Page 17 of Pawns of Fate
The door to the room opened. A faun, dressed in a maid’s uniform with a pretty silk girdle the color of daffodils, steppedthrough and said, “Lady Rose! You’re awake!”
Nicholas woke up with a small jolt. A thousand emotions flickered across his face, but he seemed to settle on concern as he asked Rose how she felt or if she needed anything.
“A little water would be nice,” she replied.
“Of course,” Nicholas said, then nodded at the maid, who excused herself, presumably to fetch the water.
“Where are we?” Rose asked, though she already knew the answer.
“We made it to the castle.” Nicholas’s jaw clenched, his brows furrowed, and he said his next words slowly and gently. “I carried you here after I found you unconscious in the woods. What happened, Rose?”
Part of Rose had worried that Nicholas would be angry. Uncle Hector certainly would have been. But Nicholas clutched her hand like a frail baby bird.
“I couldn’t stomach the odor of the ogre blood.” She grimaced.
“Ahhh. That makes sense. It takes some getting used to.”
“So, I went into the woods looking for a place to—” Rose fidgeted with Nicholas’s hand for a second, becoming more and more aware of the pleasant physical contact. “I needed to deal with my nausea,” she said. “I wasn’t paying attention to my surroundings and stepped on a colony of twiddletoads.”
“Not just the dead one we found?”
“No, a black snake caught one of the toads and scared the rest of them away. I assumed it had eaten the one it killed.” It was already strange that the snake had attacked the twiddletoads atjust the right moment for Rose to survive the encounter. Stranger still that it hadn’t eaten its prey. She decided not to mention the wink; it must have been a trick of her mind.
Nicholas opened his mouth, but the maid returned with a pitcher filled with cold, fresh water right at that moment. Rose drank it eagerly, sure she’d never tasted anything so refreshing. The liquid soothed her aching throat and washed away any lingering powder from the twiddletoads.
A second maid followed the first through the door. After Rose quenched her thirst and got out of bed, Nicholas introduced her.
“Rose, these are your maids. This is Betty.”
A short, full-bodied woman with brown hair and a warm smile stepped forward. Velvet deer antlers poked out of the curls on her head. A faun! They were uncommon outside heavily wooded territories, but a coniferous forest surrounded Castle Sharp. Rose couldn’t wait to get to know her better.
“And this is Lyla.”
A tall, slender woman stepped forward. Lyla had long, lavender hair and intelligent, purple eyes. Both of her forearms were covered in dark, runic spell tattoos. What was a powerful mage doing as her maid? The urge to access the aural plane and read Lyla’s magical energy tickled the back of Rose’s mind.
“I know she’s dressed as a maid, but Lyla will serve as your and Ava’s bodyguard. She’s a shadow mage from the same tower as Syzman. You haven’t met Syzman or João officially yet, but they are bodyguards for York, our father, and me. You’ll meet them at dinner tonight, if you’re feeling up to it. We have Lyla disguised as a maid for an extra layer of protection,” hesaid as Lyla rolled down her sleeves, covering the runes on her arms.
It took Rose a minute to understand that she would have a bodyguard, let alone a shadow mage. Bodyguards were expensive, especially female ones. Shadow mages were in a different class altogether.
Rose had met a handful of shadow mages over the years, and they always had a terribly dark and dangerous energy because of the magic they practiced. Controlling shadows was a rare gift, but shadow mages took it further than that, honing their entire bodies into physical and magical weapons from a young age. She could remember when a ‘talent scout’ had come through her orphanage and ‘recruited’ a few girls who might develop an affinity for shadow magic. They had been a pair of lavender-haired twins. Rose wished she could remember what they’d looked like.
She’d heard the children were killed if they didn’t obtain mastery of the shadows fast enough. A twinge of pity grabbed Rose’s heart as she noticed a vicious scar hidden among Lyla’s tattoos.
“I look forward to working with both of you,” she said to the remarkable women standing before her.
Betty smiled back sweetly. Lyla let a predatory grin show, then tried to cover it with a casual smirk. Rose tried not to flinch.
Ogres. Twiddletoads. Fauns. Shadow mages and golden-eyed snakes. Rose had experienced more adventure in one afternoon with Nicholas than she usually did in a year. Life at Castle Sharp would be different; she was sure of that.
Chapter 6
ROSE
After introducing her to the maids and ensuring she sincerely felt up to dinner, Nicholas left Rose to settle into her room. She started by unpacking the few suitcases. Betty tried to help, but there wasn’t much for her to do since Rose didn’t have many belongings. Lyla helped for a while, then disappeared when neither was looking.
“Does she often vanish without a word?” Rose wondered.
Betty shrugged. “It’s not unusual.”
