The Knight Read Online Free Page B

was customary, they had the servers exchange the platters so they could share each other’s dishes.
    The trumpets blared again and the hum of conversation ceased. A troupe of madrigals started strumming their instruments and began playing one pleasant arrangement after another all through the rest of the meal.
    After supper, Rhys returned to his rooms. As he walked the nearly abandoned halls of the back corridors, he listened to the sounds of his heels clicking against the stone floors. It was strange to hear the sounds of his steps so distinctly in the castle; Morgana always had the floors suitably strewn with herbs and flowers which muffled the sound and sweetened the air. They must have already been swept up by the maids and not yet replaced. He was lost in those thoughts when he heard it. The sounds of another set of footsteps following him.
    Instinctively, he ducked into a darkened alcove and waited silently. After a few moments, he saw him. It was the same dark cloaked stranger who had followed Erasmus from the dining hall earlier that day. The figure moved with purpose, but as it passed by the deep alcove where Rhys hid, it stopped. The man looked around suddenly and seemed to be peering into the darkness around him. Rhys stood silent with his back pressed against the back wall of the recess, holding his breath. After a few moments, the figure turned and moved swiftly to the end of the corridor and around a corner.
    In his privy chamber, Erasmus was waiting again with a basin of warm water, a washcloth and soft, lilac-scented soap. Rhys washed his face, hands and then his feet and dressed in his night clothes. As Erasmus left the room, Rhys jumped up on the window seat and sat looking up through the window. The moon was a white marble in the sky and had that odd shape it took before it disappeared. He gazed at it for a long time, wondering where Naida was tonight. He climbed into bed and fell asleep thinking of the girl whose beautiful face remained hidden behind a sheet of water.

 
    Chapter Three
     
    Eon
     
    Naida was distracted by her thoughts all evening and it was visible.
    She sat absent-mindedly watching the other faeries dancing after supper even as her own plate lay in front of her almost untouched. Vanya and Thenidiel had already given up asking if something was wrong with her and had long since left the table to join in the dancing. They were her best friends at court, but she had absolutely no idle conversation or the patience for it that night. She could only just avoid the questioning glares she had been getting from Titania and the other priestesses during the supper proceedings. Queen Mab had excused herself from the hall early that night, so Naida felt that she had mercifully escaped being questioned about her behavior toward Pendrake earlier that afternoon. Obviously Titania would be taking it up with her soon enough though.
    It was usually a carefree existence for Naida at Mab’s court; however, being somewhat of a rebel child, all the priestesses had taken it upon themselves to tend to her in the wake of her own mother’s latest and seemingly final disapproval. She was recently required to take classes with them on a myriad of topics including potion making, spell casting and midwifery. Pendrake, the librarian, had issued her with a very official looking time table of her lessons. He had also advised her it had been decided that if she would not receive her wings, marry and take up the mantle of wife and eventually mother like other noble born faery girls, then she would have to be trained to a task like a commoner.
    Naida had realized that the discussion had been meant to be degrading, even condescending on his part, but it had actually been somewhat liberating for her. It marked the end of her mother’s expectations and that her future was in her own hands. A future that was wholly dependent on how she excelled at the lessons to come and then by the task she would be set to afterwards. The