Chapter 6 Azalea
Azalea
I pull the threadbare garment over my head and toss it in a heap on the ground, leaving me in nothing but the silken slip I wore beneath it.
Rhoden and I spent the afternoon on a mission to make the ugliest dress we could for me to wear to dinner.
Braxton can boss me around until he’s blue in the face, but that doesn’t mean I will ever listen to any of his demands.
I grit my teeth at the memory of how smug he looked when he saw me in my chosen attire, as if he somehow still won.
Perhaps he had. After all, I was the one wearing tattered strips of cloth for a dress.
Still, how could he look at me with amusement and not even the slightest flicker of frustration? The condescending prick.
I so badly want to make him feel even a fraction of the suffocating rage I feel daily because of him. Not that it will do me any good to get under his skin, but I still try. After all, I have to entertain myself somehow in this dreary place.
The memory of Braxton’s vile smirk lodges its way into my brain.
The way the corners of his lips tilted and the slightest glimmer entered his striking dark eyes, as if we were sharing some kind of inside joke.
Somehow, my blatant disobedience of his demand amused him.
Dare I say for the briefest of moments, he looked almost… happy. And I hate it.
Needing something to distract me from the dastardly dinner, I turn to my writing desk, hoping that drafting a letter to my fiancé will help in ridding my mind of just how infuriating Braxton is.
I stall when I turn toward my desk, and my eyes dance over the glass vase still sitting on my nightstand with the bouquet of now slightly wilted forget-me-nots.
The once vibrant purple petals seem to have dulled from the lack of attention they received throughout today.
Those fucking flowers that I’m not sure are meant to act as an apology, an attempt at wooing me, or simply as another means to piss me off.
And they do. They piss me off so profoundly that seeing them right now catapults my once-dimmed temper into uncontrollable outrage.
I don’t know how I didn’t notice them as I was getting ready for dinner, but they should have long since been disposed of. Now, I intend to do just that. Crossing the room, I curl my bony digits around the cool glass, but as I hover the vase over the waste bin next to my writing desk, I hesitate.
For a fleeting moment, I feel something stirring deep in my gut.
Something that doesn’t feel like anger, or disgust, or even annoyance.
Something that feels entirely different.
Before I can try and decipher what that feeling is, I hear my door creak open.
Turning my head, I see Rhoden slip into my room, a nefarious look gracing her features.
“How did it—”
“You were supposed to get rid of these.” I snap at her, shaking the vase in the air for emphasis before placing it back on my nightstand. The sudden urge to expel them, and whatever they were momentarily making me feel, out of my presence, is overwhelming.
Rhoden pales. I’m never harsh with her, and certainly rarely ever this curt. “I-I’m sorry.” She stumbles over her words, and I hate to see her good mood tarnished.
“No.” I shake my head, slumping down onto my bed.
Normally, I would cover myself up, and not just laze around in my slip in front of Rhoden, but I’m too exhausted to care after today.
I dramatically fling myself backward until I’m lying flat on my back and stare blankly at the cream-colored ceiling.
“I’m sorry,” I groan, listening as her feet patter across the floor of my room.
I’m soon greeted with the weight of something draping over my stomach. Looking down, I see that Rhoden has gotten me my robe. Sitting up, I scowl at nothing in particular as I slip my arms through the sleeves and secure it tightly around my waist.
“I take it dinner went well then?”
“I swear to all the celestials above Rho, he looked amused when I walked in tonight.”
“Amused?” she squawks, looking just as flabbergasted as I feel. “Are you sure you didn’t misread him?” She shakes her head, her perfectly straight black hair swaying like water with the movement.
“I swear to you, I think I almost witnessed his first laugh.”
Rhoden snorts, which always seems like such a startling noise coming from such a delicate girl. “You must be dramatizing the situation.”
“Do you find me to often be dramatic?”
Rhoden gives me a pointed look, her forest eyes speaking a thousand words.
“Don’t answer that,” I bleat, dropping my chin in my hand.
Rhoden scoots next to me on the bed and drops her head on my shoulder.
“Do you want me to brush your hair and get you ready for bed?”
“It depends. Do you think if I instead have you chop all of my hair off, it would piss Braxton off?”
