Read Online Citadel of the Sky (Thrones of the Firstborn Book 1) by Chrysoula Tzavelas - Free Book Online Page B

you’ve been skipping lessons with him.” Kiar had argued for procrastination, tried to forget, tried to ignore the request, but Jerya was indomitable.
    She took the long route. She skirted the Crystal Room, where some reception of the Regency Court went on and on. The Blood attended a few of those, but the Regency Court had a great deal of work to do managing relationships with the nobles, and it seemed to require many parties. She avoided as many as she could.
    She wandered through the kitchens, stealing warm bread before Min Baker chased her out. Her earliest memories were of carefully shelling beans by the kitchen fire. Her mother had been a Palace maid who won her father’s rarely-given trust for a short time, before war had come again. But she’d died just after Kiar had been weaned and Kiar didn’t remember her enough to miss her. The kitchen had been her nursery, the kitchen maids her nurses.
    There’d been reason, at the time, for all of Kiar’s mother’s friends to think her daughter would be safest if no one important knew her father’s name. The Blood fought among itself, and children died. Even after she’d been taken away to join her cousins on the floors above, the kitchen was warmth and order and strength for her.
    She walked along the Palace wall, until a strolling lordling tried to engage her in conversation. The greater nobles rarely courted her directly: her servant’s blood and blond hair were a bit too base for them. But if a lesser noble could win her, it would be quite the stepping stone for their family. That wasn’t going to happen, of course, but they were always so hopeful. She corrected his poetic description of the stars, then escaped back into the main Palace.
    She stopped by the Scrivener’s Office and asked them to recopy the maps Tiana had found. Then, she lingered to admire the Vassay hand press they were clustered around, until they closed the office. The scribes bid her a cheerful good evening and went off to their supper, taking away her last distraction.
    And now she was standing outside of Twist’s chambers. How had Jerya known? Had Twist told her? She hadn’t attended a weekly lesson in months, but no one had seemed to notice.
    She felt like she was standing before an executioner. Jerya, or Twist? She told herself Jerya was family and knocked at the door.
    There was no answer. Relief rushed through her.
    “Right!” Kiar said. “I came by, he was out, oh well, ask him yourself, Jerya.”
    But she didn’t leave.
    “I’m not good enough to be here,” she said to the door. “I’m aware of my problem. Jerya should be talking to Twist directly; she’s wasting her time with me. Just like Twist’s wasting his time with me. I wasn’t meant to work with the Logos. It was a mistake. I was confused.”
    She remembered standing before this door eight years earlier, scared and determined, tired of feeling small and powerless in a world of the powerful. She knocked, and there was no answer.
    Then, as now, she pushed on the door.
    It was unlocked. “Why doesn’t he lock his door? Why?” she demanded. “What if another confused child wandered in here? Didn’t he learn anything from my mistake?”
    When the door opened wide enough to step through, she gasped in horror. Scholarly, wizardly, and personal possessions were scattered around the room indiscriminately. She started instinctively cataloging it all. A work shirt was draped over a chair, a collection of geometric wooden blocks in primary colors littered the floor, rice spilled from a bag in a corner, the fireplace overflowed with cinders, dozens of books had been removed from shelves and incorrectly replaced, six folded paper birds occupied the desk chair, and a pair of empty boots dominated the desk. A ripped pillow rested on a table, feathers spilling everywhere, and a crust of dried bread lay in front of it. Four empty wine bottles formed the arms of a cross on the floor, right next to the door, and a rag doll sat