Chapter 4: The Ember Garden

Maelis woke alone in the big bed, with sunlight on the black walls.

The sheets on his side were cold. A tray of bread and honey sat on a table, and beside it lay a folded paper.

She read it standing, wrapped in a blanket.

"Your rooms are the east tower.

"You will eat in them.

"You will not speak at my table.

"You will not go below the Ash Stair.

"T."

She read it a second time.

Then she dressed in the plain grey gown someone had left, put her mother's comb in her hair, and ate every crumb of the bread.

She did not go to the east tower.

The corridors of Cinderkeep ran warm and dark, lit by lamps of low gold flame that never flickered.

She walked them.

Servants flattened themselves against the walls, and a few bowed their heads, uncertain.

A boy of about seven stopped dead in front of her with a basket of coal.

"Are you the new queen?" he asked.

"I'm Maelis."

"Are you going to cry?"

"Do I look like I am going to cry?"

He studied her face with great seriousness.

"No," he said. "You look like you want to hit someone."

"Only before breakfast."

He grinned and ran off, and she heard him shouting to someone down the hall.

She kept walking, and she kept the feather scar in her mind.

It was a coincidence. It had to be.

A hundred feathers on a hundred dragons' scars could look the same.

She did not believe it.

The corridor ended at a pair of tall doors left slightly open.

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