Chapter 11
After several frustrating minutes of trying to get my blood-stained dress off while still bound by the chain, I tore the fabric. There was no hope of salvaging that gown anyway.
A sigh of relief slipped out between my lips as I sank into the pool.
It didn’t magically wipe away the dust and grime like the bathing pools at Rahil’s house did, nor was the view as breathtakingly beautiful, but it was still plenty clean and just as well-organized as Zafir’s potions were on the shelving in his study.
At any rate, it beat what Nadia and I were used to by a long way.
If I were a classier woman, I might’ve been scandalized to be bathing in a single man’s private quarters.
I closed my eyes as I soaked. Good thing I wasn’t a classy person.
The warm water felt strangely good on my shoulder, and when I unwound the bandages, I found that there was only a faint scar left.
So, Zafir was an adequate healer. I still loathed him.
He hadn’t said exactly what time the fire dance would start, so I wasn’t sure how long I was supposed to take in the bath.
It was still early in the afternoon, and I assumed that fire dances would be held at night.
He wasn’t coming to bang on the door, nor did he order me to hurry, so I took my time, scrubbing away all the sand and dried blood.
Whatever Zafir had done to my shoulder had healed it faster than any injury I’d ever sustained.
If only he were bad at his job so I could despise that about him, too.
I had to drain the pool and refill it after I’d turned the water a light shade of brown, but with the second bath, the water stayed clear and I used the soaps Zafir had recommended.
A floral ginger scent lingered in the air when I washed my hair, and the pomegranate exfoliating scrub seemed to take away three layers of my skin when I used it, leaving me with a fresh, rosy glow.
When I finally emerged, I felt more like a princess than the street rat I really was. There was only one towel, so I dried off then wrapped up my hair and looked at the gown Zafir had left hanging on the door.
I had to admit, as obnoxious and overbearing as he was, Zafir had good taste.
It didn’t have any sleeves to get caught on the chain—which, until I put it on, I hadn’t thought about.
The fabric was light and airy as I slithered into it, a perfect dress for the boiling hot climate.
I managed to fasten the halter top behind my neck but the laces in the back still needed to be cinched.
I tried to knot them myself, staring behind myself into the mirror at where the gown yawned open right down to the back of my waist. Each time I tried to tighten the strings, a different part would slip. It would be impossible to manage alone.
If Zafir was so insistent that I wear this particular gown, he could help.
“Tie me up,” I ordered him, emerging from the bathing room and turning to expose my back.
There was no reply, so I looked back over my shoulder at him.
Zafir’s cheeks had flushed a delicate shade of pink, and he kept his eyes averted.
“Are you embarrassed?” I teased. “Is the sight of a woman’s bare back too much for you to handle? Maybe you should occasionally actually look at a woman rather than keep your nose in your books. You’re right; this Julian will very much like watching you squirm. I do.”
Spurred into action by my goading, he cinched me up, pulling much harder on the strings than was necessary so my breath was cut off.
“Not…so hard,” I panted. For someone so dull and bookish, he certainly was strong.
“Can’t you breathe well?”
“No.”
“Good. Then maybe you’ll talk less.”
I elbowed him hard in the chest, and an immediate pain stabbed my own chest. We both let out gasps, and Zafir gave a retaliatory jerk on the dress’s strings, but then choked for air and hastily loosened them.
Realization dawned, and I grinned. “Did the vow bond cut off your air just like you were cutting off mine?”
Zafir let out a snort. “How did it feel when you elbowed me? There must’ve been a reason I wanted the vow bond in the first place.
And by the way, aren’t you supposed to be married to some insane murderer who tried to kill you?
What do you suppose your crazy husband will do if he finds out I was touching his wife? ”
“Then at least I wouldn’t be the one to kill you, and I wouldn’t have to direct him to, either. He would just do that on his own.”
“How’s this?” Zafir had tightened the strings to a respectable amount so my figure was trim without cutting off my air supply.
“Perfect.” I smoothed my hands over my neatly tapered waist. “Now what?”
“Now you finish getting ready. Do your hair and makeup.” Zafir pointed to the drawers on his magic wardrobe. “I have paperwork to do, so don’t bother me.” He turned his back on me and sat down at his desk, pulling a dreadfully dull-looking stack of papers toward himself.
