Two girls. Two secrets.
Only one can survive.
Years before Nelle Wychthorn plans her escape, Tabitha Catt may unearth something in a Horned God's lair that is the key to freedom.
Desperate to save her beloved aunt from a dark curse, Tabitha is out t...
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I brought the spoon down with a thunderous smack against the coffee table. "Enough!" I roared. Right now I was precariously close to splitting the spoon in half with the force I was using because I was furious!
But the room was loud with panic, the servants arguing, arms flying as they squabbled with one another about what to do next and how to do it; accusations hurled at one another—why it was the other person's fault the room was still in shambles; the string of voices overlapping one another—like they hadn't even heard me, let alone realized I was in the room.
I thumped the polished surface of the table with a series of quick strikes. Anger blistered beneath my skin. If my favorite wooden spoon broke, all hells was going to unleash.
Whack!
Whack!
Whack!
"Stop. With. The. Freaking. Out!"
Seven servants froze and their voices stopped dead, mid-sentence.
The only sound in the room came from the tv and the music channel someone had set it to while they worked.
I hissed in exasperation, straightened, and slapped my spoon against my thigh. Seven servants, and between them all they couldn't decorate the room as required.
I was a Between Maid, an old-fashioned term for my position. I was better paid than past holders, and my role and rank was higher than the junior housemaid. I served under the Chef, the Butler, and the Head Housekeeper, my duties split between the three of them whenever they had need of me. Most of the time I enjoyed the variety and fast-paced nature of my role, except for dealing with Mr. Volkov, the Head Housekeeper. My stomach twisted into a knot as I took in the chaos of the room. I had a feeling Mr. Volkov had set me up for failure by choosing the team to help me decorate the room—with a further stipulation that we couldn't turn our attention to the project until we'd performed our usual duties for the day.
Besides a laundry maid, I'd been appointed two scatter-brained junior housemaids—the Purcell sisters—who I'd constantly caught frozen in motion gossiping or bickering; Oswin as well—a gardener who was more comfortable outside deadheading flowers; two young stable boys who had brought with them much-needed enthusiasm for the task at hand as well as the smell of hay and manure; and the steel-eyed Hilda, a cadet training to join the Deniauds' division of soldiers, who had an ironic aversion to orders.
They slowly and quietly gathered into a tight knot, readjusting their uniforms, formal for this royal visit—crisp black jackets, waistcoats, and neatly-pressed trousers or skirts. Sometime during the afternoon the boys had taken off their jackets and rolled up their shirt sleeves, and now they were brusquely unrolling them, rebuttoning the cuffs, while the girls smoothed away invisible wrinkles on their skirts. No one could look me in the eye apart from the laundry maid, who stared at me like a startled deer with big brown eyes.
