Chapter 184

Abby

By the fourth day, I knew the shape of it.

Breakfast at eight, lunch at one, supper at seven, brought up on a tray by the small woman in gray, who set it down by the window and lit or banked the fire and went out again without lifting her eyes. Two of the Council’s guard on chairs outside my door, day and night, a different pair every twelve hours. A walk in the walled garden at two, if I wanted it, with four of them round me. No letters. No phone. No visitors, unless the Council allowed them, and the Council was spread across the valley in its own houses and wasn’t allowing anything.

The door wasn’t locked. I could have walked down the corridor to the end and back. I did, once, on the first morning, with the two of them a pace behind me the whole way, and some of Sebastian’s people coming up the stairs at the far end saw me and turned round and went back down again. After that I stayed in my room.

It was a beautiful room. I hated it.

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