My gaze dragged past the long shelves of potions and ingredients.
If Zafir wasn’t watching me so closely, I would be able to swipe a few choice items. There were any number of potions I could whip up with all the ingredients available.
I could spike one of his drinks to make Zafir more tolerable, alter his emotions…
I could even have him singing and dancing with the right elixir.
I smiled to myself. It would have to be an incredibly strong dosage to combat his prickly personality.
Zafir looked up. “What are you waiting for?”
“Nothing,” I said, and approached the wardrobe.
When I opened the indicated drawers, I found them loaded with cosmetics, lotions, and combs, but didn’t have the faintest idea what to do with most of them.
I knew how to use lip stain and could comb my hair just fine, but makeup wasn’t something I’d ever had before.
I supposed I’d had access to such supplies at Rahil’s, but I’d never been in a hurry to impress him and had consequently ignored everything.
How was I to know which to choose and how to use it?
I picked up one of the creams and dabbed it on my face, looking into the wardrobe door’s mirror.
That looked right. How much was I supposed to use?
I added another layer, then dotted some of the pink rouge onto my cheeks but it smeared as it combined with the cream to make a strange paste that slowly dripped down toward my jaw.
I frowned and leaned closer, trying to correct it, but only succeeded in making it worse.
My skin had thick blotches of makeup that caked on in globs and was completely unattractive.
Frustrated, I snatched up the lip stain.
At least I could figure out that much, but even that looked like the wrong shade.
Looking at the color felt like being punched in the eye.
The longer I persisted, the worse everything became until I finally looked like a court jester who’d been caught in a rainstorm.
Eventually, Zafir came over to check on me. “Is everything a joke to you?” he snarled when he saw the poor job I had done. “Are you trying to sabotage our plan?”
“Some of us weren’t raised in a palace being given everything we wanted,” I snapped back, standing up to grab a cloth and blot at the dripping makeup. “Now, if you wanted me to poison someone or skin and cook a rodent, I’d be highly proficient. But getting all dressed up isn’t in my set of skills.”
Zafir rolled up his sleeves. “Sit down.”
I crossed my arms. Was that his answer to everything? Ordering people around? “No.”
“I’m trying to help you, you impossible woman! As hard as it is to believe, I don’t actually want to be chained to you forever, so for the love of the flaming phoenixes, would you just sit?”
I lowered myself onto the stool. Zafir, grumbling to himself, set about wiping off the makeup job I’d done and scrubbing my face back to how it looked when I’d first emerged from the bath.
“Always start with the skin first,” he huffed. Then he held my chin and carefully brushed a thin coating of skin-colored cream over my face. We were so close I could see the individual pores dotting his nose. He studied my face after applying it, tilting my head from side to side.
“You have good bone structure,” he announced, leaning back in with a brush. “Use that to your advantage when you contour and highlight.”
“I don’t even know what that means. And where did you learn so much about women’s beauty products?”
“I had an older sister who never stopped talking,” he answered shortly. “Believe me, it was never a desire to learn that fueled this knowledge.”
I leaned away from him so I could rub my temples. Even the light was starting to hurt my eyes.
“If you have a headache, you need to drink more water,” Zafir told me, pulling my face back toward himself. “You come from a cooler climate, so you need to stay more hydrated here. Now hold still. This is a delicate procedure.”
“I thought you were supposed to be good at delicate procedures. Isn’t that what you do when you tinker with all those potions in your study?”
“My potions don’t talk back.”
Instead of looking at his face, my gaze dropped down to study the forearms he’d exposed when he rolled up his sleeves.
Zafir didn’t have large, beefy arms like a warrior or soldier, but they did have cords of muscle running through them, pushing his veins up and causing threads of skin to rise.
If they didn’t belong to such a cantankerous man, I might have found them attractive.
After tending to my skin, Zafir pulled up a stool for himself. “It isn’t good for me to hunch over,” he grumbled. “I don’t need bad posture on top of everything else.”
His sitting down put us almost directly at eye level with each other, and he was close enough that I could smell his scent, which reminded me of books and exotic spices. Zafir’s black eyes bored into mine and his long fingers gently pressed along my jawline, thumb under my chin.
My blood pumped hotter and faster.