The Girl Who Fell (The Chess Raven Chronicles) by Violet Grace

Author:Violet Grace [Grace, Violet]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Schwartz Publishing Pty. Ltd
Published: 2018-09-02T16:00:00+00:00

chapter 19

I’m alone.

Moonlight floods the room, casting shadows in an eerie stillness.

Somewhere in the distance a clock chimes, but I’m not listening closely enough to count the strokes.

I’m in the palace. I don’t know how I know, and I don’t remember getting here. But I know that I’m in the palace, in my room. And I’m clean. Someone has washed the mud off me and changed me into my night gown.

Something has happened to me. I feel different. I am different. Power courses through me, an acute awareness. Unbidden, memories from the previous night fill my mind.

Magic. My magic. I controlled the Art. Without a wand.

I can still feel it: a power and sureness I’ve never had before. Something snapped and something came back together, forged stronger than before. For the first time in my life, I feel whole. The Art is no longer a series of songs in an ancient book. It’s living and breathing in me. Now I understand what Gladys was getting at: the Art is will – magnified, amplified, intensified.

My will.

I am the one I’ve been waiting for.

My door creaks open, and Jules pokes her head around. She opens it wide. Brina and Callie stand behind her.

‘It is pleasing to see that you are awake, Your Highness,’ Jules says, and it’s clear that she really means it. ‘Inform the Luminaress,’ she orders Brina, who promptly scuttles away.

A memory of the pycts falling to the floor as dust flashes through my mind.

‘I killed them.’

‘Your Highness?’ Jules says, stepping into my bed chamber.

‘The pycts.’

‘They’d have thought nothing of killing you,’ she says, sounding like a seasoned battle commander.

‘But … but … they’re dead. All dead,’ I say.

‘There was only one path for you to travel. You acted as you must; you are our hope, our future. You were barely alive when Wynstar found you on that train platform.’

‘Wynstar?’ Wasn’t he the one Jules told me to be wary of when I first arrived?

‘Second Officer Wynstar of the Protectorate,’ she says, before adding, ‘It was a surprise to us too, Your Highness – a welcome one, of course.’

Brina returns and clears her throat. ‘The Luminaress has asked that you join her in the garden as soon as you’re ready.’

Good, I think, springing out of bed. I’ve learned how to wield the Art just as Gladys asked, so now she can help me rescue Tom. Or I’ll do it without her.

I walk over to the wardrobe and Brina and Callie follow me across the room expectantly. They want to dress me but I don’t have time for all their fussing right now. I’ve got rescue plans to make.

‘Don’t you have somewhere else to be?’ I try to say it casually, but it comes out more sharply than I mean it to.

Both look uncertain. Callie looks like she’s about to burst into tears. Jules stiffens and is suddenly intensely interested in nothing in particular on the floor. I’ve broken protocol. Again.

I look at the two women standing there in their perfect white gowns – two girls, actually.

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