Chapter 10 #3
“I volunteered first when she asked this morning.” Katrina smirks at me from behind Taylor. “What a privilege for a lowly soldier like me to get up close and personal with the lieutenant general. I didn’t realize she’d have company.”
I cross my arms over my chest and level a haughty glare in her direction. Before I can follow my sneer with a snide remark or opaque threat toward this succubus, Taylor pipes up. “I appreciate your time, Katrina. If any complications arise, I will send for you.”
“Send for me anytime.” Katrina gathers her supplies from the bed with an exaggerated bend at the waist. A great position for me to kick her in. Courageously, I resist the urge.
“Sure.” Taylor draws out her response as she guides the woman to the door and shuts it behind her. The tension she was holding in a vise grip loosens and she lets out a sigh, snatching a long-sleeved shirt from off her bed and slinging it over the footboard. “She is peculiar.”
I snort. “That’s a word for it.” Pushy, flirtatious, about to piss me off, are others.
“Everyone here is accommodating, that is part of their job. She is more thorough than most.”
Against my better judgment, I bark out a laugh at this hilarious underestimation. “Thorough? Yeah, right. Thoroughly flirting with you.”
Taylor’s forehead crinkles. “Flirting with me? Why?”
“Because she wants you.”
“Wants me for what?”
“Come on, Taylor. You know what she wants, look at you.” Though I think I’m being perfectly clear, Taylor frowns innocently as she pulls up her hair into a messy bun. “I’m sure she’s not the first of them to try.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she replies. “First to try what?”
“Clearly, she wants you for, you know. Private…times. Indecent things.” The impish grin crawling across Taylor’s face and devious glint in her eyes tips me off and I gape at her. “You jerk! You’re teasing me!”
“‘Indecent things.’ That was the most tact you have ever used with me. Did it hurt very much?”
I pick up a nearby towel and smother her face in it. She laughs into the soft cotton. “Brat.”
Taylor uses the towel to wipe down the back of her neck, then to clean the salve off her body with a displeased expression.
“Even if she wasn’t as subtle as a brick in the face, the note was a tip-off.
Delilah is left-handed and the writing on there is most certainly written by someone right-handed.
A decent forgery in terms of script, but the slant is wrong. ”
I peer down at the note. “But you let her continue.”
She discards the towel and pulls her shirt over her head. “Evidence to support intuition. Her motives can stay her own.” Taylor tugs at the hem of her sweater. “You are right, she is not the first.”
“You’ve never taken advantage of it?” Taylor leads me down a flight of stairs and through the corridors. She shakes her head. “Why not? Lots of opportunity, lots of attractive people around here. Maybe ‘Trina’ isn’t your taste, but there’s got to be somebody.”
Her pale eyebrow cocks and she halts in her step. “If you want to patronize this business, Lucy, by all means, do as you please. Of course, your boyfriend may mind.”
A fierce blush invades my cheeks. “He’s not my—that’s not what I—I didn’t say I wanted—” Taylor nudges my arm with her shoulder. I’m not on my best game today, and she is taking full advantage of my lack of verbal sparring skills. “How are you this bratty so early in the morning?”
My sexual “deviance” is clearly among the intimate details of my life Taylor helped herself to, based upon her suggestion.
Papa went to great lengths to hide my indiscretions with women and unsavory men, as women in my position are expected to bring only the most suitable suitor into the marital bed.
So, naturally, I snuck around a lot. Papa found out a lot.
I got in trouble a lot. I suppose the freedom the Order plans to bring to the masses could bring me a certain kind of freedom as well.
The simple pleasure of loving and being loved by someone I choose, who chooses to be with me.
“Are you okay?” Taylor cuts into my introspection with an expression of genuine worry. “I apologize if I insulted you. I was kidding. I’m bad at joking with people. That is why I avoid it.”
“I’m not offended, I know you were kidding.” I smile gently. “Besides, even if he was my boyfriend, he doesn’t own me.”
“Good point.”
We turn down another hallway and the smell of breakfast beckons me. It perks up my brain and lets me reroute the conversation. “I suppose I’m surprised there hasn’t been a moment of temptation for you.”
“I have no time for this,” Taylor says, running her fingers along the burgundy painted walls of the hallway.
This piques my curiosity, and not only because I want to level the playing field of information between us. “No time at all? Or no time for ‘Trina’?”
“No time.” Well, that’s characteristically opaque. “There are more important matters to attend to than temptation.”
“So, you’ve never…?” I venture.
