Page 79 of Saved By The King's Gamma

She stares at it while I wait for her to come up with another excuse. Yet I had already spoken with Kyson. This would do for now until we move upstairs to the apartment on the top floor. It was smaller than this quarter but was reserved for long-term guests, but this place sometimes got a little loud at night with men coming in and out at all hours for their shifts. Abbie shakes her head, scooping him up, much to his dislike. She walks back out of the room toward ours, and I sigh.

“Abbie!” I call after her. She doesn’t stop to listen but marches into our room, clearly angry with me.

“No, he stays with us,” she snaps at me, and I grit my teeth, following after her.

“I’ll clean the room and get him a bigger toy box,” she says, setting him down on our bed.

“Abbie, he needs his own room. He can’t keep sleeping with us,” I tell her, and she pauses, looking at him.

“Fine, I get it. We’ll be out of your way, then,” she says, and I furrow my brows as she scoops up his clothes and toys, dumping them in a box. Tyson watches her climbing off the bed where she placed him and reaching for the blanket she was trying to put in the box.

“No, Bubba,” she tells him as he tries to pull it out.

“What are you doing?” I ask her, but she ignores me, cleaning the room up before taking the box and moving it to his room. I sigh, watching her place it inside the door before returning just as I move to grab Tyson, who was about to rush out after her.

Abbie plucks him off the ground before I have a chance to and turns on her heel, walking back to the room I had made for Tyson and shutting the door.

“Abbie?” I ask, twisting the handle to find she had locked the door. I grit my teeth and knock on it.

“Just go away, Gannon,” she says, leaving me in the hallway staring at the closed door.

“I didn’t say I wanted you to leave,” I yell at her through the door.

“No, just Tyson,” she retorts angrily. And I groan, scrubbing a hand down my face. I open my mouth to argue with her before closing it. Shaking my head angrily, I walk back to my room and slam my door.

She is being childish, and I am too tired to deal with her right now, so I climb into bed. Yet as the night comes and she still hasn’t returned to the room, I sit up, hearing the door open as the servant brings dinner up. She sets it down on the table.

“Abbie sent me up,” she tells me.

“And where is Abbie?” I ask her, rubbing my eyes.

“We just finished having dinner in the servant’s quarters. She is helping Clarice in the kitchens now.” A growl escapes me, which sends the servant rushing out of the room as I toss the blanket back and get to my feet.

38

Tyson sits next to Oliver near the pantry, the boys are playing with their mini dump trucks that they are running over cookies with while I help do the dishes with one of the other servants. Clarice bitched me out real good for being down here. Eventually, giving in, and I have been down here for a few hours helping prepare food for the guards and royals while also preparing the servants’ dinner.

I also find something soothing about cleaning or cooking. It is a task that occupies the mind, one that has an end result that can be seen. It is better than the thoughts that usually occupy my mind or, more like haunt it. Ghost of fragmented and distorted memories, twisted and wicked as they force me to relive the past on a never ending loop.

I suppose the other servants here look at me like I am a madwoman wanting to be a servant, but it is better than being me. Better than being Abbie. Nobody wants her, me, as Mrs. Daley would say.

Yet here, being a servant is like being invisible. We are the ghosts who clean and about the castle, sneaking into rooms before quickly leaving. Servants are the shadows of our master. We live with routine and repetition, no thinking, just working, my mind separated from my body as it handles the task it was told to do. Muscle memory takes over, and I no longer exist. I just float within myself as I move from task to task.

Apparently, Gannon told Clarice he doesn’t want me working now that I have Tyson. Yet he made it perfectly clear that Tyson was no longer welcome. Therefore, I am not. What he also doesn’t realize is that working is the only peace I have known. I need to work, I want to work.

Clarice grabs the roster down from off the wall, looking for a spot to place me on. Drying my hands on a tea towel, I move toward her and peer down to see where she is putting me and which floor I will be working on. I hoped for my usual floor since it was our quarters, and I could have Tyson with me. Or maybe with Azalea.

“I can go back to my old post. I live up there, anyway,” I laugh, and Clarice sighs, chewing on the end of her pen. She sets it down and looks up at me.

“Abbie, Gannon will lose his head if I put you on this roster,” she says, tapping it with her index finger.

“Which is why you won’t be!” Gannon snarls, making me jump. Turning around, I spot him at the entryway. Gannon storms through the kitchen and passes me while looking for Tyson. Tyson instantly jumps to his feet across the room at the sound of his voice.

Gannon glares at me as he passes me, moving across the room, and scoops him up. The room falls quiet, and I glance around nervously as he turns to face me before stalking toward me. He is furious. Did the servant wake him? I told her to just set it on the table so she didn’t wake him. I knew I should have taken it up. I know how to move around that floor silently.

“Why are you down here?” he snaps at me, and the tone of his voice is one I have never had directed at me before. And it shakes me to the core.

My eyes widen when he snarls and reaches for me. All I see is his hand coming toward me, hyper-focused on it for mere seconds, and it is all I can see besides the fury on his face. I squeeze my eyes shut, and my body tenses, a noise I am not sure if I make or someone else sounds around me. My heart is pounding so hard in my chest that I can hear it in my ears.

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