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Lady Merissa Vankhal stood in the doorway, silhouetted against the light. There was a chair just outside the door behind her, one which hadn't been there when Andrin went to bed, with a blanket tossed untidily across it, and Lady Merissa herself was clad in a silken sleep robe over her night dress, devoid of the least trace of make-up, her hair all awry. Andrin had never seen—never imagined—her fussy, propriety-obsessed chief lady-in-waiting in such disarray, and she wondered what fresh cosmic disaster could have driven Lady Merissa to her bedroom in such a state.
Yet before she could even start to frame the question, Lady Merissa crossed the bedroom to her and, to her utter astonishment, Andrin found herself enfolded in a tight embrace.
"Oh, my love," Merissa whispered in her ear. "Oh, my poor love. I didn't hear you—I didn't know."
Andrin felt herself begi
Lady Merissa sat down on the window seat beside her, and a corner of Andrin's brain wondered just how ridiculous they looked. She was a foot taller than Lady Merissa, yet Merissa cradled her as if she were a child, and Andrin abandoned herself to the comfort of that touch.
"There, love," Merissa murmured, stroking her back while she sobbed. "There, love."
Andrin clung to her, as if the fussy, fluffy, irritating lady-in-waiting were the last solid rock in her universe, for that was precisely what Lady Merissa had become.
And then someone knocked gently on the bedroom door.
Andrin stiffened, and Lady Merissa's spine straightened with an almost audible snap.
"Really!" she huffed. "Is this a grand imperial princess' bedroom, or is it the waiting room down at the local train station?!"
She set Andrin aside gently, then came to her feet, straightening her robe, and stalked across the enormous bedroom towards the door, muttering as she went.
"Can't leave the poor girl in peace," Andrin heard floating malevolently back from her remorselessly advancing lady-in-waiting. "Middle of the night, for goodness sake! Coming bursting in on her, keeping her awake at all hours! I'll give you a piece of my mind, just wait and see if I—!"
Lady Merissa reached the door and yanked it open. A Palace maid stood there, hands folded anxiously, and the poor young woman ought by rights to have burst spontaneously into flame under Lady Merissa's fiery glare.
"Well?" Merissa snapped at her luckless victim.
"Beg pardon, Lady Merissa!" the maid said quickly. "I wouldn't ever have disturbed Her Grand Imperial Highness, not ever! But they insisted."
"Who insisted, girl?" Lady Merissa demanded. "And what could possibly be so important that it couldn't wait until morning?"
"I'm sure I don't know what's important, My Lady!" the maid said. "But it's Privy Voice Yanamar and Voice Kinlafia. They say they have to talk to Her Grand Imperial Highness right away!"