With an exasperated shake of her head, Rhoden bounds to her feet, grasping my wrist in the process.
She hauls me over to the cozy chair in front of my vanity and pushes me to sit down in it.
To be honest, both the chair and vanity are highly impractical in this room.
The chair is so large that I could lie across it, and my feet would only slightly dangle off the edge.
It’s far too big for its purpose, and it makes it frustratingly annoying for Rhoden to do my hair.
It’s also furnished with a white velvet fabric that is practically begging to be stained, and particularly impossible to keep looking immaculate.
My vanity is equally as over-the-top, and littered with more drawers than I could ever fill.
It has a mirror so large I swear I could spot my reflection in it from the window across the castle.
However, as impractical as they are, I could never part with them.
Mostly because I demanded Braxton provide me with a space for Rhoden to help get me ready, and his payback for me throwing a fit was having this set up in my room.
It’s like he somehow knew I would find it unnecessary and gaudy, especially when I pretended to love it.
He couldn’t hide his paling shock at my reaction as I gushed over the intricacies of both pieces of furniture.
I feel like if I tell him how bothersome it is now, it will be like admitting defeat.
I relax further into the soft cushion of the chair as Rhoden begins pulling the brush through my curls, no doubt ruining them, but I can’t bring myself to care right now when this feels so good.
After a moment of silence, Rhoden finally speaks, asking, “Do you really want your entire existence to revolve around trying to piss him off?”
“I have a theory that his misery could actually bring me great joy,” I joke, placing my hand over my heart. Rhoden playfully tugs on my hair. “Ow!” I blindly slap at her, but she continues with her task unperturbed.
“Seriously. What peace do you think it will bring you to fight with him all the time?” Her eyes meet mine in the reflection of the mirror, all joking removed from her expression.
“I don’t think Braxton really had any peaceful intentions in mind when he imprisoned me here.” I throw a heavy amount of emphasis on the last three words as I speak.
Rhoden finishes tying my hair up and sits on the corner of my vanity. “Well, I don’t know much, but I’m fairly confident a life of unrelenting anger is only going to contribute to a melancholic existence.”
“Now who’s being dramatic?” I scoff.
Unimpressed with my response, she matches my sass with some of her own, crossing her arms over her chest. Groaning, I roll my eyes and slump back into my chair.
“Are you suggesting that I actually be nice to him?” I grimace as if the mere thought brings me pain.
“Well…” Her word drifts off as she lifts her shoulders in a gentle shrug.
I bark out a laugh. “Oh, good, so you’ve lost your mind.”
“Not exactly.” Rhoden leans in, dropping the volume of her voice to a hushed whisper. “You know how, no matter what the deal or agreement was, magic, at the end of it all, is a binding contract.”
I match her stance, also leaning closer to her. “I guess.” My gaze turns quizzical as Rhoden continues.
“Well, like any binding contract, it can be broken.”
“I already know that,” I huff, slumping back into my chair. “Why do you think I’m spending all my time in the library reading?”
“You’ve been educating yourself on curses in general when what you need to be doing is better understanding the circumstances of your specific curse. You can break the binding and free yourself if you can find out the parameters of your curse and find a violation that you didn’t know of.”
My brows pinch tightly. “First of all, if a violation occurred, wouldn’t the magic unbind itself automatically?”
Rhoden shakes her head excitedly. “The only way it can be broken is if one of the participants demands retribution. That’s why curses are so finicky, and why most mages steer clear of them. There’s too much room for error, loopholes, or violations to occur for them to last very long.”
I skate my tongue over my teeth as I ponder her words. “So, if I can find the contract of mine and Braxton’s curse, I can find a reason to demand retribution and get it broken?”
“Exactly.” Rhoden’s smile widens so much that I’m almost positive I can see all of her teeth. Her level of excitement is mildly unsettling.
“So, what does this have to do with me being nice to Braxton?” I ask, my forehead scrunching with my words. Rhoden’s already impossibly wide grin stretches further, and my stomach drops. “I’m guessing you have an idea.”
“I do indeed.”
With a sigh, I pull my legs up underneath me and get comfortable because I know that whatever this plan is, I’m not going to like it.