Beyond the Glow

Chapter 10

"Briar! Wake up!" 

"Amita, its not even dawn yet! Five more minutes..." I swat at the hand in my face, shifting my weight on the lumpy mattress unhappily. The castle didn't supply it's servants with their own quarters for each worker, we had to share. Lucky for me, the girl from yesterday, Amita; I finally learned was her name, was my roommate. Which meant that I couldn't use my lamp for anything, not even the privacy and comfort of my own room and soft bed.

Yay.

On top of that, we had to get up at ungodly hours to prepare the castle for the royals. Breakfast, warming the fires, and cleaning all apparently had to be done in the morning so as not to 'disgrace the King and Queen with our dirty presence' as mistress put it.

"Amita, tell me again why I chose to take this job?" I groan at I sit up. Stupid bed, you'd think they would treat their servants better than this. There were even extra rooms, but they were down one of the more unused paths of the tunnels, I hear they even connected to the prison from here. I shiver, I definitely won't be wandering around down here alone anytime soon.  Finally complying to Amita's orders, I sit up; surveying the dirty little room we share.

The bed practically is the only thing in the room, taking up most of the space with only a small area between it and the smudged old walls. The bed itself only has a small blanket and myself on it, me and Amita had been fighting over who got it all night. The door is on the other side of the room, where the only space large enough to do anything was. Amita was changing, seemingly accepting that I would get up on my own.

I joined her, helping her tie the apron around her gray dress, and let her do the same for me. My hair hangs around my face, too short to pull back. but Amita pulls hers behind her head with a thin strip of fabric, and I stare jealously. I miss the feeling of having long hair. I could do so much with it, this shorter cut hung in my face and wasn't long enough for me to do much but huff in annoyance and blow it out of the way. 

Amita either ignores me, or doesn't see my jealousy. I pull back, ashamed. The girl has been nothing but kind to me, and I am supposed to be her best friend. But here I am thinking of how satisfying it would be to grow my hair back just to have it longer than hers. Something that surely would give away the fact I had access to magic and blow my cover as Briar.

"Let us be off then, the royals breakfast will not prepare itself." Amita straightens up, looking at me expectantly. I lead the way out of our small room into the empty hall, and I stop in the doorway; normally at this time there are people everywhere, getting ready for the day. Crud. "We're late!" I call back, and break into a run. I hear a curse before Anita follows. We run down the halls, exiting the servants quarters and heading into the main halls of the castle.

The sun hasn't even risen in the stain glass windows, and the only other people in the halls are the servants who awoke on time and are attending to their work. We rush past, frantic to get to the kitchens where we have been posted the past week or so. "Henry's gonna kill us!" I pant, my lamp bouncing up and down as I run. I grit my teeth, thinking of the mess I'll have to deal with if I ever get the chance to go in again. 

Amita and her more fit shape starts to pass me to the kitchen, and I increase my speed in order to keep up. I stare at her hair again longingly, from what I can gather, she and Briar grew up outside the city's limits, away from the street urchins and the horrors that would be aware of if they grew here.

They came in when the underground rebels took over the farm as a war headquarters, fleeing into the city. They had lived on the streets for a few days before going before the King to plead for help. Their families had been either killed or taken prisoners. Amita wasn't sure which. The prince had been quick to give them a job, and here Amita, and I, were.