Chapter 204: Beneath the Bed
Lyria's POV
The corridor was empty when I reached it.
I had expected as much. There was never a guard stationed outside my mother's chamber these days. The first few times I had noticed the absence, I had felt a flicker of something—relief, perhaps, that I might enter unseen, and irritation that no one thought her worth protecting.
Now I felt nothing at all.
It had become usual. As though the lack of a guard were simply another piece of furniture in the corridor, too familiar to remark upon.
I slipped inside and closed the door behind me with a soft click.
The room was dim.
The single lamp burned low on the side table, its flame turned down to the smallest permitted glow. The curtains were drawn, though not tightly; a thin line of grey light crept through the gap between them, falling across the floor in a long, pale rectangle.
My mother lay upon the bed as she always did. Still and silent.
