19 An Impressive Streak of Stubbornness
An Impressive Streak of Stubbornness
I’ m officially exhausted.” Yawning, Spie bent to rub her ankles. Her heels’ straps had been digging painfully into her skin. Her poor feet needed a break. She started undoing the clasps.
“Only four hours to go.” Kalvin’s tinny voice tickled her ear. “A few dances, a few conversations, maybe a few kisses...”
“Please don’t tell me I’m expected to remember all their names.”
“That’s what I’m here for.”
Nicky’s footsteps echoed across the newly emptied receiving hall. “You ready?” He held out a black-gloved hand.
Around the corner, from the ballroom, came the sound of an orchestra beginning its overture, soft and inviting.
“I’m going to give the bathroom a visit first. Wait for me?” Spie finished pulling off her heels, slinging them both over her left hand’s pointer finger. With her free hand, she let Nicky pull her to her feet.
“As though I’d let him go in alone.”
“Why, thank you, Kal, for that reminder to remove you before I start peeing.” Spie plucked out her tiny earpiece, a light brown, skin-colored bit of mechanical wiring made to blend in with the surrounding ear. She dropped it atop her brother’s palm. “Keep Kal company for me?”
“You know he’s already in my ear, too, right?”
Spie ignored him, dancing away on bare feet.
She dipped down a corridor to the left of the stairs—the opposite direction from the ballroom.
The sound of chatter grew dimmer while the smell of spiced meat grew stronger.
The doors to the kitchen were wide open.
Spie glimpsed manor attendants bustling about, carrying long silver trays overladen with cakes, lamb sliders, and thin strips of roasted pineapple.
The bathroom came into view around the next corner, a PERSONNEL ONLY plaque adorning the front. Spie tried the handle. Locked.
She knocked.
“One moment!”
She recognized that voice and tapped her CB.
Spie: Open the door. It’s me.
The door whispered inward. Trash Girl poked out her pretty blue head. “It is you.”
“Congratulations.” Spie elbowed past her, kicking the door closed with her bare foot. “You made the only logical assumption.”
The privy was small but clean, the toilet made of old-fashioned white porcelain. How quaint. Spie set her heels on the sink’s counter, right next to a miniature statue of none other than her mother. Lovely. Facedown you go . Spie tipped the hideous thing over.
“What are we—what are you—” Trash Girl was, apparently, incapable of speech.
“Relax.” Spie turned around. Artemis had backed into the little wedge of a corner between the wall and the door, boxed in by a whirring auto-recycling waste bin. With one hand, she held her torn skirt together modestly. “I haven’t coaxed you in here to steal your virginity.”
Artemis’s pale cheeks flamed crimson. “I’m not a— I’ve already—”
Spie plucked out one of the pins keeping her hair flowing to the left. She placed the thin metal between her lips and sucked meaningfully. “You’ve already what? Been with mediocre men? In that case, you basically are still a virgin.”
“You’re the actual worst.” Artemis looked like she wanted nothing more than to disappear into the wall behind her.
An abrupt laugh-snort escaped Spie. Trash Girl was too easy to rile up. Spie genuinely couldn’t help teasing her—it was like asking grass not to be green. She lodged the pin between her teeth and reached up to pluck out another. “Relax. I’m just here to fix your dress.”
Artemis dipped her gaze to her dress as though only then remembering it was on her body. “Oh.”
Was that . . . disappointment ? And what the hell was Spie’s pulse doing in her throat?
A strand of Trash Girl’s dyed cerulean hair was stuck to the corner of her mouth. Beads of sweat moistened her temples and the soft place between her nose and upper lip. Spie blinked twice, rapidly silencing the little voice in her mind that wondered how that lip would taste sucked between her own.
They were Nicky’s to kiss. Nicky’s to explore. She took out the final pin, and her hair swooshed down her back, free. A cool tickle against her bare shoulders.
Trash Girl’s gaze traced the shape of Spie’s loosened hair. Spie didn’t think she imagined the faint burn in those eyes.
Gods-dammit.
“Come here.” Spie waved the pin at her. “I’ll make it painless, I promise.”
“Why?” Trash Girl made no attempt to move. “I thought you would’ve enjoyed me having to parade around indecently.” Her rough X-er dialect made a small butchery of the word indecently.
“You’re seriously going to interrogate me for wanting to help you? By all means, head back to the ballroom, spend the next three hours stumbling across the dance floor with your panties visible.”
“My underthings aren’t—are they?” Artemis ducked her head, parting the rip in her skirt.
“Gods and nebulas, why must everything be so difficult? Just come here. I’ll throw in these pins, and you can go. Before people start wondering where we are.”
Artemis raised her head and, careful to hold her skirt together, the fabric of which was already impressively tight around her thighs, shuffled toward Spie.
“Closer. Come on, I need you near enough to kiss.” A joke Spie probably shouldn’t have made, because the instant it left her mouth, the sexually confused X-er made a small, choked sound and tripped over her own feet.
She sprawled face first into Spie’s chest. Spie caught her but not without stumbling slightly backward and hitting her lower back against the sink.
The cherry scent of Trash Girl’s hairspray invaded Spie’s nose and mouth.
“Fuck. Sorry.” Artemis righted herself, her hands tightly clutching Spie’s triceps. She had an impressive grip. Their bodies were all but flush.
“Breathe, Trash Girl.” Spie laughed around the two pins in her mouth. The top of the X-er’s head came to her nose. A perfect height difference. “And maybe ease up before you give me bruises.”
“Oh, shit, sorry.” Artemis dropped Spie’s arms like they were hot coals. She stumbled a half-step back, her head tilting up.
