The Princess's Servant

58. The Summoning

Sybil felt herself swimming in silken sheets before she saw them. She blinked awake and found herself  surrounded by the whitest, softest sheets she'd ever been in. Her bed was the size of a servant's room. Her pillows were plump with plume. The golden sunlight of the rising sun graced her skin. She wondered how long she'd been out for.

She froze, remembering where she was — what had happened. She found herself in the same clothes she had passed out in, but not entirely confident that no one had disturbed her in her time. She saw two guards at the door. She stared at them.

One shifted towards her direction, and the other followed. Through the slits in their silver helmets, she could tell — both female. Sybil felt her tense shoulders lower and her heartbeat slow. She'd probably been safe.

"You. Guards," she called from the bed. One of the guards turned towards her while the other kept watch on the door. "Where am I, exactly? How did I get here?"

The guard looked to the other for help, but the other didn't take her eyes off the hallway. The guard sighed. "The medics brought you here, your highness. They said you downed an entire bottle of Night's Kiss. Prince Holden ordered his best doctors to come to your aid, and they did. They cast spells over you all night and day — to banish your sickness — and it worked! A miracle, truly. It seems you have him and the gods to thank for your survival, your highness."

Spells? Miracles? Sybil wondered. Was that how they did medicine in Ward?

No wonder their queen had passed away from a simple concussion.

"I see... I would like to thank the prince for his kindness," Sybil said. "Would it be possible to seek an audience with him?"

The other guard turned, peering over her back shoulder with a twisting neck. "The prince has asked to see you immediately upon you waking, your highness. We were instructed to take you to him as soon as you awoke."

As soon as the guard had finished her words, her companion gave her an odd look. The guard nodded "yes" as if to convince her, too, of this truth — and then turned back to face the hallway.

"R-Right," the guard obliged. "We are to take you to the prince. Would you come with us, your highness?"

Sybil tried to decipher their strange interaction, but came up empty. "Of course..." she replied, moving the sheets off of her and climbing out of the bed. Her legs were weak from sleep, but Sybil stretched strength into them and slipped into her silky sky-blue shoes.

Sybil straightened out her dress and hair, and walked with the guards out of the room.

The throne room was nothing like Lailoy's. For starters, it was cold — like a cellar, or a tomb — and it had no light save what little filtered through the windows. And those windows were no intricately painted stained glass, but dull rectangular things whose only ornament was a frame of black columns. Instead of red carpet, there was naught but white and black checkerboard marble. Instead of a gold throne, there was a blocky stone mass that looked to be of the same marble as the floor.

But as black and lifeless as the throne was, it was not the darkest thing in the room. That honor belonged to the prince who sat upon it — who himself was clothed in a tunic the color of the night. He looked at Sybil as she entered the way a hawk watches a mouse — the way Sybil would watch villagers. She felt a panic rise inside her and she crushed it forcibly. As terrifying as this man was, she immediately understood him. She could not show him fear.

Sybil also immediately understood that this man was not Prince Holden. At least... she prayed he wasn't. Her thoughts drifted to her little servant and resisting the urge to sigh, she snapped back to her present predicament.