Chapter 176 Training

• The air felt heavier here. Each step seemed to carry me deeper into a space that belonged to someone else, and part of me wasn’t sure I was ready to step fully inside.
• Mierelle had been trying to lift my mood the whole walk down the marble corridor, pointing out how the palace maids always seemed to gossip in twos, whispering behind silver trays, or how one guard in the east wing had the stiffest posture she’d ever seen, “like someone glued a plank to his back.”
• Her words were light, but her voice carried a tremor, and every so often I caught her pressing her palm to her stomach as though trying to smooth out the knots twisting inside her. I knew she was nervous, whether for me, for herself, or for whatever waited behind those doors, I couldn’t tell.