Verona was pressed behind one of the old marble pillars in the eastern corridor. The stone felt chilly even through her thin tunic, and she kept fidgeting because the seam at her shoulder scratched her skin.
From her hiding place, she could see the garden.
Not the grand one with fountains and trimmed hedges where important guests pretended they liked one another. The smaller one, tucked deeper inside the estate, the one her siblings claimed as their playground. She rarely approached it. They made it clear she shouldn't. But Verona was more stubborn than the quiet girl she eventually grew into.
She peeked around the column. Her siblings were there.
The twins and Marien racing circles like little gusts of chaos. Someone had conjured a small loop of water that hovered in the air, wobbling like a soap bubble held together by magic. The colors inside it shifted every time sunlight hit it, blue to silver to something almost lavender.
