Page 14 of A Court of Masks and Roses
“You seem lonely,” a melodic voice drew Violet’s attention to a pair of girls who’d stopped before her. They were probably a couple of years older than her, and both wore loose red dresses, baskets of dying carnations hanging from their elbows. Children of the Goddess.
“Would you care for a bit of company?” said the other girl, this one slightly plumper and no less pretty.
Both of the girls smiled with the warmest, friendliest smiles Violet had ever seen.
9
KALI
Igroan awake the morning after my encounter with Wil and Trace, and wince as I sit up on Kal’s hard cot. Trace made good on his threat to draw blood, but after years of Lord Gapral’s discipline, the welts and cuts Trace left are little more than an inconvenience. Beyond my tiny window, dawn is breaking in red and orange hues that give the Eye of the Goddess an ethereal glow. I stare out at the grounds, marking the routine of patrols, memorizing the keep’s daily pulse. The distantbum...bum... of the temple bell calls devout women to the morning service, where Bishop Bahir and his disciples will instruct the Goddess’s daughters on their duty to produce offspring at any cost to mind or body. Closer to me, trainees stumble into the courtyard with all the enthusiasm of bears waking from hibernation.
I shrug into my uniform and buckle a practice sword to my waist, hoping that Kal’s second day proves less exciting than his first. I’m just starting on the jacket buttons when the door to my tiny room bangs open.
My knives are in my hands in a heartbeat.
“Hello, Trouble,” says my guest, pushing a cascade of red-brown hair behind an ear, only to have the thick strands drape right back over his light-brown eyes.
“Hells, Luca.” I slip the weapons back into their sheaths and make a mental note to lock my door even when I’m inside. “Have you not heard of knocking?”
“Aye. It usually makes the same sound as the whack of your head against a wall. Lounge in bed a bit longer and you’ll feel that too. Have you recovered from your acquaintance with Trace?” His grin takes the sting out of the words, but my face heats regardless.
“If I never see that man again, it will be too soon.” I throw frigid water on my face and attack my teeth with a brushing stick. If Luca insists on gracing me with his presence this morning, he can entertain himself.
“Yes, about that...” Luca helps himself to an apple I’ve been saving. I consider smacking him for it, but the guard gobbles it down like a starved wolf, and I decide I should be fortunate that he hasn’t eaten the shelf along with the fruit. “If my information is correct, and it typically is when it comes to things that will royally annoy someone, it appears that His Royal Highness Prince William has requested that one Trainee Cassidy be assigned to his personal guard. Quite the honor.”
My hand freezes mid-brush.
“But—” Luca pauses to survey my gear. Black trousers, blue shirt, a thick leather vambrace that conceals real throwing knives beneath. “But as neither the king nor the guard master, nor anyone else with any wits, believes that a trainee with four hours’ experience is the optimal watchdog for a crown prince, they came to a compromise designed to make everyone unhappy in one shot.”
I turn to him slowly and scowl at his spreading grin. “Iwillthrottle you if you don’t get to the point.”
Luca pulls my newly issued practice sword free of its sheath on my hip and uses his boot knife to roughen the grip. “Trace is your new sponsor.”
I choke on my tooth-cleaning powder. The man who tried to intimidate me into betraying someone’s trust is my new bloodysponsor? The brushing stick in my hand snaps under the pressure. “No.”
“Well, we both are, but mostly Trace,” Luca continues as if I hadn’t spoken. “He’s in charge, as you may have gathered.”
“Cassidy.” The low bark comes from the door, now blocked with Trace’s frame. Rays of sunlight curl around his hair, giving him a soft glow that’s utterly at odds with the hard set of his jaw.
My quarters, lavish as they are, seem to have become a common room this morning.
“Training grounds,” Trace says, the sun returning to my room as he pushes himself back into the courtyard. “Five minutes.”
Luca winks and tosses my practice blade back into my hands. The grip, roughened beneath Luca’s blade, is more comfortable but only half-finished. “You’ll want to use one of the keep blades for now,” he says, following after Trace. “See you soon, cub. And bring a waterskin.”
Alone in my room, I take a moment to curse soundly before grabbing my gear and resigning myself to an unpleasant morning.
Trace and Luca are already working at the far end of the grassy training grounds when I jog out. Moving past the herd of trainees lining up before the guard master, I feel their gazes searing my back. Getting an assignment and sponsors only one day after arrival is unlikely to make me many friends—not thatI am looking for any. Not that these sponsors—one sponsor in particular—are envy worthy.
Trotting up, I find Luca in the middle of an abdominal exercise, swinging his upper body between the ground and his bent knees while Trace braces his feet. Right. Of course Trace has chosen something to irritate my back, lest I forget who holds the power in this new setup.
“Two hundred two, two hundred three,” Trace counts for Luca. “Two hundred four.”
I sit on the ground beside Luca, the dampness of the earth seeping through my clothes as the smell of fresh-cut grass rises around me. I wonder if Trace expects me to balk or complain, and if he’ll be disappointed when I don’t.
“Two hundred twenty,” Trace counts to Luca’s unwavering rhythm. “Two hundred twenty-one.”
Maybe he doesn’t care either way. Crossing my arms over my chest in imitation of Luca, I bend my knees and start lowering my shoulders to the ground. At least Trace chose grass. Lord Gapral would have had me on gravel.
