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Chapter 8

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Chapter 8

She's real.

The words echoed through Andala's mind, her body, pulsing in time with her heart.

She's real. She's real. She's real.

Witnessing the skylark's song was like nothing Andala had ever experienced. She had not so much heard it as felt it – its glow, its gold-bright magic, as if its notes were sunrays themselves, warming her skin, her bones. She was always cold, even in summer, but when the woman – Oriane – had called and the dawn had answered, Andala might have been sinking into a warm bath, or being kissed by a hearth fire's radiant heat.

And she had found herself thinking: perhaps it wasn't so bad, what she had done. If this was what the skylark could do – if this was how her song made people feel … Perhaps it had been right to reveal her after all.

But then her thoughts turned darker, as they always did.

What right had Andala to justify her actions? Who was she to try to fool herself into thinking they served anyone but herself? She knew what the king sought, though not why. Oriane might become what he needed, but at what cost? Her freedom? Something more? 60

And there was something else pervading Andala's thoughts, too; something petty, something ugly. Envy. It seeped into her mind like poison, tainting the golden memory of what she'd seen the skylark do. Oriane had seemed so at ease up there on that dais. So in control. So comfortable in herself and her song.

Andala clenched her teeth as a spike of pain lanced through her, as if to punish her for her thoughts, or remind her what had caused them. She breathed deeply, once, twice. When the pain had dulled, she turned to the cupboard that took up most of her little room in the servants' quarters. She sifted through its contents until she found the little bottle of tonic she was seeking. Kitt had made it for her several months ago now, but there was still some left. She'd used it less and less often recently – not because she hadn't needed it, but because it did little to actually help.

‘You're in pain sometimes, aren't you?' Kitt had said to her one day, about a year after she'd begun working at the palace. They were taking tea in his rooms, Andala sitting beside him at his desk while he worked on some contraption or another. She couldn't remember exactly when or how she and Kitt had become friends – she had tried to avoid any such familiarity with others. But at some point this had become a ritual for them, one Andala had come to look forward to; it broke up the drudgery of her day-to-day toil as part of the kitchen staff.

She looked up sharply at his question. ‘What do you mean?'

Her tone was harsher than she'd intended, but Kitt didn't shy away. ‘You hide it well, but a physician is trained to see these things,' he continued. ‘It seems to bother you more as the day gets later.'

Andala had opened her mouth, closed it again. He was right, of course, but she couldn't have told him that. 61

To her relief, Kitt hadn't pried for further details. He simply went to his room of medical supplies and returned with a little bottle, plain and unlabelled.

‘A tablespoon a day, two at the most,' he had instructed, handing it to her. ‘I don't know if it will help, but I promise it can't hurt.'

She had almost refused it. Had almost pushed the bottle away and stood, ready to leave Kitt's rooms with every intention of not coming back. She didn't need this, any of it – not the medicine, not his perceptiveness or his tact, especially not his kindness.

Instead, Andala had taken the tonic. Her gratitude was quiet, almost silent, but genuine. And Kitt had understood, as he so often did, without another word needing to be said.

Each time she took tea with him after that, there was a new little bottle waiting on his desk, ready for Andala to take should she need to replenish her supply. She kept doing so long after she'd become certain that the tonic had no effect. Even though it didn't help, as Kitt had said, it didn't hurt.

She took a spoonful now, relishing the medicine's bitter tang. It was bracing, restorative. It helped her prepare to face the skylark once more.

She's real. She's real. She's real.

This time the words were a war drum, marching Andala back into the battle she'd created for herself.

The skylark was real – and as long as all eyes were on Oriane, Andala knew none would land on her.

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