Page 6 of Taken By the Shadow Prince

I blow powder into Kal tent and don’t bother waiting to see his reaction, though I must admit that I would have truly enjoyed that look on his face. Instead, I move on to the tent beside his. If the mauve colored fabric is any sign—and the splotchiness of the coloring, showing it was done by hand—then this is Kelsa’s tent.

I push the flap to the side.

She grins up at me with a wicked gleam in her eyes. “I heard all the shouting and woke up. Light sleeper,” she explains, tugging a boot on her foot. “Decided to see what was going on and saw you waking everyone up with...whatever that is.” She pauses, as if waiting for me to answer, then realizing I won’t. “So? What is it?”

“Want me to show you?”

She hesitates. “Does it hurt?”

The joke is on the tip of my tongue.It’s more shocking than anything. I almost say it.

Instead, I shrug.

Kelsa huffs out a breath as she stands, fully dressed. “You’re so mysterious, you know that? I don’t think I’ve heard you say more than a dozen words total.” She counts them out. “Hello. Yes. Fine. You too. Want me to show you.” She snorts. “Ten. Ten words in total.” She clicks her tongue and shakes her head. “You’re an enigma.”

I hold the powder up. “Well?”

“And there’s eleven!”

I turn to leave, a scowl on my lips, but she snatches me by my wrist and spins me back around. “Alright, fine. I’m sorry. Show me, please.”

I take some of the powder on my dandelion-covered fingers and rub it onto her skin. She jolts, exhales sharply, but laughs. “You’ve beenshockingthem? That’s brilliant.”

I offer her the smallest of smiles, then say, “Find Kal and tell him to have everyone to get their horses ready. No time for a leisurely breakfast today.”

Kelsa nods. “Will do. But shouldn’t the order come from you since you’re in charge?”

I frown. “I’d prefer to keep conversations with him to a minimum.”

She laughs. “Fair enough. He comes on a little strong at first, doesn’t he?” She shrugs her shoulders and starts picking up her sleeping bag from the floor.

“Don’t worry, I have no problems playing middleman.” Kelsa winks, and then slips past me out of her tent.

I turn and follow a moment later, but I merely head back across the campsite to my tent and start packing up my things. Kelsa talks to me as if we are...friends. Are we? I’ve never considered myself to have friends. Even with the council, they are more like family than anything—though, Ellis reallyisfamily.

Friends. I’m not so sure I like it. But perhaps it isn’t such a bad thing, especially if she so easily accepts my silence. I wonder if Mair told her what I said, long ago, when the two of us were drunk off wine in her rooms and in a horribly emotional state.

It’s embarrassing to even think back on it.

“Is there a reason you’re always so quiet?”

I turn to Mair, the question a surprise. No one really asks. I think it makes them uncomfortable, or perhaps they’re not sure they want to hear the answer. But she... she looks like she really wants to know. And she wants the truth, not some half-assed lie to get her off my back.

I have no reason not to tell her, this girl whom I will serve for the rest of my life. If she wants an answer, I will give it to her. “Ellis doesn’t remember our father. But I do. I think it’s because he always loved our mother the most, was always stuck to her side like glue. But I was always with my father, hanging on to every word he said. Before he died, anyway.

“He had a disability. Couldn’t talk very well, because of some incision that someone had done to his tongue. He never told me who, or why. But it was there, and he talked little because of it.

“We were out fishing one day, in some boat with a slow leak that I liked to stick my feet in. I was babbling on and on, and he finally laid a hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Do you hear that, Mavey? That is silence. That is the world telling us everything we need to know. If you’re quiet long enough, you can hear it.’ It was the most I’d ever heard him say at once. I told him so, and he gave me a gentle smile. ‘Words are precious. We should not waste them on the small things when our eyes are already speaking.’

He died a handful of months after that—bringing home a birthday cake for Ellis and me. Someone took it from him, and when my father tried to fight back, they killed him for it. We were broke and couldn’t have afforded another cake even if the shops had been open, and he wanted us to have justonething to celebrate. They found him with it lying right beside him. He’d defended it until his last breath. And after that... I decided to live like he did and let the world tell me everything I wouldn’t be able to hear if I was talking.”

Mair had stared at me for a long moment, then said, “Yes. Words are precious.” And that had been that.

Not once have I regretted telling her. I like that there’s someone who understands me—someone besides Ellis. But I wonder if she’s told anyone else—not that it’s a secret, not that she isn’t allowed to. But a part of me can’t help but be curious: who else knows about my father, the man who valued his words and his family more than anything else?

I finish packing up my things with his face flashing behind my eyelids. I wonder if he would be proud of the girl I’ve become, or if he’d prefer to see me soft, like I was when I was a kid.

I suppose I’ll know, someday. Once I’ve passed into heaven and met him once more. But by then it’ll be too late to care what he thinks of me, of who I am. I can only hope that he’ll love me all the same, that it won’t matter to him that the bubbling little girl who chased at his heels became a quiet alchemist.

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