Page 94 of The Crown’s Temptation

I tried to remember what else he had told me when a voice pulled me out of my thoughts.

"My mother says it’s rude to spy on people."

CHAPTER 22

The Girl in the Tunnel

Iturned.

She was standing a few feet behind me in the tunnel, barefoot, wearing a nightgown slightly too large for her. Her hair, black in the dim light, caught streaks of deep indigo and wine-red whenever it found the sun.

She had been there for some time. The announcement was a choice.

"Your mother is right," I said.

"She says many things that are right." She tilted her head and looked at me carefully. "You have golden hair. And golden eyes." A pause. "And you stare at two children." She considered this. "You must be the golden eyed woman my mother doesn't like."

And you must be Ivanoxa’s child, I thought to myself.

I said nothing.

I reminded myself that children in Morrath were not children the way children elsewhere were children and that whatever Nox was her daughter had not chosen her mother any more than I had chosen mine. Still. I could not stop wondering what a child was doing roaming the tunnels alone in her nightgown at whatever hour this was.

"What are you doing down here?" I said.

She looked at me as though the question had a very obvious answer she was deciding whether to share.

"Walking," she said.

She looked past me at the ward. At the two bassinets. At Saurin asleep in the chair. Then she pointed at the small stack of books near the bassinets.

"Why are they reading council ledgers?"

I laughed before I could stop myself. "Those are storybooks."

She looked at me. "What is a story?"

"Something that happened," I said. "Or something that did not happen but feels like it could have. Someone writes it down so other people can read it and feel what the people in it felt."

She considered this. "Why would you want to feel what someone else felt?"

"So you do not feel so alone in whatever you are feeling yourself."

She was quiet. Then, “I should like to try one of those."

"If you can find one I will read it to you," I said. "Or perhaps your mother will."

Something in her voice when she answered was careful. "Perhaps."

“When I was your age I wanted someone to read me a story too,” I offered. “But I did not have anyone.”

“What sort of story did you want them to read you?”

“There was one I would always hear other parents telling their children. It was called The Hare and the Crown. I was fascinated with it, but I was never able to hear how the ending really went.”

“So you still do not know it?”

I laughed. “There is a rhyme on the first page. I know some of it, but just not the ending.” I paused. “So I simply made one up in my head.”