Page 37 of Beyond Those Gilded Walls

The Soulshade tipped its head back and screamed. I struggled to not react and forced myself to keep my eyes on the Soulshade rather than searching out Tallon to see if he was reacting. Tightening my grip on the tray, I changed my path, going towards the other doorway near where Maricara worked.

I tracked its approach in my periphery, but I had no time to react before it was on me, just as the one the previous night had been. Frozen talons burned as they clawed through my chest and I faltered. Time slowed as, clutching at my breastbone through the veil, I watched the tray fall to the ground. A cascade of shattered glass echoed, falling in a maelstrom across the floor as I fell to my knees. The stone floor of the ballroom was typically frigid, but now seemed ablaze compared to the icy grip around my heart.

I could notbreathe. My heart thumped wildly in my chest and my mind was besieged with flashing visions that were not my own.

A library's vaulted expanse and rows of wooden shelves, the silhouette of a man's nape, a goblet raised in a toast, corridors stretching throughout the castle, a return to the library, and finally, a man’s hand, adorned in rings and reaching forth, clasping my throat.

The visions that ensnared me felt so real, so true, though I could still see the ballroom around me through the vision. Maricara and Elena continued gaping at me, their lips moving, but I could not breathe, the spectral hand tightening around my throat as it did in the vision. My heart constricted in my chest, the regular thumping of my blood against my veins in my throat slowing as the cold seemed to spread, pervasive through my body.

A slightly warmer cold brushed against my leg, and then the sensation and visions were gone. I slumped forward, hands falling to catch myself and narrowly missing embedding more glass into my flesh. The cat wove its body between my arms and my knees, winding itself around my wrists in a figure eight and looking up at me.

Relief washed through me and I let my eyes fall closed.

“What iswrongwith you?” Maricara’s voice finally cut through the haze. Footsteps stomped towards me and she yanked my veil from my head. Fingers twisted in my hair and hauled me to my feet. I didn’t resist her, though I likely should have.

Tallon was still watching me from the balcony. The cat hissed at her from my side.

“Did you justhissat me?” Maricara demanded. She’d let go of my hair but was still in my face, her shoes crunching against the glass shards I’d spilt.

I couldn’t help the smile that stretched over my lips, couldn’t stop the laughter that bubbled up from my chest, uncontrollable and far from humorous. Of course she would hear that.

In a small way, I was honored the cat was defending me. This strange, wrong creature, an echo of a soul that clung to the living, was trying to comfort me. How sad that this was the first being, living or dead, that had ever defended me in my entire life. It was equally pathetic and endearing, and only made the laughter crescendo.

Not for the first time, I had an overwhelming desire to be able to pet it.

Once the laughter finally stopped spilling from my lips, Maricara and Elena were standing in front of me, looking at me curiously. “You will be the ruin of us all, and I will not stand for it. Camelya will be hearing about this.”

“She already has,” Camelya’s voice echoed into the nearly empty ballroom from the doorway. “Odyssa, come with me. The others will clean up the glass.”

I hardly questioned following her. The Soulshade had ruined the only night I’d had since I started that had not ended in some other catastrophe, and it seemed I was out of chances. Idly, I was aware that I no longer felt Tallon’s gaze on my back, but I could not muster any care to turn back and search for him. He did not care about me, nor should he.

I followed Camelya into a sitting room down the hallway from the ballroom’s entrance. The door swung silently on its hinges behind me, shutting us in with a soft thunk.

Camelya stood by the window, and though her attempts at dismissal by turning her back to me were obvious, they were weakened by the quick darting of her glances over her shoulder back at me, and the way her clasped hands trembled at their place at her lower back. “I understand you are grieving, Odyssa, but this cannot keep happening. Some of the others report you are being careless.”

I said nothing, though I kept my head high. Observing. Perhaps it made me a bad person that I enjoyed the sight of her fear, but the knowledge was a comfort. I did not know why my Death marks had begun reacting to my emotions, why they came to life to protect me, but I was hardly in a position to wish they had not.

“If patterns hold, your paycheck will be withheld and any opportunity for communication outside the castle will be revoked.” She let out a little breath on a nod, as though proud she got through her declaration without her voice shaking. “Tomorrow’s party is your last chance. Any more mistakes after that will be taken to the prince.”

The words resonated in my ears, but they took a moment to settle before I truly understood the implications.If you mess up again, your brothers will pay the price and they will die without a word from you.The letter I had written Emyl weighed heavily in my heart. It was still sitting there on my desk, waiting to be finished. Now, perhaps it never would be.

The threat of the prince held no dominion over me. There was little he could do that would be worse than that. My brothers may have written me off, but my mother watched from the land of the dead, and I would not fail her.

Slowly, I removed the shroud from my head so that I could see Camelya without the tinge of orange.

She tracked each movement closely with narrowed eyes.

“Do you enjoy being cruel? Enjoy being able to play puppeteer to these lives in your hands? Does the control make you feel powerful?” I took a step towards her with each question. To her credit, she did not flinch or back away.

“Life is cruel, Odyssa, and cruelty often keeps you alive.” Her eyes slipped down to my arm again, but the marks remained still. “Loyalty is a foolish notion; we all must look after our own interests and safety.”

“Be cruel unto others before they can be cruel unto you?”

She smiled wryly. “Precisely.”

“How shortsighted. To be cruel unto those who would never have been cruel unto you only makes you enemies you otherwise would not have. You should be careful: one day, you might make an enemy who can be far crueler than you.”

Her passive face flickered into a frown for a moment, fear flashing in her eyes before she was able to school her features back into placidness. “You are naive to think there are people who would never wish cruelty upon you. Especially in this place.”

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