Chapter Four

Even though I had agreed to educate the duchess’ daughter, I’d still rather die than become a tutor. I felt like my hands were chained together, bound by service like a slave. By signing the contract Cicero, the duchess’ emissary, had given me, I signed my life away. My sanity. The peace I had worked so hard for when I bought this house a year ago.

I refilled my aquaplant’s pot absently, thinking of all the things I could be doing right now. I could be doing something productive. Like writing. Writing a column on how rude the prince was. No. Titus was a Royal, and all Royals were like Odelia. Prideful and arrogant. The Royals were the ones who fired my mother after eight years of her faithful service. They turned her away like she was trash.

Titus was a Royal. I would have nothing to do with his family.

I sighed. The first tutoring classes with Odelia’s daughter were supposed to start this morning in two hours. If Clarice Faretra was as horrible as her mother, I wouldn’t last one hour in the same room with her.

To prepare, I obeyed Odelia’s instructions in regards to dressing well. My best outfit included a blue blouse, comfortable dark trousers, and boots. The duchess could whine and pout all she wanted. I was not going to force myself to squeeze into a dress or suffocate my waist by wearing hosiery.

My messenger bag was packed with my mother’s reference books and other such needed things. Whenever my mother would come home after a day’s work in the palace, she would set her books on the table and tell me about her day. But she never told me about tutoring Titus. Not once did she speak his name to me.

I almost felt betrayed by my mother. How could she have kept something so important from me?

I gripped the strap of my bag hard. Was that a royal messenger or something? I went to unlock the door.

“Hello, Ms. Bury!” I immediately regretted opening the door, but when I went to close it, the foot of an irritating delivery man blocked its progress. “I won’t leave until you open the door, Ms. Bury.”

I considered grabbing the knife from my messenger bag and stabbing his foot, but that would be too sadistic, I realized. I sighed as I opened the door. “What do you want, Delivery Man?”

A short and stout middle-aged man with a crooked grin stood before me. Percy Wentzel ran his hands through disheveled brown hair. “Boy! I’ve only seen you in pictures; you’re much prettier in real life, Ms. Bury. It’s nice to officially meet you. You can call me Percy Wentzel. Or P.W. for—”

“I will stab your foot if you don’t get to the point, Delivery Man.”

“Okay, okay.” He placed his hands in front of him in a cautionary manner. “I was asked to inform you to meet with an escort at the Aria water port near the cathedral in fifteen minutes. Exact words from the royal emissary.”

“Cicero Rauch?”

Percy nodded. “Did you take a job at the castle or something? Because people are whisperin’ all around town. It sounds like it’s mighty important—”

“Thank you for letting me know,” I interrupted. “I have to go now.” I glanced meaningfully at his foot.

“But don’t you have to go out the door?”

“I forgot some things in the house. Move your foot.”

The delivery man pursed his lips, but obeyed. “It was nice to officially meet—”

I closed the door. His habit of repeating things was too much to bear.

Instead of going out the front door where Percy would assail me with meaningless chatter, I climbed out the back window of my stand-alone house (since there was no back door). Landing silently on the pavement outside the window, I trotted along the dank alley to the main streets.

It took me a while to make it to the water port. I weaved deftly through the crowd as I made my way up the hill that led to the cathedral. I wondered briefly why Cicero would want me to meet an escort at the ports. Whatever the reason was, I did not feel good about it.

I rounded a street corner directly across from the cathedral and came to a stop at the Aria water port. The flashy low-rise building was the second largest port in Aria, and it was identified by its open sun porch and obnoxiously bright yellow banner that read:

I entered the brownstone building as a distinct smell of lemon and moldy wood assailed my nostrils. I covered my nose protectively. What was that ? I looked around the lobby, which was square and sparsely populated. There was a very good reason why it was close to empty.

“Ms. Lannie Brackenbury?”

I turned to see a large, muscular guard in a blue uniform. He had dark sideburns and a keenly trimmed mustache. His facial hair reminded me of my father, who absolutely abhorred any hair growth on his face.

The man in front of me bowed swiftly. “My name is Maddox Quill, Captain of the Guard. We’ll be escorting you today, ma’am.” The captain spoke in short, terse sentences, getting right to the point. I immediately liked him. He nodded to two other guards, both of whom wore the same blue Aria military uniform as Maddox. They waved cheerfully, and one even smiled at me. Maddox, however, never changed his expression.

“Okay, then can we go now?” I pointed at the port exit eagerly. Surely this was only a meeting place… Surely I wouldn’t be forced to ride in a…

“We’re taking the ports today.”

“Can’t I just walk? You don’t have to escort me. I’m perfectly capable of making it to the castle myself…”

“Actually,” Maddox said as I inched backward towards the exit, “the prince informed me that you needed assistance in getting to the castle. He said you had trouble getting there last time.”

I stopped inching away. Of course it was Titus who told them I needed help. “I was just…admiring the scenery.” I thought back to the jungle I had to wander through. “I really don’t need help. I’ll just walk, okay?”

“Ma’am, these are my orders.” Maddox pointed to the looming entrance of the loading dock.

There was no point in making a scene, so I gave up. I already knew that Maddox was an impossible man to argue with. I followed them onto the loading dock where my worst nightmare awaited.

Water horses.

Past the entrance was a large terrace that was fenced in by tall brick walls. A twenty-foot wide empty water channel made its way through the center of the deck, beginning at a water booth and continuing on to exit through a gap in the wall. A massive barn was positioned several yards away from the terrace. Its doors were shut, but I could hear the distinct screeches of water horses within the building.

As Maddox talked with a man inside the booth, I counted several times to eleven to calm myself down. I breathed in deeply, but started coughing when I smelled the air. The scent of molded wood and lemons was stronger than it had been in the lobby, and I realized with horror where the smell was coming from. Directly next to the water channel, a deep crimson liquid stained the planks. A staff member was mopping up the stain with a lemon-scented cleaning agent.