13. Dressed for Battle of a Different Sort
13. DRESSED FOR BATTLE OF A DIFFERENT SORT
The goblin tugged at my scalp as she twisted a section of dark strands and pinned it atop my head. She flicked a comb through more hair, seeming to snag on the remaining tangles on purpose.
“Pru, ow,” I said, attempting to shift atop the cushioned velvet stool to glare at her. She held me in place with a steely grip, separated another lock, and twisted it with mounting fury.
“Mistress shouldn’t complain. It’s just a hairdo,” Pru said, stubbornly refusing to meet my stare in the vanity mirror directly in front of me.
We were back in my assigned rooms in the palace. Despite the fact that I was on the loose, escaped from the dungeon—and the queen was aware of my delinquent status—Rush insisted I had to dress properly if they were to escort me to the Hall of Mirrors. When I’d pointed out how ridiculous it was that I should look ready to attend a vapid party when I’d been locked up for days and denied food, water, and basic facilities, every one of Rush’s friends—even West—had agreed: I was not to further provoke the queen by sullying her court.
After another journey through tunnels within the palace walls, I found myself the object of Pru’s painful ministrations while Rush did whatever he did to get himself ready in his antechamber. Hiroshi, West, and Ryder had gone a different way when we’d left Saturn’s rooms, to update Roan and Reed, I presumed.
Pru wove the next strand of hair into a slim braid that was too tight. Since she wouldn’t listen, I reached behind me and clasped her hand.
That fierce grip shook in mine.
More gently than I’d planned, I unwove her fingers from my hair, the plait loosening, and turned toward her, looking down to meet her eyes though I was seated.
“Why are you so mad at me?”
Pru snorted and looked away, her throat bobbing as she blankly studied one of the walls and its satiny lilac finish. “We must hurry, Mistress, or it’ll be off with our heads. The queen will be?—”
“Pru,” I interrupted sharply. “What’s going on?” When she blinked more rapidly than normal but still didn’t answer, I added, “You know you don’t have to be here helping me if you’re worried the queen’ll punish you for it.”
Pru snickered. “Her Majesty will punish me if I don’t help you get ready for the party.”
“Okaaaay,” I drew out. “So then … what? Did you fi gure I could use a bit more torment after what I’ve been through the last few days? Since I was brought to Embermere, really?”
When Pru met my waiting eyes, hers glistened. “Pru’s not trying to hurt Mistress.”
Exhaling slowly, I shifted on the stool and pulled her toward me. On gangly legs, she stepped closer. Softly, but intently so she’d understand I meant every word, I said, “You know, if it’s too dangerous for you and your family, I won’t be offended if you ask to be reassigned. In fact, you totally should do that. It’ll be safer for you if you’re not around me.”
Pru released her hand from my grip, but patted the back of mine before walking over to the vanity table to arrange the row of shiny gold pins she’d laid out minutes before. They didn’t need organizing.
“We goblins have no say in where we go or whom we attend.”
“Then you should join Rush and the others in turning me in to the queen, so she knows you weren’t in on my escape … that turned out not to be an escape really at all.”
Pru dropped the pin she’d been fiddling with and whirled toward me. “Mistress takes too great a risk. Her Majesty will punish her in the Hall of Mirrors.” After a cursory scan of the room, especially its shadowed corners, Pru whispered, “The queen likes an audience.”
“There are no eyes and ears here now,” I told her. “The queen must not realize I’m here. ”
“Of course she doesn’t. If she did, she wouldn’t wait for you to arrive at the Hall of Mirrors. She’d kill you here and order me to clean up the mess.”
I studied the goblin in her threadbare, dingy frock. She’d tucked her hands in deep pockets.
“Is that why you’re mad at me?” I asked. “Because you think I’m being reckless?”
For several moments, Pru didn’t reply, then, “We must hurry, or it’ll be off with our heads.” With a gnarled hand to my shoulder, she attempted to turn me to face forward. Again I took her hand and held it.
“I’m being careful, Pru, I promise you I am. I can’t help that the queen’s a psycho bitch who seems determined to end me.”
“You provoke her.”
I was going to deny it, but there was no point. Half of Embermere had witnessed me calling out her dragonshit in the ring.
I inched forward on the stool; Pru wriggled her hand free. “The queen preys on weakness,” I said. “I mustn’t appear weak.”
“So Mistress openly defies her in public? In front of her subjects?”
My patience evaporated. “Yes, that’s exactly what I did,” I snapped. “Or should I have waited until she tried to kill me again before giving her a piece of my mind? I’ve lost count of how many times she’s tried to do me in since I got here. So if you expect me to lie down while she orders cowards to do her dirty work, you’re in for a big surprise. I won’t go down without taking her with me.”