Spie noticed green flecks amongst the brown of her irises.
Like how the sea looked clear when sunlight speared a shallow spot.
“Your lucky day,” Spie said, suppressing an urge to do something stupid like lean in and study how those eyes changed when soft with pleasure.
“I won’t charge you with assault on the royal body. ”
“I swear I’m not usually this bad at walking—”
Spie hiked her dress up and lowered herself to her knees, which had the effect of silencing the other woman. Sticking the third pin between her lips, Spie busied herself aligning the distended fabric of Artemis’s skirt with the original seam.
“I really don’t understand why you’re doing this.”
Spie held the skirt in place with one hand and retrieved a pin from her mouth with the other.
“Still stuck on that? I didn’t realize your opinion of me was so low.
I might be a narcissist ”—she pointedly looked up—“but I’m not going to let another woman be forced to walk around embarrassed.
I’m not cruel. Or a misogynist. Nebulas know dating shows have such deeply patriarchal roots as it is.
And production won’t help you—they’ll just be happy to have drama they didn’t have to manufacture. ”
“So, you didn’t”—Trash Girl’s breath hitched as Spie threaded the first pin through the fabric of her dress, her fingers unavoidably brushing soft inner thigh; Spie fought an urge to let her touch linger there—“find it amusing?”
Quickly, Spie withdrew her hand and relieved her mouth of another pin.
“Find what amusing? That you managed to thoroughly butcher your dress on night one?” Spie couldn’t suppress a light smile.
“Okay, maybe it’s a little funny—but the rest of the empire has no right laughing at you. Only I get to do that.”
“Didn’t realize you’d grown so”—another hitch in breath as Spie secured the second pin—“possessive.”
Spie’s pulse spiked. She swallowed hard, lingering with the third and final pin. “You’re an investment,” she whispered softly, then wove the pin into place.
“In what?”
“My brother’s happiness.” She ran her hands over the front of Artemis’s dress, down her legs, the golden fabric cool and silken. She had an unholy urge to keep exploring.
Her CB vibrated. One glance told her it was from Nicky.
You fall in the toilet? Blessing Stone’s about to have an apoplectic attack.
What was Spie doing? The teasing, the bridging, the improper thoughts...Nicky had asked Spie for one thing: to stay away from Artemis Ialan. She’d thought her involvement harmless, and it was, except—the sudden heat in her stomach didn’t feel harmless at all.
Spie rose slowly. “You can go. Best we don’t leave here together.”
Artemis nodded. Something about her countenance had grown pensive. A furrow between her brows, the drawing-in of her bottom lip be tween her teeth. “Am I going to be sent home tonight?” she asked. “I’m aware that I haven’t exactly made a great impression.”
“Sent home?” Spie recalled the way Nicky’s eyes had softened when watching the X-er on the holo that afternoon.
“Not a chance. My brother’s quite smitten with you.
He probably isn’t brave enough to marry you—the political ramifications would be too hazardous—but maybe he can be happy for a little while. We do have eight weeks, after all.”
“By political ramifications you mean because I’m lowborn? Because I have a record?”
“Do you?” That seemed like the kind of red flag that would keep a person from being cast. But also.
..why did Spie find it kinda hot? The girl was full of surprises; more than that, she was real.
Had lived in a real way. Spie had been meaning to read through Trash Girl’s files but hadn’t gotten around to it yet.
She’d assumed Marta Eulogon would’ve done her due diligence before letting Nicky offer the girl a spot on the show.
Now Spie found herself wanting to know every last dirty detail of Artemis Ialan’s life. “Don’t tell me you killed a person?”
Artemis stopped chewing her bottom lip. Her eyes seemed to spark as she leveled her gaze at Spie. She said slowly, the syllables drawn out, almost like a promise, “Not yet.”
Gods, those two little words should not send a thrill through Spie’s chest. But she couldn’t help it; she liked this girl. Liked the grate of her voice; liked the unselfconscious way she spoke; liked the way something about her felt a little bit dangerous, a little bit forbidden.
But Spie could like those things platonically, right?
She forced herself to exhale before she did something she shouldn’t.
“The ugly reality is that Nicky’s unofficially betrothed to Cailin—she’s the New Terran princess who always looks like she’s ingested something sour.
If he doesn’t pick her, it’ll be a slap in New Terra’s face.
Personally, I think he should rock the boat, but Nicky’s never been one for boat-rocking.
Beyond that, X72 is pretty low on the list of places my mother wants tied to the future emperor. ”
Gracelin Expani preferred her territories with the most crucial resources to maintain the highest level of dependence on the empire and absolutely no voice or votes in assemblies.
Nothing that could position the precious orrist basalt closer to players, alien or domestic, that would gladly obtain it for themselves.
An ambassador with strong ties to orrist basalt, wedded to the future emperor himself, proved too great a threat, no matter how loyal.
Still, Spie would try to convince Nicky to do it anyway.
“Then why pick X72 for the show?” Artemis asked, because she was clearly not an idiot.
Spie shrugged one shoulder. “I try to avoid peeling back the intentions of Her Imperial Excellency. You’ll find what’s underneath is almost always repugnant.”
Trash Girl stared at Spie for a piercing moment. She looked on the verge of asking another question but glanced down at her dress instead. “Right, well, thank you for this. I guess I’ll see you out there.” She turned to go.
Spie had the irrational inclination to ask her to stay. To hide away in the private little bathroom a little while longer. A sanctuary from the expectations awaiting her right outside the door. Sighing, she tapped her CB.
Spie: Tell BS I’ll be right there.