Chapter Thirty-Six
Alora floated amongst sweet-scented bubbles.
Across the room and behind her, she could hear Harriet, the skittish Opulence employee, pulling open the vanity drawers, assembling what she assumed to be costume makeup.
Something befitting a ‘Goddess of Desire’.
Alora gagged at the idea. Gracious, even the name left her sickened.
The fact Merridon had used it in all seriousness was enough to make her screech.
“Master enjoys a heavy eye and a bold lip,” Harriet had explained before she’d begun.
Of course he does, thought Alora. “Yes, I’ve seen his office,” she’d said, startling seconds later.
She’d remembered!
The memory was blurred and faded, but it was there. Gold on gold, the furniture too big. But there’d been no response to any of it from the mousy woman, neither her comments nor her sloshing.
Alora watched the sconces on the wall now as she stewed, her hair hanging heavy over the tub’s lip, slick with oil.
Harriet’s gem-bedecked comb tugged at her scalp.
Alora wondered over if she could somehow get around the rule of going to and from Door Twenty-five and nowhere else, if she could jog her memory in other ways.
She’d managed it with Lennox, with Bash, and even that rogue captain, vague as they still were in her brain.
Now she’d done it again with Merridon’s office.
It was a relief that her memories were only hidden, rather than having been entirely taken from her.
If she could manage a bending of the rules, surely she could excavate them fully?
“I’ll go and ready your costume now. Wash out the excess oil but not all of it, and wait for me at the vanity, if you would. I must finish with you before dinner.”
“Whatever you say,” called Alora, feeling a child again, and dunked her head below the surface.
Not long later, she’d managed the final instruction.
Alora sat at the vanity in a crimson robe, uncaring that it was oversized and slipping down one shoulder.
She picked up palettes and brushes and lipsticks in turn and shook her head at it all.
When she could avoid it no more, she chewed at her lip.
Slowly, so slowly it pained her, she looked into the mirror.
Her eyes were no longer puffy; it’d been some hours now since she’d cried.
But the circles were still there, purple and blooming, as well as the dead, gray cast to her eyes.
Her hair hung heavy and wet down her back, lank pieces framing her face.
She looked like she’d been a prisoner for months instead of a single afternoon. So very pathetic.
She glared into the glass. “No. You are not this weak.”
She continued to glare, her teeth scraping against the others, a muscle feathering in her jaw, until the dead in her eyes came alive again, but this time with a cold, silver rage.
Nevermind the robe was crimson and did nothing for her coloring.
Alora’s eyes were ice through and through, and they couldn’t be tamped.
God help you, Marshall Merridon, when I’m freed from your invisible bonds.
She would—
Well, she could—
The sconce moved in the mirror. At first, Alora didn’t pay it any mind as she was too busy in her vast failure of attempts in imagining revenge.
But when the light eased across the wall as if being breathed in, she froze in her seat.
Her scowl fell from her face. She tilted her body.
But no matter the angle, it was the same.
The light was leaving. And then it was gone.
“Good god! Harriet!” The darkness was absolute, a black hole. Alora stretched out her fingers tentatively, and knew by the sudden flurry in her head, This has happened to me before.
But why?
And then she remembered—only a little—but she remembered. A dream of masks and hoods and leather gloves.
“I take light and break it, Miss Pennigrim.”
“A light-breaker and a regenerator.”
Captain.
Bash.
Oh. Oh no.
Bash fucking Merridon.
So much for a potential ally; they were the same man!
Alora felt a rising presence behind her, the sensation skittering across her skin before diving further in.
She smelled leather and guilt, and it filled her nostrils until nothing else remained.
Her fingers found the only thing available to her—a hair pin. Hideous gold, she thought.
“You lied to me,” she whispered, and wondered why the idea of it hurt so much. Of what memory she couldn’t yet find.
“Alora,” said the presence, apologetic. Leather-clad fingers enclosed her own.
If she’d her full capabilities, she would have imagined him maimed, but as it was, she couldn’t even conjure the thought. So, instead, she did the next best thing and spun in her seat. Straight into his waiting chest, she stabbed.
The light returned in an instant. Alora crushed her hands to her temples to avoid falling off the stool. It was disorienting to be catapulted from an impenetrable dark, and she nearly swooned.
