Chapter 32
N ear the end of the week, Soren informed me his sister would be visiting sometime soon. He didn't give me anything more precise than that, so I wasn't prepared to see her the moment I walked into the kitchen the next morning. And not only her but also the esteemed designer Zinnia Russo.
I had only met Serena once, and Zinnia never. They were both extraordinarily beautiful and elegantly styled, and they greeted me in my robe with my long, wavy hair lying loose and wild down my back.
Soren was leaning against the counter, drinking tea the way I found him most mornings, and Serena was across from him, perched on the edge of the butcher block, munching on pomegranate seeds.
Neither of them had time to greet me before the diminutive designer rushed to me. Zinnia was hardly over four feet tall, not counting the halo of graying dark curls surrounding her head. Her skin was a medium brown, and she looked in her late sixties. She put on a monocle to inspect me closer and lifted my arm to get a better look at my body.
Fortunately, I recognized her as one of the kingdom's most glamorous and respected working muses. Otherwise, I would've found her intrusive behavior more alarming. While most muses performed conductions for at least part of their lives, many of them went on to work in other creative endeavors, like designing, cooking, and composing music.
“Don’t mind her, Isadore,” Serena said cheerily as Zinnia pulled a measuring tape out of her deep pockets. “That’s just my friend Zinnia, and she’s here to get you ready for the Samonend. My brother hasn’t left us with any time for pleasantries.”
With that last remark, Serena cast Soren a disapproving glare, and he gave a sheepish shrug.
"We cannot live in the past, so it does us no good to worry about what could have been. Instead, we shall put our energy in the here and now," Zinnia said almost absently. "We'll make do with the time we have. With that in mind, is there somewhere we can go so you can strip down?"
Soren nearly choked on his tea at that point, and hurriedly, he offered us the library so the designer could get more precise measurements of my body. He closed the curtains, then departed and closed the door behind him, leaving me in relative privacy with Serena and Zinnia.
“Do you want me to leave for this part, or would you rather I stay?” Serena asked as I started untying my robe.
"You can stay," I said because having a buffer felt better than being alone with the intense Zinnia.
Besides, I had been through dozens of fittings. Stripping down to my slip and bloomers as a stranger measured every inch of my body was a part of my life. At least I would have a stunning one-of-a-kind garment on the other end.
For her part, Serena walked around the room, pretending to admire her brother’s books so she wasn’t staring at me in a state of undress.
“How long have you been a muse?” she asked me.
“About fourteen or fifteen years,” I guessed. It was hard to remember exactly when I had started, since I had been so young.
"Oh, that's right. Soren mentioned you were a child muse," Serena said. "I did some musing when I was younger, but I was still twelve when I started."
“I didn’t realize you hadn’t always been an enchantress,” I commented.
Sometimes, muses moved on to enchanting, but not often. It was a much different skill set, both in terms of magik and performing. On top of that, warlocks and other enchantrices were slow to accept a muse in that position, making it a very difficult transition.
“Nobody is always anything,” Serena said dryly. “Our mother was a muse, but she retired when she married our father, who was a wealthy barrister. But he fell ill and died by the time I was twelve. His protracted ill-health had burned through our inheritance. Mother’s skills were rusty, and the shine had faded off her star, so I went into musing to make extra money for the family.”
Serena gave me a sympathetic smile over her shoulder. “Being a muse is hard work, especially when you’re a kid, and I gave it up after only a few years.”
Until then, Zinnia had been mostly silent, other than occasionally muttering about inches and numbers, but she let out an audible scoff. "Serena talks as if she were sent off into battle alone and unprepared. Her mother, Lysandra, was fierce .”
“You know what creeps some of the enchantrices and royal nobles can be, so demeaning and so demanding,” Serena expounded on Zinnia’s claims.
"With some of those folks, leaving a baby muse with them is like leaving a lamb in a lion's den," Zinnia went on, talking as she moved around, measuring and remeasuring my body. "And Lysandra Tomoleo was a damn lioness."
“Zinnia was my mom’s best friend,” Serena told me. “But she’s not wrong.”
“I never am,” Zinnia retorted, indignant.
“How did you get into musing, Isadore?” Serena asked. “Was it something you always wanted to do?”
This wasn’t the first time I had been asked this question, but every other time, I had lied and said, Yes, I always dreamed of being a muse .
Instead, I found myself telling the truth: "I never considered doing anything else because I always knew that I would never be able to do anything else."
Zinnia stopped measuring long enough to look up at me, one eye oversized behind her monocle, and she made an indecipherable sound in her throat.
"I've got everything I need," Zinnia said, and she held out her hand, shaking mine brusquely. "It was nice meeting you, and I will be back two days before Samonend for a fitting."
“Thank you,” I said, and she was already starting for the library door.
“Don’t thank me until you see the dress,” Zinnia said.
“I’ll be out in a minute,” Serena said, and the older woman raised her hand absently as she left the room. “Have Soren make you a cup of tea.”
After I got dressed again, Serena came over. She put a gentle hand on my arm, her dark eyes reminding me so much of her brother’s.
“You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to,” she said, her voice low and very serious.
I had to suppress the hysterical urge to laugh because she was clearly speaking out of concern and kindness. It was just that I couldn't remember anyone saying that to me my entire life. This was my first time working at something because I wanted to, and now , someone was concerned.
“Performing at the Samonend with Soren is my choice. I want to do this,” I assured her.
A smile crept up at the corner of her mouth. “Good. I just had to be sure that Soren wasn’t running over you. He can be hard to contain when he’s excited.”
“What we’re doing is a true collaboration,” I said.
Her smile deepened. "I can't wait to see what you create together."
As soon as both Serena and Zinnia had gone, after gratitude and goodbyes from both Soren and myself, he turned to face me. With an apprehensive tone, he asked, "Serena wasn't too horrible to you, was she?"
I laughed. “No, she wasn’t horrible at all. I think she was trying to look out for me.”
"She tends to do that," he said, but his tension didn't seem to ease. "Did she try to warn you away from me?"
I tilted my head, caught off guard by his concerns. “What would she have warned me about?”
He rubbed the back of his neck, turning bashful. “She thinks I’m bossy and overzealous.”
“You can be both of those,” I admitted. “But you can also be encouraging and confident, and you demand a lot from others because you give so much of yourself.”
“That is true.” His eyes lightened, and he smirked. “I am a very awesome guy.”
I rolled my eyes. “Did you ask me that to trick me into complimenting you?”
“No, that was merely a wonderful side effect.”
Soren’s smile didn’t completely disappear, but a gravity had settled into his expression. “I do want to be certain that I’m not bossing you around or forcing you into things, the way…”
He trailed off, but I didn't need him to finish to know what he meant: he wanted to be sure he wasn't treating me the same way Adora had. He was making sure he had my enthusiastic participation in a way that almost no one in my life ever had.
“I love what we’ve come up with for Samonend,” I insisted. “And I don’t mind when you boss me around.”
“That’s good because I plan on telling you what to do a lot today.”
I arched my eyebrows. “What did you have in mind?”
“Are you ready to add the light today?” he asked, barely masking the zeal in his voice.
“Are we ready for that?” I asked uncertainly.
The plan was to learn the footwork, then combine my magik, and finally, incorporate Soren’s levitation. I wanted to move on to the next step but worried I wasn't good enough yet.
“I am ready, and from what I saw with you yesterday, you seem ready to me. But I’m not you. If you want more time focusing solely on footwork, we can do that, too.”
"Let's try it with the lights and see how it goes," I decided after a moment of thought, and Soren's eyes sparkled.