Page 39 of Under Restless Skies

Getting angry won’t help. What might help is getting washed. I grab a dress and some underwear and head to the hallway. Rosalia said there were bathing chambers and pots outside, so they must be somewhere around here. In the hallway, I try to use my sense of smell to find the bathing chambers, but my nose feels blocked. Even the scent of the stones on the wall and marble on the floor is minimal, and I assume I must have a cold or something.

After checking a linen closet and a room full of buckets, I find the right door. The washroom is a simple space with stalls, soaps, and pitchers next to a large water container.

I take a pitcher, a basin, a cloth, some soap, and go to one of the stalls, where I peel off that uniform that feels strange over my skin, as if I was pretending to be something I’m not.

I pour some water over my body and notice that my marks are gone. Completely gone, as if I had never been wounded. Strangely, I miss them. They were the only physical proof that I didn’t hallucinate my experience on the island.

Two women enter the washroom, chitchatting happily about a trip to the Outer Beach, mentioning some friends and potential lovers. At least they’re finding joy here. I wait for them to finish and leave before getting out of my stall. For some reason I’m not in the mood to talk to anyone, to have to explain who I am, where I belong, where I sleep. Everything’s such a mess. At least I’m wearing my clean dress, even if I’m carrying the uniform back to my gloomy room.

Insanely gloomy—and lonely. Perhaps what makes my chest crack is that I was hoping to find belonging, to find my people here. Instead, I’m in this odd limbo where I belong nowhere.

Take advantage of your anonymity, Mayara. You’re as good as invisible.

It’s Alayel’s voice coming to my head, reminding me that he might have orchestrated all this to make me spy for him. I don’t even want to unearth any secrets, I just…

That door by the auditorium comes to mind, calling me, pulling me—or maybe that’s the excuse I’m giving myself to go there. Excuse or not, I change back into the cleaning crew uniform and go down the stairs.

I thought it would take me a few tries to get to the correct level, but no. I find it right away. Guards patrol the area, but they pay me no mind, perhaps because I keep my steps firm and my pace steady as if I was on an assignment. It doesn’t make sense, of course. Why would I be cleaning anything at night? But I guess they don’t know—or don’t care.

The door is right there, small and inconspicuous, probably leading to some storage area.

Why am I even here? Because Alayel told me to snoop? But I don’t want to bow to any of his whims. There’s no answer to what brought me to this place, and yet I insert my key in the door’s lock and open it. For a second, I close my eyes, wondering if it was a smell that caught my attention, but my nose is still numb.

I come to a narrow hallway with no light source, and yet something tells me this is where I’m supposed to be. For the first time since I came to this castle, my heart feels appeased and sings with a strange kind of satisfaction. There’s no logical reason why I should feel so elated and fulfilled by walking in a dark hallway, of course. Maybe I’m going crazy, and yet it’s such a good kind of crazy that I don’t want to question it.

The hallway leads to a narrow set of stairs, and I climb it slowly, until I reach a corridor. My hands touch the wall and find a wooden door, but I continue, finding another, and another. This one. A faint orange luminescence comes through a keyhole. Another test for the key.

I insert it, try to turn—and the key doesn’t move.

Why am I not the least surprised? Perhaps because the idea of a key that can open every door in the castle is too preposterous. Maybe it’s for the best. Who knows what will happen if they catch me where I’m not allowed? I want to step back, turn around and return to my room, but my feet are stuck. This is where I’m supposed to be, and the urge to open this door is so overpowering that I don’t know how I’ll even breathe if I turn away.

I reach for the handle and turn it—just in case—but the door doesn’t open. Maybe I can give the key another try. This time, I insert it slowly, and move it back and forth, jiggling it, trying to find a place where the lock gives. After many, many tries, when I’m about to give up, I feel a click. The key turns, and the door opens.

My breath catches, and before I can make sense of what I’m seeing, I step in and close the door behind me, so that the light doesn’t alert anyone. The room has three fireplaces, all of them lit, connected to chimneys. Two large piles of firewood stand in each of the corners opposite to the entrance. In the middle lies a circle of stones surrounding loose straw. Over it, the dragon eggs: red and green and brilliant like jewels, and yet looking so lonely and abandoned that a knot forms in my chest.

I walk over to the pile of hay and embrace them like I did on the boat. While I’m sure I can’t brood dragon eggs, I just don’t want them to feel that they were abandoned. In fact, why are they here? Shouldn’t Auranius be taking care of them?

As I embrace them, my skin starts to sweat and I realize that the room is hot. Way too hot. But then I don’t understand anything about dragon eggs and how they’re supposed to hatch.

No.

I saw them in their natural environment. It wasn’t hot like this. Wasn’t hot at all, in fact.

I get up and scan the room for tools, spotting a bucket with pokers, tongs, a brush, and a shovel. Our weather is always warm, so I’ve never seen a fireplace up close before, but I have dealt with the firewood stove in the restaurant.

With the shovel, I press onto the flames on one of the fireplaces and throw some ash over it until the fire is reduced to embers. I do the same to the other fireplaces, then open the door slowly to let some air flow, hoping it won’t alert any guards.

I close the door, then jiggle the key in the hole until the lock turns. With the room locked, I feel safer here, knowing normal guards won’t be able to find me, and yet the truth is that whoever set these fires might return at any minute. Still, I feel bad about the eggs left all by themselves, so I decide to lie down beside them, just for a moment, just to make them feel better.

In the almost darkness, they are indeed brilliant, casting a colorful, magical glow on the walls. Somehow, I feel like I’m part of this magic—a pleasant sensation taking over my body.

And yet questions and questions spin in my mind.

This room is not new. Have dragon eggs been brought in before? Then why does Dracolius only have Auranius? Or could it be that the previous eggs didn’t hatch? Then again, why isn’t our dragon protector brooding these eggs? He certainly cares for this pair, as he escorted our boat and helped us bring them to our kingdom.

No answers come to mind, only Alayel telling me to use the key to find the answers. I want to wipe the bastard prince from my mind, and yet his smirk lingers. I don’t wish I had stayed in his room. I wish he were here, and then we’d lie in a circle around the eggs and pretend we were dragons.

Click, click, click. A key is trying to find an opening in a difficult lock. I sit up with a start.