Knowing now that her mother was dead, having watched Sephone go, Ella wiped her eyes.
She got unsteadily to her feet and limped toward the canteen.
In the castle courtyard she saw Elos talking with Katherine.
"That horse. Have it slaughtered. The hide will do for a waterskin."
"Yes, milady."
After the brief exchange, Katherine called two guards and set off for the stables.
Ella paused. The horse to be slaughtered—was that the one that had kicked her?
She didn't dwell on it. Head down, she went into the hall where the castle's soldiers were fed.
Elos caught sight of her and followed idly after.
Inside, Ella drew a bowl of soup and rice, took some dried meat with it, and sat down at a table, heavy with everything on her mind.
Her mother was dead. Where was she buried? What was being done about the funeral? What in the world had her father been doing?
"Well. If it isn't Ella."
Elos's voice came out of nowhere at her ear.
Ella jumped, her shoulders twitching.
"You... I'm just hungry, that's all. I only came to eat something. Don't take it."
Bracing herself, Ella assumed Elos had come to torment her again.
The pink-haired girl turned suddenly, and her small face was pale, her eyes faintly red-rimmed, as though she had just been crying.
Elos lost her train of thought. Without meaning to, she reached out and poked Ella's cheek.
Soft, and a little wet.
Her gaze dropped, and she saw the faint tremor in that leg, and Elos frowned.
She had only meant to humiliate her. That horse was always docile enough under her.
"Well. Kicked by a horse? Leg broken?"
Entirely at odds with what she felt, what came out of her mouth was mockery.
"Not broken... I backed off in time, so I took most of the force out of it. It just hurts..."
Ella moved her fingertips.
Though set against the pain in her chest, the one in her leg hardly seemed worth mentioning.
The mother who had raised her for fifteen years in this life had died of an illness, and all Ella could do was be tormented in this oversized cage and let the time run out of her.
Ella closed her eyes.
"Potion. Drink it. It speeds up healing. A doctor will come out from the town tomorrow."
Elos shoved a bottle at her, the kind she had used several times before.
Whether it was an open wound or a cold and a fever, this healing potion worked. The principle was accelerating the turnover of the body's cells, and it had no side effects—none that had been found so far.
"Mm..."
Ella made a small sound of acknowledgment, still no closer to understanding what Elos's hot-and-cold behavior was about.
That business about slaughtering the horse—was that revenge on her behalf? Elos showed no sign of intending to tell her.
Ella went on eating. Elos found the hall thoroughly distasteful and left in a hurry.
Once she had eaten, Ella drank the potion and went back to her room to rest.
The pain in her thigh kept coming. Ella leaned against the window and looked out at the distant cliff, her mother sitting at the bottom of her mind... and Sephone too. She hoped nothing happened to her.
Her leg was too badly hurt for any other work, so Ella simply experimented with magic. At present her control was still poor; the most she could produce was a light breeze, or a single small flame.
"Haah..."
She sighed. The road to getting strong stretched out with no end in sight, never mind getting home.
She lay on the bed and let the hours run to nothing, and then, deep in the night when everything was quiet, she got up.
"I... have to go back and see Father, just once."
Ella wanted to ask that discount dad of hers how he could bear to leave her in this pit.
At the very least, she wanted to pay her respects to this life's mother.
"Come to think of it, Elos's room doesn't seem to be guarded much."
Ella pressed her lips together. Perhaps it was confidence in the castle's defenses, or perhaps it was that Ella had never put up much resistance and they had all relaxed.
In any case, she had walked into that room more than once without anyone thinking twice.
A rough plan took shape in her mind.
***
The night passed without dreams. The next morning Ella drank down the healing potion and slipped into Elos's room.
Inside, that vile milady was fast asleep.
"...You should just be grateful I'm a decent person."
Looking at the girl breathing evenly, sleeping so soundly, Ella had nothing to say.
If she were even slightly nastier, wouldn't taking her life be the easiest thing in the world?
Ella moved lightly, searching the room with great care.
Before long, on the table beside Elos's bed, she found a ring stamped with the family crest.
Ella picked it up, studied it a moment, and hurried out of the keep.
It was still early. Elos was deep in her morning sleep, the castle's maids were already busy, and the soldiers on watch had come to the hour when they changed shift.
Ella ran into Katherine on the way. Looking at the limping Ella, Katherine suspected nothing, because Elos's ill-treatment meant Ella was forever slipping into the kitchen at odd early hours to steal food, like a little mouse.
"Little madam. Off to the kitchen for something to eat again?"
"Mm. Mm."
Ella nodded, doing her best to look as though nothing at all were the matter, one hand over her right leg.
They exchanged a couple of words and parted, and Ella went to the kitchen for two bags of beef jerky and to the canteen to steal a flask of water. Carrying them, she came to the closed castle gate.
It was not yet time for it to open, and the soldier who had stood watch all night was half asleep, waiting for his relief.
They took no notice of her whatsoever. Ella pressed her lips together. Being ignored carried a damned humiliation of its own.
"Cough, cough..."
She coughed twice.
"Little madam? What is it?"
Hearing her cough, somebody finally paid attention.
"I need to go outside. Open the gate."
"You may not leave here."
Refused, of course. In what way was she a madam? She was a pet being kept.
The bitterness stayed inside; nothing of it showed on her face.
"I hurt my leg yesterday. Elos told me to go into the town and find a doctor."
Ella produced the ring she had stolen from Elos.
"This..."
"It hurts so badly I can't stand it. I went and pestered her about it this morning, and she's never liked me, so she told me that if it hurts, I can go and find a doctor myself."
The words landed, and the soldiers wavered.
Everyone in this castle knew Ella was tormented by Elos. Making an injured person walk a long road to get treated would be one more piece of it.
Looking at the crested ring in Ella's hand, the drowsy soldiers opened the gate after all.
"Little madam, would you like an escort?"
"Heh... She'd be delighted if something happened to me. There's no chance she'd allow anyone to escort me."
Ella smiled bitterly again, and the soldiers felt sorry for her and didn't dare show it.
God knew what the young mistress was thinking, treating her own wife this way.
"Open the gate. Let her through."
***
Through by bluff and out of the castle, Ella was elated. Her heart was going hard and she quickened her step; she had to get well away from here before the soldiers she had fooled, and Elos, worked out what had happened.
"Hoo. Bailed. We bailed. Insane milady, I'm never seeing you again."
Only once the gate was some distance behind her did she dare to celebrate out loud.
She hadn't forgotten she was injured either. She had chosen dawn for her escape because dawn was when the castle's supplies came in.
She walked a stretch of road and soon met the farmer bringing the delivery.
"Hey. I've got somewhere urgent to be. Take me back to the town."
"Miss, I'm delivering goods. I don't carry people."
"I know. It's genuinely urgent."
Ella showed him the ring.
The delivery man could make no sense of it, but at the sight of that ring and the rank it stood for, he turned the cart around.
Ella climbed aboard, and the cart set off down the mountain toward the town.