Chapter 5

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Chapter 5

The skylark was real, and Andala had found her.

She could have laughed at the irony of it, at the strange, stupid luck that had made it so. Andala could have laughed, but she didn't, because there was nothing funny about this situation. About what she'd done.

The skylark was real, and Andala had revealed her.

She had grown up with stories of the lark, of course. They'd been few and far between, tucked like treasures among the other myths and legends her mother favoured, but Leilyn had liked to tell them, had liked to think they would soothe her daughter into sleep as Andala lay still in the dark, too afraid to close her eyes. This was no story, though, no fanciful bedtime tale.

The skylark was real, and Andala hadn't even asked her name.

She did laugh then: quietly to herself, a sharp and bitter sound. It echoed oddly in the empty servants' hallway. She barely remembered walking through the palace to get here. Everything since she'd left the skylark's rooms was a haze, a blur.

The laugh became a gasp as pain shot through her body, radiating out from her chest, turning her bones cold and brittle as ice. She raised a hand to the wall to steady herself. The pain would pass; it always did, spiking sharply then settling back into its usual steady 39 ache. But it was a useful warning this time, a reminder that brought her out of the spiralling blizzard in her head.

Andala closed her eyes, took a deep breath in through her nose. Outside, the sun was setting. She needed to make her way back to the woods, where that morning she'd seen legend come to life.

She had revisited that moment, in the hours afterward, returned to it and watched it over in her mind; ran a hand along it until the memory shone smooth as a stone. She remembered the way her heart stopped as the bird morphed in mid-air. The way the impact shook her as the woman fell to earth.

She had known what she was looking at in an instant. Who she was looking at. It was absurd, really, that Andala should have been there of all places, then of all mornings.

She could have left the woman where she found her. She could have woken her, spoken to her, hidden her or helped her get away.

But temptation, and some dark instinct, had bade her do otherwise. You have to, she'd told herself. You must. Not just for you, but for—

She'd run to fetch a guard before she could stop to think about it. That guard had fetched another, and soon a handful of them had taken the unconscious woman from the woods and brought her into the palace on King Tomas's orders. And then Andala had been summoned to see the king herself.

Then, like now, a humourless laugh had bubbled up in her like poison. The whole point of being here was to hide herself in plain sight, to fade into the background like furniture, to make the money she needed and remain invisible. King Tomas hadn't known she existed before, and now she'd placed herself directly under his scrutiny. But as she'd faced the king, she'd steeled herself and kept her cool, told him exactly what she'd seen, and what she thought it meant. 40

The king had thought he was doing her a favour, an honour, when he'd rewarded her discovery with a new role as the skylark's personal attendant. She had not been able to refuse, though his words had made her want to run, once more, from what she'd brought upon herself.

But she would not run. She'd rally. She'd smother her guilt beneath a shroud of detachment. And when the sun had sunk fully and the cold moon had risen in its stead, she would return to the skylark's chambers, a servant, a stranger, a forgettable face.