In the antechamber, the door opened and closed.
“Did Rush just leave?” I asked, alarmed that the thought should cause me concern. I didn’t need him. He hadn’t been there to help me in the dungeon, and I’d gotten out, hadn’t I?
You wouldn’t have left that horrid cell without his help .
Pru padded across the floor to peer through the door between our rooms. “Yes, Mistress, he’s gone, but I’m sure he’ll come right back. He was beside himself with worry when Mistress was in the dungeon and he didn’t know where she was. He won’t leave her alone for long.”
“He … really? He was seriously worried about me?”
“He nearly killed Drake Lennox Heath of Etherantos. Other noblemen had to pull them apart.”
My heart thumped. “Why … why’d Rush nearly kill Lennox? I mean, specifically? Obviously he’s more irritating than having a foot covered in fat blisters, and next chance I get I’m gonna kill him for being a despicable, underhanded, murderous bastard. But why’d Rush try to beat me to it?”
Pru picked up the comb again and guided me to face forward. This time I let her, relaxing when her movements were now gentle. “I wasn’t there to see it, but I heard Drake Rush thought he’d been the one to lock you up in the fae dungeon. Drake Rush thought you were dead. ”
“What’d he do to Lennox, then?” I breathed, unsure when I’d started enjoying Rush’s defense of me.
Pru wove my hair with expert fingers that no longer trembled or threatened to jerk me bald. “From what I heard, Lennox had to be carried away. He couldn’t walk on his own.”
“Good,” I said, content to hear the vicious slant of that one word. “He deserves more.” Righteous anger sped through my veins, heating my skin.
“If Mistress wants to be the one to deliver his punishment, then she’d better stay alive.”
“Wow, Pru, never woulda thought of that myself.” I scowled at her, my insides a tangle of emotions I wasn’t in the mood to sort.
I’d been abducted, tormented, and nearly killed multiple times. I’d come back from the edge of death when it was already so near I could taste its final grip. I’d glimpsed power for a few moments, but whatever hope it had delivered had shriveled to nothing when I’d called on it in the dungeon. I’d lost my maidenhood but had no chance to enjoy or process the change.
I was still a captive in a magical world I scarcely understood and in which I was woefully unskilled—where the queen’s cruelty was far-reaching.
“And knock off all the ‘mistress’ crap,” I added. “I disappear for a few days and you’re back at it. It’s as weird now as it was before. Hasn’t changed.”
“But you are my mistress, Lady Elowyn.”
“How about, I’m your friend . So treat me like one. ”
Pru’s face crunched and contorted; she was either moved or eking out a silent fart.
The goblin finished with my hair and began brushing blush onto my cheeks.
I rolled my eyes. “Do I really need this? Wouldn’t it be better if the queen saw me pasty and pale after my imprisonment? It’d probably make her day.”
“Mistress must—” I glowered at her. “Would you rather look weak for the queen?”
I stiffened in answer as Zako’s unique lilting voice filled my memory. In battle, the appearance of strength is as valuable as strength itself. To win, aim to have both .
“No,” I seethed. “I’d rather murder the queen while she sits atop her pretty throne, for all her subjects to see.”
I caught Pru’s eyes widening in alarm through the mirror before she examined the corners of my bedchamber again—though even when spying ears and eyes were present, she didn’t see them.
“Mistress,” Pru hissed before correcting herself. “Lady Elowyn … Elowyn … you must be careful.”
When Pru attempted to brush more of the rosebud pink powder across my cheeks and nose, I pulled away. “That’s enough. Can I go now?”
Pru gulped. “Yes, you’re ready. Just…”
“Just, what?”
“Never mind.”
“You really don’t think I’ll come back, do you?”
“The lords and ladies of the court have placed bets. ”
Abruptly, I stood. “On whether or not I … die tonight?” Even though, when compared to Rush and his drake friends, I wasn’t particularly tall, I towered over the goblin in the high heels she’d insisted I wear.
She fidgeted, noticed, and stepped over to the vanity table to return the blush. Dusting invisible lint off the case, she said, “No. When you will die. No one’s given odds that have you surviving more than another month.”
“Everyone assumes I’ll die…” I stated, mostly to myself. “This is one majorly messed up place, Pru. Why would anyone want to live here?”
“Not many do, milady. Most are here because there’s no better place for us to go.”
I crossed the room to check out Pru’s work in the full-length mirror of the armoire. She’d clothed me in a delicately feminine dress of happy periwinkle blue, with a flared skirt that revealed the tops of my ankles and dainty matching stilettos. Walking in the shoes was still a challenge, but I’d improved greatly since the first time.
