“Yara told me you were back,” Layla said in a hurried voice, getting straight to the point. “I’m sorry, but Nyla has a task for you.”
“Now?” I stared at her in dismay.
“She wants you to polish all the silverware. She says it needs to be done by morning.”
“Polish the silverware?” My eyes widened. Although I often helped out where needed, that job was usually completed by the kitchen staff and on a set schedule.
Layla gave me a sympathetic grimace. “She’s insisting it has to be you, but you’d better do the polishing in here, so you stay out of her way.”
My eyebrows rose. “It’s that bad?”
“Worse,” she said gloomily. “It turns out Yasmine was invited to the palace last night and—in case that wasn’t bad enough—she turned up for tea this afternoon because shejust knew Nyla would want to hear all about it.”
I gasped, my sympathy growing. “If there’s one woman who would make a worse mistress than Nyla…” I shook my head.
“She’s miserly to her servants,” Layla said, her voice making it clear she considered such behavior the worst of all crimes. “At least we’re well compensated for Nyla’s…moods.”
I nodded, not bothering to point out that only some of the servants were well paid.
“I know you’re determined to remain in your role here,” she said, her voice making it clear she shared Yara’s opinion that I could do better for myself elsewhere, “so I suggest you stay out of sight. Or Nyla might finally lose her temper enough to actually throw you out.”
I grimaced. The last thing I needed was more upheavals tonight. I glanced at the scales, struck by an idea.
“Ali asked me to help him tomorrow as well. I’ll leave first thing in the morning, before Nyla’s up. If I can stay out of her way the whole day, she might have calmed down again by tomorrow night.”
“An excellent plan,” Layla said promptly. “If she asks for you, I’ll tell her you’re in the forest. Here, you better give me your plate. I’ve left everything you need for the polishing just here.” She gestured to the wall beside my door.
As she brushed off my profuse thanks and bustled off down the corridor, I looked at the piled silverware with a sigh. I’d be up half the night completing the unnecessary task. At least my friend had helped by collecting everything I needed so I could stay hidden for now.
I glanced back up to catch a final glimpse of Layla. She was only fifteen years older than me, but she carried herself as if she were a peer of Rowan and Yara who must be two decades older again. A lot of the newer servants in the household found her too abrupt, thinking it came from hauteur, but it was just her natural manner.
Despite Yara and Rowan’s championing, Layla hadn’t taken to me at first. She must have considered me a rival for her position given Nyla had chosen me—a brand new servant—for the grand trip to Sirrala in Layla’s place. But given how the visit had turned out, her suspicion and resentment transformed to sympathy within weeks. We had long ago become allies. And while officially I was a general maid, providing help wherever it was needed in the house, I most often worked with Layla.
Bringing the armloads inside, I set myself up and began polishing, whisking my cloth across the silver surface of a candlestick as quickly as I could. I needed to be gone promptly in the morning and couldn’t afford to oversleep, which meant I needed to get the task finished sooner rather than later.
As I worked on the monotonous task, my eyes were continuously drawn back to the scales as the events of the afternoon replayed in my head. A magical cave full of wonders beyond counting was enough to distract anyone, but it wasn’t the cave that intruded most on my thoughts.
The thieves had made a more intimidating picture and, as I pushed the cloth back and forth, I realized I was even more concerned about them than about the possibility of an enchantment.
As I moved from one piece of silverware to the next, I pondered the unanswerable questions: would they realize someone had stolen from the cave? And what would they do if they did?
A gang of forty cutthroat thieves would be frightening enough, but I couldn’t shake the certainty there was something strange about their behavior. Did they steal—despite all the risks—just for the joy of it? What possible reason could there be for someone with access to such riches to resort to thievery?
The idea increased the sense of danger that surrounded them, and a new guilty thought crept over me. In the initial shock of discovery, Ali and I had naturally been focused on our discovery of the fabled second treasure cave. But we had found something else as well—the headquarters of the dangerous gang who had been plaguing the roads of Kuralan for decades.
Rek was looking for those thieves, and I could tell him where to find them. It was almost as if he had known that when he chose to lie in wait for us inside the city gates. But he couldn’t possibly have done. Something else had driven him to wait there, and for some reason that was an even more intriguing thought than the cave and the thieves put together.
It was foolish and illogical to focus on Rek in the middle of everything else, but I couldn’t help the way my thoughts kept circling back to him.
I put down one item and picked up the next without even looking at it.
Rek had looked so different and yet so familiar. What did Adara and the twins look like now? Would the best friend of my childhood look unrecognizably grown up and sophisticated?
But despite the shock of seeing Rek, nothing had actually changed. Dwelling on the royals was as foolish now as it had been three years ago. Nothing Rek had done or said had given the impression he wished to resume old friendships. Instead he had hovered on the edge of anger, clearly consumed by emotions I didn’t fully understand.
What could I possibly have done to provoke him? I had obediently left the palace when instructed to do so, and I had meekly worked for Nyla ever since, putting up with all her abuse and turning myself into a valuable member of her household. And never once in all that time had I attempted to push my unwelcome presence on the royals. What could Rek possibly have against me?
And yet, the more I thought about our two brief encounters, the more his behavior and words seemed as incomprehensible as that of the thieves. What had he said to me?