A few days after Julian had set out and left behind a strange silence that had once been full of his chatter, Nina pops her head in to inform me that I had received correspondence from Sunset Palace, the empress' residence.
I had just come back from a riding lesson, as riding with one hand is harder than it looks, so it is with stiff leather gloves that I receive the thick cut, luxurious paper that all of the empress' correspondence is written on. Below where her seal was specially printed onto the page, there is a brief message that I could hardly bother to read with the prominent list of handwritten names that burn my eyes.
"My riding gloves, please," I say out loud, my eyes focused on the paper as Wanda swoops past Nina's outstretched hands to remove them first, one by one.