“What of the human world?” I asked, angling my head this way and that to make out the serpentine pattern that trailed around my head, wrapping a modest diadem. I tapped the glittering crystals set within the gold.
“And this? You’ve never put me in one of these before.” With the blush, rose lips, and blue eyeshadow, I looked so different from my usual self.
“There’s nowhere else for us to go, not even the human world. I dressed you for battle,” Pru explained, “just of a different sort.”
I wouldn’t admit it to her or anyone else, but I liked my appearance. In Nightguard, I’d never had reason or opportunity to dress up. The goblin hadn’t adorned me in the garish styles and colors flaunted by the courtiers, but I looked … quite pretty.
I fingered the delicate tiara. “Is this to remind the queen I’m the king’s daughter?”
Pru straightened, drawing her shoulders back and setting her jaw with ferocity. “No. That’s to remind the queen you have royal blood in you. It’s why the land saved you.”
I spun around so fast I tottered before regaining a semblance of grace on my heels.
“Have you heard anything more about that?”
“No more than the expected.”
“Which is?”
“That you must be a royal close enough to the pure-blooded elves of the Golden Forest for the land to want to save you. And that maybe there’s another bloodline out there from early on, when our ancestors first arrived here, that separated from the queen’s long ago. Maybe it’s connected to the king. And maybe, just maybe, you could be a new heir to the throne.”
“What about Rush?”
“The fae like him.” She shrugged her slender shoulders. “You could marry him.”
“Marry Rush?” I sputtered and chortled. “No, no way,” even as a tingle zipped up and down my body, conjuring an image of me astride him in the tub. “He’s a spy for the queen.”
Pru shrugged another time. I couldn’t decide if she, like everyone else I’d discussed the topic with, really thought an arranged marriage was no big deal, or if she was pretending.
“He’s also risked a lot for you already,” she said. “Besides, it’s all just empty hope in the end. If you become heir, you’d have to do whatever the queen tells you to anyway.”
“How’s that different from now?”
“Now you’re not as big a threat to the queen.”
I scoffed. “Which is why she keeps trying to kill me…”
“Whoever becomes the next crowned princess, the queen will rule every aspect of her life so it suits her needs.”
“Until the princess becomes more powerful than she is.”
“That will never happen. Not until the queen’s dead.”
“Lucky for us, that result aligns with my current goals.”
Pru smiled at me, but it was frail, tenuous as a spider’s web assaulted by whipping gales.
It was the smile one gave a person whose fate they believed already dealt.
“I will make sure she pays for all she’s done,” I swore fiercely, as much for myself as for her.
“Of course you will, Mistress.”
“Don’t pander. It doesn’t suit you.”
“It’s better than the truth.”
“No, it isn’t. The truth’s always better, no matter what.”
When she didn’t say anything else, I flung open the door to the antechamber in anticipation of Rush’s return. “Whatever you’re really thinking,” I pressed, “I want to know.”
“It’s time to go. We’ve tarried enough already. Surely the drakes have made the necessary preparations to deliver you to the Hall of Mirrors by now.”
With purposeful strides, I stalked to the bench seat at the foot of my bed and sat primly. Tilting my head toward her expectantly, I prepared to wait her out.
Pru huffed loudly, but didn’t speak.
“As the goblin appointed to assist me,” I said, “you’re required to do as I ask, yes?”
Pru pressed her lips together, eking out a “Yes” from between them.
“Then let me have it. The truth.”
Another sigh, this time resigned. Pru studied the claws on her black dragon feet. “As much as we might talk and wish and … hope … the land only has so much power left. The queen’s taken it all. There’s nothing left for anyone else. Until she dies, which she might never do, there’s no chance of anyone ever becoming more powerful than her. It doesn’t matter what any of us want or don’t want. It’s just what is.”
I was digesting that fact when the door to the hallway opened and closed quickly, and Rush’s footfalls whispered across the anteroom. His head peeked around the door, his eyes immediately finding me. Their moonlight swirled as he devoured the sight of me.
“It’s time to go,” he growled, a rough purr that had my center clenching and another memory of him inside me flashing through my thoughts.
Then I remembered he was delivering me to the queen, who planned to kill me at the earliest opportunity. I rose, smiled somberly at Pru, then brushed past him, allowing the backs of my fingers to whisper across the bulge beneath his belt.
He sucked in a sharp breath that whistled through his teeth, but I didn’t look back.
My next fight wasn’t tomorrow.
It wasn’t in the arena in view of a mob of spectators.
It was tonight.
In the palace, entirely wretched behind all its fancy opulence.
Beneath the guise of civility and glowing chandeliers, the battle for my survival awaited.
“Are you coming?” I called to Rush over my shoulder, then opened the door to the hallway and stepped out.