My family desperately wanted to know more and the need to rip the answers out of me was apparent between the three of them. I started giving them one word answers or no answers at all. I had scarfed down the first bites of food, missing my mother's cooking so much that I was delighted by something as simple as bread, until my appetite vanished.

I could see the curiosity and the fear blazing in my father's eyes. What had happened to his daughter? He knew that I had changed, but he couldn't identify how and he had no idea who to blame for it all. Even still, he was the one who got up from the table first.

"Lark needs to rest and I need to get a proper look at that mare she brought in," he announced.

"Be careful, she can be skittish," I warned.

His eyes snapped to me, narrowing. "Does she have a reason to be skittish?" I could hear the question he was really asking: did someone hurt her? Did someone hurt me?

I shrugged my shoulders. "I think she didn't deal well with the transition from farm life to palace life."

His expression softened ever so slightly. "That's nothing that some time and some kindness can't fix."

"If you see that guard, send him in here to eat. No one is ever to leave my house hungry," my mother called out, already collecting the plates.

"Lark," my father prompted.

"It's fine." Devlin having a full belly was the least of my worries. And if he had grown up in Mount Hexe alongside Xion, maybe some homemade meals and motherly love would do him good. "I'm going to get ready for bed. All the riding today took it out of me."

I shuffled off to my bedroom, struck by a wave of emotion as I entered. This was my whole life. This one room. It was where I intended to stay until I married and even then I would never leave my village, never leave my family behind. And now everything had changed and the room suddenly felt so small, like it was closing in around me. I couldn't decide if it was a warm hug or suffocation.

"Your clothes are really beautiful," Alice said quietly.

I stared in the mirror, watched a strange woman stare back at me. "Thanks."

"Did you love him, Lark?" she asked.

Leave to Alice to find where it hurt the most and if there was a soul I couldn't be mad at, it was my little sister, still so young and so wide-eyed. "I think I did, Al."

"Did he love you?"

That was the question, wasn't it. I could hear Devlin's low voice rumbling in the kitchen as he thanked my mother for the meal and I wished so badly it could be Xion out there, charming my mother with his rare smiles and his booming laugh. But would a man who loved me, lie to me?

"It's complicated."

"You keep saying that."

"That's because it's the truth, Alice."

"Are you ever going to tell me about it?"

"Probably," I said. "Now, let's get ready for bed."

Sleep didn't come easily that night. I hated every second of it, feeling like a traitor for allowing the palace to become my home. This is where I belonged. I should have never left here and now, I felt like a puzzle piece that didn't quite fit. I wanted to scream into my pillow, but knew the walls were far too thin to be doing that here. Besides, with my luck Devlin would hear me from the inn and burst into the house, sword drawn.

But the days were better. My mother would ask me to help her tend the garden and though she never prompted, I would tell her about the glassroom and the tropical fruits that I would get to eat. When I told her about the bakery in the village with cinnamon bread, she outright gasped and set off to purchase ingredients.

My father was a little less direct. He appreciated Pandora for all her muscle and her wild temperament. If I thought the feisty mare loved me, she adored my father. When he worked her on the long line, she was an angel, flicking her tail as if she were the star of the show with her pretty head held high.

I told my father how Xion rode all of his horses the same. My father heard that Xion used horses as machines more than animals. I told him that I had witnessed a horse being killed. My father understood that I had been in danger. When we rode into town, I told him about all of the horses in the stable and he knew that I had been spoiled, at least a little bit.

"It sounds like it was a bad situation, but he is not a bad man," my father said carefully.

Well, he felt that way because he didn't know the details of how I went missing or why I had returned. "Xion is not bad. But he has made bad decisions."

"Is this man going to come to my house and rip it apart to find you?"

"No. He knows I left. He let me go before our three month contract was up," I admitted.

"You had a contract?"

"A verbal one. But he promised that he would let me come home. Devlin is only here to protect me in case anything goes wrong and he'll go home once he gets bored of this quiet village."

My dad was silent for a moment, leaning forward to smooth a hand down his horse's neck. "And where will you go when this quiet village bores you?"

"It won't," I stated. I felt like I had endured enough adventure for a lifetime. My father said nothing.

On the fourth day back, it seemed I was not exempt from chores any more. I had to get up at the crack of dawn to work the horses before the summer sun got too hot, but there was no relief for me when noon came and the heat was unrelenting. My mother recruited me and Alice to weed the garden. And there were little bugs on the leaves of our plants, which pulled me further out of my sorrow and into reality.

"Where are the chickens I had the king send? They are not doing a good job at keeping the pests away," I commented, flicking a hungry bug off the leaves of my potato plant.

Alice froze and my stomach tightened. Her gaze remained lowered on the dirt, her hands jerkily resuming their quest. "We don't have the chickens anymore."

"No? Did you eat them already? Surely, they could have produced eggs for another few years. Maybe they were lazy palace chickens or something," I teased, trying to backpedal off of whatever I had ruffled. "At least the wine and tea I sent can't have a work ethic."

I watched the way she bit her lower lip, the way her cheeks flushed. Alice was a sweet girl, but there was no mistaking the redness in her face as bashful blush. My sister was angry.

"Alice, what happened to the chickens?" I asked firmly.

She hesitated, jerking a nasty weed out of the soil.

"Alice."

"Sampson took them."

My blood heated a couple degrees. "What?"

"Well, not Sampson exactly, but he and his father took them and many of the other things that you sent us while you were away," she confessed. "It is a tithe. And Sampson is right, we should not accept gifts that were given to replace you."

"It was not to replace me," I said hotly. "It was to help you. I was always going to come back, Alice. One way or another. If I had fallen in love with him after three months, I would have brought him here for all of you to meet you all and--"

"It is done, Lark," Alice said, raising her eyes briefly. "And I think Sampson and his father are right."

The rebuttal was on the tongue, but I swallowed the harsh words. Before me was not a malice woman who was trying to cut me down and keep my family in poverty. She was a young woman, who was learning the ways of the world. And being manipulated by an older, more powerful man who used romance and sweet words to get what he wanted.

I didn't have to straighten my sister out. Any criticism I gave would only push her closer to the man I wanted to keep her away from. To deal with this, I would have to strike at the center. 

~~~Question of the Day~~~

Do you ever annotate books?