“Son of a fucking hellhound,” hissed the voice from somewhere in front. “Can I not go more than a day without being stabbed?”
Alora blinked slowly at the ground, taking in black boots, the hairpin now clattering to the tile, its end coated scarlet.
The cold fury she’d seen in the mirror disappeared as she stared at that hairpin, replaced instead with something hot and fierce.
She’d been deceived. By someone she cared about.
She was so angry, spots danced in her vision. She rose from the stool.
“Again, I’ll ask, do I know you?” Alora took advantage of the captain’s preoccupation with finding the puncture wound on his chest. She shoved him.
His hood shifted as he stumbled, focusing on her. “Easy, Alora. I can explain.”
“Please do,” she said, marching forward until her bare feet toed his boots. “You lied to me. I’d love to know why. Is it because I can hardly remember and so you wished to take advantage of that fact? Well, I’ll tell you, I haven’t forgotten everything, and I certainly won’t forget this.”
“We were being watched.”
“Oh, I’ve heard that line before.”
“I’m telling you the truth. We were not alone in that hall. The fairy lights—”
“And we’re alone now? My chaperone is just upstairs!”
“She never made it that far. I sent her away.”
“Did you now? Well, that is just…perfect.” Alora pulsed with anger. And she didn’t want to keep it locked in. For once, she wanted to act rashly. To show how she felt inside on the out.
She knew precisely how Bash stood and precisely where she wanted him to fall. She kicked at his knee, and when it buckled, she didn’t reach to steady him but pushed instead.
Bash Merridon, the master’s dutiful son, toppled into her cold bathwater with a splash that soaked the room.
Silence. Alora could hear nothing besides her own breaths in the aftermath, and that quiet felt charged, prepared to explode.
Oh, he is angry. But that suited her just fine; she was angry too.
As the captain climbed from the water by slow, exacting measures, his shirt clinging to his skin beneath his coat, Alora backed away.
He looked like a grim reaper like this, which was an unpleasant comparison to make when she was incapable of running farther than the front door.
He ripped the hood from his head. He stripped the gloves away.
The coat he shed without difficulty, pulling it from his arms.
When he lifted his gaze to her, she stilled.
Above the mask, his eyes were green but veined by black.
Even as she watched, darkness writhed within the whites of them, like it wished to take over and destroy every modicum of light within the room.
She swallowed, trying and failing to imagine what he might do to her.
I’ve not thought this through.
He reached for the topmost button of his shirt, undoing it. When he finished, he moved onto the next. It wasn’t until the fourth button that Alora finally found her voice again.
“What are you doing?”
His fingertips stilled for only a heartbeat. “Reminding you.”
Then his shirt was shrugged from his shoulders and dropped to the puddle of water formed on the floor.
Alora cleared her throat. It was all she could manage while drinking in the sight of every sculpted part of him. “Of what?” If he took off his trousers, she’d faint dead away, she knew.
Bash made several purposeful strides toward her, which Alora only realized belatedly, backing away too late. Her bottom met the vanity, the makeup scattering. His chest made up her view. Her gaze flicked to the wound she inflicted upon him. As it wept slowly, already beginning to clot.
But that wasn’t where she was meant to look.
Two fingers pressed beneath her chin forcing her attention upward.
She allowed him this, her eyes skimming over his chest and shoulder, the skin smooth and lightly marked, and she wondered if what he planned for her would really be so bad, after all.
What did it mean that a flutter of anticipation built inside her now?
Except her eyes landed on a disruption in his flesh, there where his shoulder met his neck, snuffing any eagerness dead. Four long scars, purpled and raised. Her abrupt intake of air had him asking, “Do you remember that day?”
Alora shook her head. “No. What happened?”
“Specter wolves. You turned two to stone. The very same that now adorn Opulence’s entrance. I nearly died that day.”
Brief flashes of feeling and images came for her. Of blood and panic, of the captain’s weight slumped against her. Oh. She’d been terrified.
“And this.” He released her chin to duck his own, and her gaze drifted to follow. A small red line marked the flesh just above his hip. “I was stabbed by my brother. On your front stoop, no less. A less dramatic moment than the wolves.”