The Theft of Sunlight, Intisar Khanani [best book club books for discussion txt] 📗

just another word for betrayal, Filadon said. And here it is, on the other side of the door from me.

“What else could I have possibly intended?” Jasmine inquires lightly. “Well, there is no help for it. We shall have to put up with the cripple until a replacement is found.”

“But didn’t your cousin—”

“I am well aware that my cousin was passed over, Zaria. There is no need to bring that up. I am quite sure you would have been passed over as well, had you not already been established as an attendant. Then again, if the princess is looking for peasants, none of us should have been selected.” Jasmine heaves a sigh, and I hear a rustle of cloth as she moves across the room, toward the door.

With a quick inhale, I raise my fist and rap on the doorframe, hard and loud, because retreat is not an option.

“Yes?” Jasmine swings open the door.

“You’re wanted,” I say briefly. “Both of you, in the princess’s rooms.”

“Veria,” Jasmine says, voice sharp.

I smile and dip my head, as if she were addressing me rather than schooling me in how to address her. Then I turn my back on her and start toward the room I share with Mina.

“You will address me as veria,” Jasmine says, her voice pitched to carry.

I turn back to her with a false smile plastered across my face. “Of course, just as you will address me as kelari,” I say. “What else would we call each other?”

She blinks at me, taken aback, and I seize the opportunity to slip into my room before she manages to snap a reply. Mina looks up from her desk, a letter half-written before her. “Are you back, then?”

I nod, though the answer is perfectly apparent. I can hear Jasmine muttering in the hallway, Zaria’s voice responding.

Whatever they’re saying, I don’t want to hear it. I start across the room toward my own desk.

“Amraeya? Are you all right? You seem to be . . .”

Haunted by an undead horse’s head? Paying the price of listening at doorways? I look toward Mina tiredly. “Yes?”

She watches me, eyes narrowed. “Is your foot hurting you?”

I grimace and sink into the chair. “A bit.” I cross my leg over my knee, slip off the still slightly muddy slipper, and inspect my foot. The skin is an angry red where the top of the shoe rubbed, and there are blisters already forming along the side of my foot.

Mina’s breath hisses between her teeth.

“Do you know where I can get some bandages?” I ask lightly. “I don’t think the cobbler quite made these shoes right.”

“You should, perhaps, see a healer,” she says, her voice that same detached polite tone she uses with the princess. But a faint line has appeared between her brows. Does she not allow herself to worry about others? Or rather, to show her concern?

“Is there—where would I find one?” I ask.

Mina smiles faintly. “We’re in a palace. There’s even a healer- mage, though she won’t see everyone. Do you wish to ask the princess to refer you?”

“No, they’re just blisters.” As long as they don’t get infected, I can manage. Mina nods and gives me directions to where I can find one of the resident healers, and then shoos me off.

I start back to the royal wing sometime later, my foot wrapped in bandages and my ears full of admonishments for wearing such shoes—in the pursuit of beauty! As if, the healer’s look said, I could attain such heights. I was more than happy to leave her care and hobble my way toward the royal wing. I take the back way there, up the stairs to the guard room so that I don’t cross paths with Jasmine if I can help it.

There’s only one group of four guards in the room—a standard quad. They are all steadily watching the doorway as I step through, as if they heard the uneven sound of my ascent, however quiet it seemed to me.

I offer a smile that is more grimace than anything, and head for the connecting doorway. One of them rises and moves to intercept me. I nod as the man reaches the doorway at the same time I do. He looks vaguely familiar. Did I see him this morning at the graveyard?

“Kelari Amraeya,” he says, dark eyes flicking over me. “Is all well?”

“Yes, kel,” I say uncertainly. “Is it not allowed to use the stairs?”

I specifically remember Mina recommending them as a less visible approach to the royal wing. I’d rather not think she misinformed me. Unless it was a different set of stairs she pointed out. . . .

The soldier gestures me through the door and steps out after me. “Not at all. It is only that the stairs are designed to amplify the sound of anyone coming up, that we may not be taken by surprise. We are not used to the sound of your step.”

“I see,” I say dryly.

The guard continues to walk with me. He wears the light armor of the royal guard, leather and studded velvet. He is easily a head taller than I am, with deep brown eyes and a generally pleasant face, though now the skin around his eyes is tight, and his jaw is set. The look of him puts me on edge. At least the door to the attendants’ quarters is right here.

“The princess seems pleased with you,” he says, turning his head to catch my gaze. The silver ring through his left ear glints in the light of the luminae lamps, the inset sapphire glittering blue. A highly placed captain, then, and not just a guard.

“Thank you,” I say, unsure what response he expects from me.

He comes to a stop before me, just blocking the door.

“There is something I hoped you could tell us. The second grave the princess visited this morning; what was in it?”

I look up at him, taken aback, the memory of the horse’s head flashing before my eyes.

“Yes, that expression,” he says. “You wore it at the graveyard as