Chapter Three

The day began as most days did — with cold stone underfoot and the familiar ache in my hands before the sun had properly climbed the sky.

Mistress Hale had me in the scullery first, hauling buckets and scrubbing the soot from last night’s pots until the water turned black and my fingers stung from lye. When the cook clapped her hands and declared the hearth was hungry again, I was sent to fetch kindling from the lower stores. When the pantry boy dropped a sack of grain and split it open like a careless wound, I was made to sweep every last kernel from the corners as though my life depended on it.

In truth, it often did.

A general maid does not belong to one hall or one household. I belonged to need. To the next voice calling from the next doorway. To the endless list of tasks that kept the castle clean and running while noblefolk slept and argued and prayed and feasted above our heads.

By midmorning, I was given the basket and told to take it to the seamstress — thread, needles, a strip of linen, and a note Mistress Hale had sealed with wax as if a servant’s errands were matters of state. I set off at once, because punctuality is one of the few forms of respect we are permitted to claim.

The corridor I took was not the grand one, with the tall banners and shining windows. It was the service passage, narrow and dim, the sort of place built for bodies to move through quickly without being noticed. The stones there held the chill longer than elsewhere, and the air smelled faintly of damp, like old rain caught in mortar.

I had nearly reached the bend when I felt it — the sudden sense of presence behind me, as if the corridor itself had taken a breath.

“Edith.”

My steps stopped before I willed them to. Not because the sound was loud — it was not — but because it was mine. My name, spoken plainly, without a shout, without an order thrown like a bone.

I turned slowly, the basket held tight against my hip.

He stood beneath the archway, half-shadowed by the stone, close enough that I could see the faint marks of morning on him — the damp at his temples, the way his shirt sat open at the throat as though he had dressed in haste. Not adorned for court. Not surrounded by men. No escort, no flurry of attendants to soften his presence.

Only him.

And the corridor felt suddenly far too narrow for the two of us.

“Your Highness,” I said, and dipped my head, careful to keep my eyes lowered in the proper way. Respect was easy. Safety was harder.

“I won’t keep you long,” he replied.

It was the sort of thing noblemen said when they meant the opposite.

“I’m on an errand,” I answered, voice even.

“I know.” A pause — brief, deliberate. “That’s why I chose this passage. You’ll be missed for no more than a minute.”

My fingers tightened around the basket handle.

He had chosen the place. Chosen the quiet. Chosen the moment where no one else would be near enough to hear my answers — or see his interest.

That was what unsettled me. Not that he had stopped me, but that he had stopped me properly, as though he had thought it through.

“What do you want of me, Your Highness?” I asked. I meant it politely. I meant it as a boundary.

His gaze lifted to my face fully then. Not the passing glance a noble gives a servant, skimming as if one were furniture. He looked as though he wished to know what he saw.

“How long have you been here?” he asked.

The question surprised me. It was not a command disguised as curiosity. It was simply a question.

“Since I was young,” I said after a moment.

“And before Hawthorne?” he pressed.

I hesitated. Truth is dangerous when offered upward.

“There was little before Hawthorne,” I answered carefully. “Only work elsewhere.”

His mouth shifted as though he might speak, then he didn’t. He watched me in that quiet way again — not cold, not cruel, but measuring. As if my caution interested him more than my words.

“You’re a general maid,” he said, as though he were fitting a piece into place. “They send you everywhere.”

“Yes.”

“Which means you see more than most.”

I lifted my eyes then, just enough to meet him without challenging him. “We see what we’re meant to see.”

“And what are you meant to see?” he asked.

The question landed like a hand at my throat — not tightening, not choking, simply resting there, reminding me who held power and who did not.

I swallowed once. “My work.”

He studied me for a long moment, and in that silence the corridor seemed to hold its breath with us. I became painfully aware of small things — the sound of my own pulse, the faint scent of steel and soap on him, the way the chill air raised a fine prickling along my arms.

“You choose your words like someone older than you are,” he said at last.

“It’s a habit,” I replied. “It keeps one out of trouble.”

His gaze dropped briefly to the basket, then returned to my face. “Does it?”

“Yes,” I said. Then, before I could stop myself — before sense could tighten the reins — I added softly, “Most of the time.”

For the first time, something flickered in him that looked almost like amusement. Not laughter. Not warmth. Only the smallest break in his severity, as if he had not expected me to speak like that.

“You’re not afraid of me,” he said.

I felt the words in my ribs. Felt the truth of them and the danger.

“I am careful,” I answered. “That is not the same.”

He did not move closer, but I felt the shift in him all the same — attention sharpening, intent deepening, as though that answer had pleased him in some way he had not anticipated.

The corridor seemed to narrow further. It would have taken only one step for him to stand too close, for the air between us to become something else entirely. A mistake. A scandal. A ruin.

But he remained where he was, as if he understood the line as well as I did.

“Your errand,” he said, voice quiet now. “What are you carrying?”

I glanced down, grateful for the question’s harmlessness. “Supplies for the seamstress.”

“And you’ll go next where?”

I lifted my gaze again, guarded. “Wherever I’m sent.”

A pause.

He held my eyes for a heartbeat too long, and in that heartbeat I felt something I did not want to name — that strange pull, like the world had shifted its weight and I was standing just slightly off balance.

Then he stepped back, just enough to let the light catch his face.

“That’s all,” he said. “Go on.”

Relief came sharp and immediate, followed by something else that unsettled me more — disappointment, faint as a bruise, because he had released me so easily.

I dipped my head once more. “As you wish, Your Highness.”

I walked past him with measured steps, refusing to hurry, refusing to show that my nerves had sparked. The basket did not shake. My hands did not tremble. I kept my face composed as any proper servant ought.

Only when I reached the bend — only when the corridor opened into brighter space — did I allow myself a breath deep enough to feel.

I delivered the supplies. I returned to the lower halls. I scrubbed and swept and carried until my shoulders burned and my feet ached. Life resumed its steady cruelty, as if nothing had happened.

Yet the castle felt changed.

Not in its stones. Not in its rituals. In the way I moved through it.

Once, I had walked these corridors certain I was unseen. Certain my name belonged only to those who needed it to give orders.

Now I found myself listening for footsteps that were not meant to follow. Watching reflections in polished brass where I ought not have looked. Feeling the phantom weight of a gaze in places where shadows gathered.

And when, hours later, I passed near the edge of the great hall and caught sight of him across the space — speaking with a man of rank, posture composed, face unreadable — I felt it again.

Not surprise.

Recognition.

His eyes turned, only briefly, and found me as though he had expected to.

I lowered mine at once, as I should. I did not slow. I did not pause.

But the knowledge stayed with me, hot and unwelcome beneath my ribs, long after the moment had passed.

He had sought me out in a narrow place.

He had asked questions.

And worst of all —

He had listened to the answers.

That night, when I lay on my pallet in the servants’ quarters with my hands throbbing and the day’s filth still clinging beneath my nails, I told myself there was nothing in it. Nothing that mattered. Nothing that could touch me.

Yet the corridor returned to me all the same — the chill air, the hush, the deliberate sound of my name.

And in the dark, I found myself wondering what he had truly wanted to learn.

Or whether he had only wanted to see if I would speak to him at all.