“I’m up there all the time,” Wrenley says, touching her own white flower.
Eldy looks back at the trunk. “All right, Miss Rosalina, let me explain some of the ingredients.”
Marigold and Astrid gather around as well, and we all listen attentively as he describes the healing components. Out of my peripheral vision, I watch Wrenley tossing the old flowers in the vases and replacing them with the new ones. An uneasy feeling settles in my stomach. Stop being ridiculous, I chide myself. Disliking her because Dayton doesn’t is selfish.
Turning away from my friends, I face Wrenley only to see her bent over the letter on my end table.
“Excuse me, that’s private.” I hurry over and snatch the letter out from under her.
“Apologies, my lady, I meant no offense.” She leaps back, blue eyes wide. “I didn’t mean to invade. I only caught sight of a few words and became concerned. Your father … He is ill?”
I take a deep breath. It’s not really private, figuring the three of us were all talking about it. “Yes, he was on an excursion in the Autumn Realm but has grown weak with malaise. The healers in Coppershire will examine him, and then Prince Ezryn will have him transported here.”
She blinks at me. “Your father is coming here?”
“Yes. Ezryn said Spring would be the best place for him to heal.”
Wrenley stares at me intently. “You’re concerned for him.” It almost sounds like a question.
“Of course I am,” I snap, my voicer harsher than I intended it. “He’s my father.”
She steps back as if struck. “Apologies. I haven’t seen my family much since coming to the monastery.”
Immediately, guilt floods my chest. I sigh and place the letter back on the end table. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you. The worry is getting to me, I guess.”
Her fingers drift over the letter lightly, curiously. “This is his writing?”
“Yes. Explorer’s scrawl, he would call it. So messy you can barely read it.”
“I can read it,” she says quietly.
There’s a flash of emotion on her face, and I wonder if my story strikes a chord with her. “There were times when my father and I had some distance between us,” I say. “But we’ve reconnected recently. There’s so much we still have to learn about each other. So much I have to tell him.”
“I understand.”
“Are you close with your father?”
Her gaze shoots up from the paper, and a grin spreads across her lips. “Oh yes, very close. My father loves me very much, more than anything. He’s a cartographer in the Summer Realm. Travels a lot, making maps.”
“That sounds fascinating,” I say. At the party, I’d sworn she’d said her father was a vendor. Maybe I misheard, or it was before his mapmaking days.
Wrenley grabs my hand and squeezes it tightly. “You’ve been blessed with much throughout your life, Lady O’Connell. I will pray to the Queen that such blessings do not run out.”
I stay rooted to the spot as Wrenley steps out of the room.
I walk back to my friends and engage with their conversation, but my heart is stuck on Wrenley’s words.
There have been so many blessings in my life, and I’ve had to fight for each one.
Nothing, not even the Queen herself, will take them from me.
73
Rosalina
I must go up the mountain.
The thought strikes me slowly, creeping through my mind as I attempt to follow Eldy’s words. I’m still standing in a circle with him, Marigold, and Astrid in my bedchamber, and we were having a conversation about something, but this thought keeps creeping in.
I must go up the mountain.
“Up the mountain! Come on, darling! Up the mountain!” It’s a woman’s voice, light and ethereal, calling to me through the door. Well, I can’t keep her waiting. Whoever she is, I know she’s important.
I open the door and walk out into the hallway. Distantly, I notice my friends walking beside me.
“I must go up the mountain,” Marigold says.
“Indeed. Up the mountain,” Astrid responds.
Eldy nods. “Up the mountain. Up the mountain.”
Oh good. We’re all going up the mountain.
We walk out of the keep and past the guards.
“Lady O’Connell!” one calls. “High Prince Ezryn requested you have an escort if you leave the keep.”
“Up the mountain,” I tell her.
The guard looks around. “Majordomo, shall I call for an official escort?”