Strange things had begun happening around the castle. Maybe they had always occurred, and she was only just now noticing as she walked around for the first time with open eyes.
There was very little life. In her dreams, she remembered light and energy and joy dancing through well-lit halls. There, she felt as if she were walking through a black maze that ended only in one place.
They didn't like her wandering around. Lucia, Jed, Andrew, some other higher-ups that supposedly advised Andrew. They treated her as any human would treat an insanist.
Maybe she was insane.
It fancied her to think so.
Still, though, the ominous air hung low in the halls. And when she looked at Andrew, she could nearly see it reflected in his eyes.
Firica was corrupted.
The halls had corrupted him.
One day screams rang through the stone. Amelia shot up from her crouch by the King's son and darted into the shadows as men ran past her in suits and uniforms of armor. The boy turned to her curiously, still very young the first time it had happened.
Not wanting to be seen but too curious to back away, Amelia followed them.
A girl had died. A kitchen maid. They huddled around her, and when she was lifted, Amelia saw the blue streaks across her lips and faintly trickling down her throat. She had been poisoned, it seemed. Not only that... her body was completely devoid of energy. Amelia hadn't taken too long to find her. There should have been plenty of life still lifting its way out of her body, like steam evaporating from a sweaty horse in winter. Instead, there was nothing coming from her at all. As if someone had already seized all of the life from her and taken it for themselves. The thought made Amelia uneasy. No human could do that.
Amelia walked directly to her chambers. If there were some sort of mage present, it would be stronger now.
Andrew was there looking out the window. She froze at the door, at first. She knew what he was there for. But he didn't turn around as she entered, so she proceeded to the wardrobe to undress. Andrew had noticed her but said nothing.
"It was a message for you, you know. A warning," she said lightly, pulling a robe over her shoulders and tying it at her waist. She glanced up to see if she'd garnered any attention from him.
"No one cares for the life of a kitchen maid.... Coincidentally, the very same one that takes your meals before you." She glanced at him. "Though any witty assassin would wait 'til after the meal has passed the kitchen to drop their poison."
It was becoming light outside. She doubted Andrew was interested in watching something as simple as a sunrise.
"Poison wouldn't be my first route," she said, eyeing him, trying to get a response. "Poison would be too slow, and not nearly as dependable. It does seem, however, that I do have much better access to His Highness than the average murderer."
"Speak another word and I could have you in irons."
"You mean I am not already?" She ignored him and sat at the small bench in front of the mirror. She stared at herself.
Her cheeks were hollow. Eyes... empty. She'd thinned.
Three years. Three... long... years. She was only, hardly nineteen. There was no real life in her.
Could she remember his eyes? The touch of his hands? The sound of his breath as he whispered in her ear? There was someone who had loved her, that long ago. Someone who'd thrown his life before hers just to see her continue to live.