“Done indecent things? I did not say that.”
“So, you have.”
“I did not say that, either.”
I toss my hands in the air. “You are infuriating.”
“And you are nosy.”
“I wouldn’t have to be nosy if you weren’t so withholding,” I point out as we enter the dining room. Delilah is already seated, delicately nibbling on a piece of toast and watching our exchange.
She grins up at us as we take our seats next to one another on her left. “Are you trying to pry information out of our beloved chestnut?”
“I’d have better luck pulling her teeth out with my bare hands,” I say as two men bustle over to fill our plates.
We dig into our food in silence, watched by well-dressed servants. It’s sort of comforting in a strange way, like eating at home.
“How are you this morning, Taylor?” Delilah asks, folding a newspaper and placing it next to her mimosa glass.
“Fine.” Taylor shrugs. “About as well as one can expect.”
“Of course. When you’re up to it, I have gathered the resistance leaders in the region. They will be here a few days, waiting on your command.”
“Right. We will meet today.” Taylor’s eyes move to the wall, but she’s not staring at the gilded sconces lighting up the dark wallpaper. She’s calculating.
“Today? Darling, you were stabbed last night.”
“I remember,” Taylor replies. “I will be fine. I need a few hours to plan and comm with Theia.” Delilah summons someone to her side, and whispers to the young teenager who scurries away at her request. Taylor peers over toward the newspaper. “Where is this being printed?”
Delilah flips to the front page. “This one is done in Lansing, I believe.”
She tosses the newspaper to Taylor. From my seat I spot the front page, upon which a giant photo of me is printed. It’s from my eighteenth birthday and embarrassingly formal, with me in a ridiculously poofy dress and a tiara. Princess indeed. But the headline is more eye-catching than my outfit:
PICCOLO OFFERING 12 MIL FOR DAUGHTER
“Holy shit,” I murmur. “Who gets this newspaper?”
“Everyone. Underclass in this region.” Taylor takes the newspaper and scans the front page, then leafs through it, her eyes scanning left and right. She folds the newspaper on its seams and drums her fingertips on the table. “Well, this is not ideal.”
“You think? Plenty of people would be happy to kill me, reward be damned.”
Taylor nods and slides the newspaper back to Delilah. “Miss Piccolo, I promise you are in the safest possible place you could be.”
“Here in the brothel?” It’s not that I don’t like the place—it’s been quite nice as a matter of fact—but the number of people coming and going at all times puts my life in danger. Loyalty is the currency for the Order, and, like currency, it can be exchanged for something else.
“You’re safe with me.” She stands from her seat and places her napkin next to her plate. The eyes of everyone in the room turn to her, as they often have since we arrived. “I want that meeting today.”
“No.”
Taylor peers down at Delilah as if she’s misheard. It’s a regal assumption of authority, Theia’s influence rolling off her in waves. Deliberately, Delilah takes a languid sip of her beverage and brings her eyes to Taylor’s. “I told them we would have a meeting tomorrow morning.”
“Okay, tell them it is today.”
“Attend the party I’m throwing tonight,” Delilah urges. “We give our people a night of revelry before we ask them to potentially lay down their lives.”
“Revelry?” Taylor barely catches herself before she rolls her eyes. “I do not see how getting inebriated is helpful to the cause.”
“My darling girl, you’ve spent too much time with Theia,” Delilah says with an affectionate smile. “Not everything is about the missions. Life is much more than that. What good is a revolution if we forget why we’re fighting?”
“I have not forgotten why we fight.”
Glancing between them, I gently interrupt. “If you intend to lead these soldiers, it would be beneficial for you to get to know them, right? What better way to get to know them than when their guard is down at a party? Think of it as personnel recon.”
Taylor’s expression softens and Delilah shoots me an impressed look as she stands and wraps a hand around each of Taylor’s upper arms. “I’ll reschedule the meeting for this afternoon, as long as I don’t hear any objections about the party tonight.”
“I suppose that is sufficient,” Taylor replies.
“Wonderful, I’ll make the arrangements. Now, darling, I must ask you to carry out one mission for me tonight.”
“Of course.” Taylor straightens up. “What is it?”
Her hand moves from Taylor’s arm to her chin, arresting it with a shake. “Have fun.”
Taylor grunts, backing away from Delilah and turns toward the door. Mason stumbles in at the same time and knocks chest-first into Taylor. She catches him at his shoulders, chuckles, and lets him go, patting him on the back as she leaves.