Arabella's POV
he palace was a different creature at night.
Gone were the bustling servants, the chattering nobles, the ever-present guards at every corner. In their place was silence, suffocating silence broken only by the occasional creak of old wood settling or the distant hoot of an owl.
I pulled my dark cloak tighter around my shoulders as I moved through the shadows, keeping to the edges of the corridors where the moonlight didn't quite reach.
My entire body was trembling badly out of both fear and interest.
Breathe, Arabella. Breathe.
I had waited until well past eleven, listening to the guards outside my door change shifts. The new ones were younger, less experienced. It had been almost embarrassingly easy to use a simple air mana trick to create a noise at the far end of the hallway, drawing them away just long enough for me to slip out.
Now I was creeping through the palace like a common thief, and the irony wasn't lost on me.
