“You have eaten nothing, Ma’am,” Magara said when she came to clear the table at which Theola had sat for her dinner.
“I am not hungry,” Theola answered.
“But you should be, Ma’am,” Magara insisted. “You had little to eat yesterday and nothing during the night, and when I brought you some food and wine after you returned home you were so deeply asleep that I didn’t like to waken you.”
“I am not hungry,” Theola repeated.
She knew it was her sense of apprehension and unhappiness that made her feel as if her throat was closed and it was impossible to swallow. She rose from the table to walk to the window.
Once she had felt constricted in the Palace and thought it dull to look out onto the formal gardens, but now she wanted nothing more than to go on living here, to be close to Alexius Va
