My eyes opened the next morning to a prism of sunlight stretched across my face and down my pillow. I groaned and rolled away from it, smelling feathers and brine. And … something fruity. Oranges?
I sat up, caught in that hazy state of not-yet-ready-to-be-awake, but the sun was bright, and about a second later there was a tapping on my door, which creaked open to reveal a housemaid.
“Good morning, miss. I’m Gladys. I’ve brought your fresh water.”
And so she had, carrying a filled pitcher up what had to be at least three flights of stairs. She moved to the bureau and set it there by the basin, then turned to me, still bundled in my quilt.
I swiped a mess of hair from my lashes and smiled at her tentatively. No one had ever brought me an entire pitcher of water before.
She was older than I, about twenty I would guess, with a skinny, angular frame and an apron so severely starched it looked like the edges could slice cheese. She did not smile back.
“Food’s not allowed in the students’ rooms, miss.” Gladys aimed her gaze pointedly at something by my side.
I looked down. There was an orange—a real one, fat and colorful—nestled right up against my pillow.
It had not been there last night. It had not. I would have felt it, smelled it. Certainly it hadn’t come with me from Blisshaven. I’d emptied my case down to the stitches.
Yet in an act of inexplicable sorcery, the orange was here now.
I remembered abruptly my dream, that touch to my face, how it had seemed so pleasurable and so real … like a gift.
“I—” I glanced up again at the maid; there was no mistaking now the rancor behind her eyes. Here was someone who was not especially pleased to consider me her peer. “I must have unpacked it last night and forgotten about it,” I lied. “So sorry. It won’t happen again.”
She returned to the door. “Breakfast begins in a half hour. I’m to show you the way, so I’ll be back before then.”
“Right. Thank you.”
The door clicked shut without a response.
I sat there for a moment, then picked up the orange, rolling it between my palms. Never once had any form of my madness produced food from empty air; someone had given me this. Last night. As I slept. And even though I hadn’t dreamed of music, there was no question in my mind about who it had been.
The tower door had no lock, no bolt. If Jesse worked for the school, as I suspected, he probably knew the castle like the back of his hand. But why would he risk such a thing? I could only imagine what Mrs. Westcliffe would do were she to come across her coachman sneaking into pupils’ rooms.
My room, rather. I’d likely set an Iverson record for Most Hastily Arranged Expulsion.
If it had been Jesse. If my mind hadn’t snapped, and I hadn’t carried the orange with me from London after all. In the clear light of day, it was difficult to envision even the mysterious Jesse venturing all the way up here just to leave me fruit.
An odd bit of folklore rose to the surface of my thoughts, something I’d read years ago in a battered, dusty book I discovered tucked in a cupboard at the Home. I’d always read every book I could find, and this one was about monsters, so old the pages had crumbled against my fingers:
Do not Eat the Food of the Fay. Do not Drink their Wine. You give Yourself to Them with every Sip, every Swallow. They shall Darken your Blood until you Desire only Dark. Only what Pleasures They may Bestow.
I shivered in the morning sunlight. I brought the orange to my lips in a deliberate hard kiss, meant to hurt. The rind hinted of bitter but the scent was still sweet.
“What am I to make of you?” I muttered into it. “Are you Dark?”
I will be delicious, was all the orange seemed to reply.
Dark or not, I was starving. But I didn’t own a clock or a watch, and I didn’t know how long a half hour might truly be. Gladys seemed like the kind of person who’d be delighted to tell anyone she could about how she’d discovered the new scholarship girl half dressed, with orange juice dribbling down her chin.
I stored the orange in the depths of the bureau, then opened the drawers containing my two