Chapter Two: The Household's Wrath
Ash did not sleep. The letter lay beneath her pillow, warm from her hand, the seal cracked and flaking. When the rain softened toward morning, she tried to close her eyes. The name on the parchment would not let her. Virelli. She mouthed it once in the dark and felt foolish, then brave, then sick.
The trapdoor jerked open at first light. Marn's face appeared in the square of gray air, hair frizzing from the damp.
"You. Up. Lord Veynar wants you in the hall."
Ash slid the letter into her apron, pressed it flat against her ribs, and climbed down the ladder. The stairwell smelled of lye and old smoke. Her boots thudded on stone, each step too loud. Servants paused with baskets in their arms and then turned away, as if they had not seen her.
The great hall of Darethmoor stretched long and cold. Flags hung between the windows like tired wings. Ash stopped at the edge of the carpet and kept her hands at her sides.
Lord Veynar stood before the hearth. Lady Veynar sat slightly behind him, rings bright against the curve of her goblet. Their son lounged at the mantel with the lazy smile he wore when he planned to be cruel. On a table near the fire lay the letter. The broken seal bled red into the fibers.
"So," Lord Veynar said. "Our attic girl receives very fine post."
Ash stared at the table. "It was addressed to me."
"Bold," he said. "And convenient. Shall we call it a prank, or a theft. Or something worse." He lifted the parchment and read aloud, every word a needle. "Ashleigh Eleanora Virelli. Summoned to Virelai Academy."
Lady Veynar set down her goblet. "Virelli. In our house. We would have known."
The young master laughed. "She can barely scrub a floor. Now she belongs in a hall of scholars."
Ash stepped forward before she knew she meant to move. "I can read, my lord. I can sign my name. I did not forge it."
"Then you found it," he said. "Or paid for it. There are men who will sell any crest that glitters."
"I found nothing," she said. "It came to me. The driver spoke my name."
"Drivers will say what they are paid to say."
Lady Veynar tilted her head. "Even if it is true, this is an embarrassment. Imagine the talk. A Virelli sleeping above our ledgers. The neighbors will think we have hidden a snake in our rafters."
Marn shifted her weight near the door. The other servants tried to look like walls. The young master studied his nails and smiled.
Lord Veynar rolled the parchment in his hands. "There is a remedy for all this. We send you to the gate and let the Academy enjoy their error. You will stand there until the rain rots you through. When no one comes, you will learn what a name is worth."
Heat rose into Ash's throat. She took one step closer to the table. He lifted the letter toward the fire.
She did not think. She moved. Her fingers closed around the parchment a breath before the flames kissed it. The room drew a single shocked breath. Marn's hand flew to her mouth. The young master straightened, bright with interest.
Lord Veynar looked down at her hand on his. For a moment his face was blank. Then he smiled without warmth. "Very well," he said softly. "Keep your paper. Keep the trouble that rides with it. You were never ours."
The words cut clean. They should have freed her. Instead they hollowed her out.
He nodded at the guards. "See her to the door. Give her what is hers."
They pressed a satchel into her arms that was not hers at all. Two shirts. A bar of cheap soap. Stitching thread in a tin. As if she were leaving for a short voyage and would return by supper. She slid the letter into the satchel, then changed her mind and tucked it back against her skin.
The rain had not stopped. It fell in a fine, needling sheet that turned the courtyard to a mirror. At the far edge of the drive, a carriage waited. Black lacquer, iron corners, the crest on the door catching the gray light.
Ash hesitated on the threshold. The servants had followed her into the portico. Some watched with hunger, as if a story might be born in front of them. Some watched with pity that tasted like ash. The young master had come to the steps and leaned on the rail, already bored.
The driver stepped down. He wore a plain coat, rain beading on the shoulders. His eyes were pale, almost colorless, and far too calm. He took in Ash, the satchel, the thin apron rope knotted tight around her waist. He bowed the smallest bow a person can make and still call it one.
"This way, my lady," he said.
The words hit like a stone dropped in a still pool. The ripples reached every face under the portico. Marn sucked in air. Someone whispered a prayer against ill luck.
Lord Veynar stepped forward, voice clipped and hard. "She is no lady. She scrubs our floors."
The driver looked at him without blinking. "And yet, she is summoned."
Ash felt her face heat. She could not tell if it was shame or something like triumph. The line between them had always been thin.
She crossed the stones and stopped at the carriage step. For a moment she looked back. The manor rose behind her, windows dark as old bruises. She had scrubbed those floors until her hands cracked. She had watched the wind pull ivy from the walls and had pushed the leaves out of the gutters with a broom she was not meant to touch. Nothing in that house had ever belonged to her. Not even the bed.
