. But without Fin’s lantern to guide her back through the northern gardens in the dark, she left once that indifferent sun began to melt beneath the western palace wall.

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