Hush by Dylan Farrow

Author:Dylan Farrow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

16

I pull my old white shirt over my training gear and tuck my hair into the collar. It’s a rudimentary disguise, but enough to pass for a servant out of the corner of someone’s eye. The servants may as well be invisible to the Bards. If they regard them at all, it is in much the same way they look at all commoners, with cold detachment.

The sun has not yet risen as I make my way through the dark halls. Torches have burned low; sentries are switching shifts. The few people I see are too mired in the early morning haze to notice anything amiss with an errant servant. And it’s a good thing, because I find myself turned around in the darkened corridors, passing the same sconces and closed doors I passed only minutes ago.

When Ravod guided me to my rooms, the layout seemed vast, but logical. But now, alone and in the dusty quiet of early morning, the walls seem to waver and shift around me, and worry begins to tremble in my gut. Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea. Underneath it all is the hum of chanting—certain guards must never rest, because when all else is silent, you can hear their chants no matter the hour.

I try to listen more closely to the rhythm to keep my mind calm, but the quiet sound of sniffling breaks through the chanting. A soft whimper. A cry for help, almost inaudible, as if muffled by a door somewhere far down the hall.

Kieran. It’s Kieran crying. He’s all alone and he needs me. It’s foolish, but I can’t shake the thought.

I hurry along the hall and push open the door where the sound is coming from, but no one is there. The sound vanishes, and I’m by myself in an empty vestibule. I have to wonder if I imagined it in my loneliness. My brother. Kieran. Dead nearly five years.

What is wrong with you, Shae?

Emotion claws at my throat as I push through another door. I’ve exited out onto one of the terraces overlooking the training grounds. I heave a sigh of relief and grip the balcony railing, trying to gather myself together.

Below me, the training grounds look like a ghostly, vanished lake at this hour. There are still a few stars flickering in the fading charcoal of the sky.

I slip down the stairs from the terrace and out onto the training grounds, my legs abruptly screaming in protest when I try to run across the field. My body is too sore and exhausted to manage anything more than a light jog down to the archery range, the stairs leading down the cliffside even more treacherous in the predawn darkness. I feel as if I’m descending into an abyss of smoky mist.

I take up a spot I scouted earlier behind one of the targets, out of sight, but with a clear view of the door to the barracks. I steady my breathing and wait. The door opens not long after,

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