“We all have our preferred tailors or jewelers or what-have-you who come up to the palace and take our orders from the comfort of our own sitting rooms.”
It takes me a moment to process her words. “You mean, they never leave the palace?”
“Not to shop. And not to just browse and wander. There are a few parks, a river walk, that noble parties will frequent. They drive there and back, though.”
“But how do they know they’re really getting what they want if they haven’t seen what’s available?” And how do they know what’s really happening with the common people if they live their lives shut up in their gilded rooms? No wonder neither the king nor the nobles have done anything to stop the snatchers. They’ve nothing to do with the world around them.
“All the best things come to the palace,” Melly says.
I raise my brows in disbelief.
Melly smirks. “Fine, then. We’ll never know if some merchant who isn’t among the favored few has something amazing, because we’ll never see it.”
“That’s absurd.” To think they believe themselves the best, when they’re shuttered away like ailing nanny goats.
Melly shrugs. We turn back toward the main road, nodding to the shopkeepers whose merchandise we’ve already looked at. My eyes alight on a young man sitting on a stool at the front corner of a shop. He has a small bowl on his lap with a heap of early peas to shell, but his fingers have gone still, a single pea pod hanging from his fingertips. His eyes are dim, unfocused. As I watch, the shopkeeper crosses to him and gently lays her hand on his shoulder, calling his name. He doesn’t respond.
“Rae?”
I glance to Melly, find her watching me. “That boy,” I whisper. “Is he all right?”
She follows my gaze to the boy and we watch as the shopkeeper takes the bowl and sets it aside, then helps the boy up and guides him to the back of the shop.
“Come,” Melly says, threading her fingers through mine and leading me toward the carriage.
“Melly?” I ask as we cross the pavers.
“He’s as well as he’ll ever be, Rae. He has the look of someone who’s been touched by the Darkness. There’s nothing anyone can do for him but treat him gently and help him through his days.”
I twist to look over my shoulder, but I can no longer see into the shop from here, and anyhow, the boy is gone. And I shouldn’t be staring.
“The Darkness,” I echo, turning back to the carriage.
“You’ve never seen what it does,” Melly says, the words not quite a question.
“No.” We only ever lost a few children to the snatchers, and only one of them returned—and he fled into the plains to escape the Darkness. I never saw anything like the look of this boy, whole and handsome and utterly hollow. This is why the Blessing is necessary—to protect children who escape the snatchers from losing the very light of their minds and spirits.
We clamber up into the carriage. I sit quietly, my thoughts caught on the memory of the boy, his hands gone still around the peas, his eyes unseeing. This is the other side of what the snatchers do, and the sight of it both sickens and enrages me. How dare the snatchers destroy our youth even after they have escaped? How can our only answer be a blessing that steals our children’s memory—instead of a way to finally stop the snatchers themselves?
I’ve allowed the last two days to slip by without thinking too much about the snatchers, about the questions I promised myself I’d ask. It seemed wise to settle in first and then broach the subject. But I cannot shake the image of the boy. Tonight, when Filadon joins us for dinner, I’ll ask.
Chapter
8
Filadon arrives just barely in time for dinner, sliding into his seat at the table—no low table with cushions to rest upon here!—just as the maid brings out the meal.
“How was your day, my love?” he asks, leaning over to brush a kiss on Melly’s cheek.
She blushes, the brown of her skin warming with a faint rose undertone. “You do see that Rae is here, don’t you?”
Filadon turns to me with exaggerated surprise. “Rae! Wherever did you come from?”
“The country,” I say helpfully.
“Oh hush, you,” Melly says, swatting his arm. “Rae and I had a lovely day, thank you for asking. We spent the morning shopping and the afternoon with the seamstress, and by tomorrow the first of her new outfits should be arriving.”
“I am impressed,” Filadon says. “With the first of the wedding festivities less than a week away, you must have been very persuasive to manage to order a whole wardrobe. Everyone must be ordering clothes.”
“You know she’s always had a soft spot for me,” Melly says. “Now she likes Rae too.”
“She was very kind,” I chime in. Melly’s promise to pay extra for a rush delivery did not go amiss either.
“And how did you find the city today?” Filadon asks, as he did yesterday.
“Lovely and chaotic and busier than Spring Fair,” I say. “But I saw one thing—a boy, actually.”
“Ah,” Melly says at the same moment Filadon says, “Oh?”
“Melly says he was touched by the Darkness.”
Filadon looks at me, his gaze oddly intent. “I see. You’ve never met such a child before?”
“No.”
“It’s a tragedy,” he says with a slight tilt of his head, as if waiting for me to go on.
“I wondered,” I say carefully, “what the soldiers here do to stop the snatchers—if anyone is investigating them. I thought you might know.”
“Would I?”
I shrug. “If anyone could stop them, I assume it would be the high marshal, or the royal family themselves. Do they—are they aware of the snatchers?”
Filadon smiles, a quick, sharp grin that is bright teeth and brighter eyes. His words are strangely at odds with that look. “An excellent question, Rae. By and large, the court believes the snatchers to be a figment of the commoners’