"Get in," Lord Veynar said. He did not raise his voice. He did not need to.
Ash placed her hand on the rail and climbed. The driver closed the door. The world narrowed to leather and shadow.
A figure sat in the far corner, half folded into the gloom. The carriage rocked and Ash gripped the strap above the window. Her eyes adjusted. The figure moved. The line of a jaw. The suggestion of a smile.
"Servant girl," he said quietly. "Interesting."
His voice was low and edged with something that did not belong to lords or housekeepers. She could not place it. He did not try to make the word kind, yet it did not sound like an insult either. It sounded like a test.
She forced her shoulders back. "My name is Ash."
The eyes in the corner of the carriage caught what little light there was. "I know," he said.
Rain ran in sheets across the glass. The wheels groaned. Darethmoor slid away.
For a few breaths she sat very still. Her heart beat against the folded letter, steady and too loud. The man across from her said nothing else. The driver's whip cracked once. Hooves struck stone and then mud. The road turned into a long, wet ribbon.
Ash let out the air she had been holding. The cold found the sweat at her collar and made her shiver. She pressed her palms together until the sting steadied her.
Behind them, the portico had emptied. The young master would already have forgotten the shape of her back. Marn would return to her lists. Lord and Lady Veynar would drink their chocolate and discuss the weather.
Ash watched the last spire of the manor sink behind the hedge.
The stranger in the corner shifted. Leather creaked. "You should sleep," he said.
"I am not tired."
"You are shaking."
"It is cold."
"It is more than cold." He leaned forward into the dim light. His hair was dark and damp from the rain. A fine white scar cut through one eyebrow. Under it, his eyes were a pale, unnatural gray with a ring of violet close to the pupil. The color did not look human.
Ash held his gaze. "Who are you."
"A friend," he said. It sounded almost true. "Or an enemy who has not decided yet."
She did not look away. "Then decide."
He smiled, small and sharp. "Good. You have a spine." He settled back into the corner again. "Sleep if you can. The road is long."
She did not sleep. She stared at the window until the glass stopped being a surface and became only rain and distance. She counted the letter's words again in her head. When the wheels hit a rut, the jolt knocked the count from her fingers and she started over.
Hours later the driver called through the panel in the roof. "Hold. Bridge."
The carriage slowed and swayed. Water roared somewhere below. Ash closed her hand around the satchel strap. The stranger's eyes were closed now, though she doubted he had drifted.
The bridge boards complained under the weight. The river's noise climbed the air and filled the carriage until conversation would have been a shout. Ash exhaled. On the far bank the road rose between black trees and disappeared into fog.
When they reached it, the driver snapped the reins and the horses found their rhythm again. The stranger opened his eyes without lifting his head.
"You will not be going back," he said.
"I know."
"Good," he said. "The ones who look back break."
She turned the words over and tried to make them fit anywhere inside her. They did not. They would later, perhaps. Not yet.
Dusk found them on a ridge. The land fell away in long dark swells. Far off, where the hills sharpened and the clouds sat lower, spires needled the sky. Lamps pricked into being like a string of distant stars. The sight reached into Ash and pulled her forward as if she were on a cord.
"What is that," she asked, her voice smaller than she wanted.
"The place that summoned you," the man said. "You will learn its name when you stand inside its doors."
Ash pressed her forehead to the cold window for a heartbeat, then pulled back. She did not want a smear to mark where she had been.
The carriage rolled on. The lamps on the far ridge brightened, then disappeared behind a stand of trees, then glowed again. The road narrowed. The air tasted older.
She touched the letter through the fabric of her apron and felt the press of the wax under her fingers. She did not know what the crest meant. She did not know what she would be when she reached the end of this road. She knew only that the attic was already a story from another life.
The stranger watched her and did not speak. The wheels kept time. The rain turned to mist and then to a fine grit of cold that found its way into her sleeves.
When the gates finally rose before them, iron curved into thorns and crowns, the driver did not announce their arrival. He only slowed the team and lifted the lantern high. Light washed over stone as old as any story. The hinges groaned. The carriage passed through.
Ash's breath fogged the glass. Her hand tightened on the strap until the leather cut a line into her palm.
The door latch clicked from the outside. The driver's voice carried in, calm and formal. "Welcome."
Ash did not move at first. She felt the stranger's eyes, felt the shape of the word that waited beyond the step. She stood, set her hand on the rail, and opened the door.
Cold air poured in, clean and sharp. She drew it deep and stepped down.