Her Conditions

*Maddy*

He doesn’t even know my name.

That’s all I can think about as I sit beside Ella and desperately try to pay attention to the workbooks in front of me on a long wooden table etched with little carvings of stick figures. I run a fingertip over several sets of carved letters, a testament to the past, and the little boys who were raised together in this very castle.

It’s hard to imagine King Isaac and Beta Cassian as children, especially naughty children who carved their names and some rather colorful insults toward each other, and the teachers hired to homeschool them both, into this table.

“You’re doing really well,” Ella says, and for once, not in my home language.

I understand every single word.

“Thank you,” I smile, looking up from the etchings. “I’ve been studying every night before I go to bed, and eating in the servants hall helps a lot.”

“They know all the slang, that’s why,” she grins, flipping her dark hair over her shoulder as she flips a page in the book we’ve been wor