7. Angélique
7
Angélique
T he rest of the week passes in a blur. I still train every day, but it feels like even Anne and Ari?l’s heads aren’t in it, either.
Ari?l has been eating my pastries without even asking anymore, and if I hadn’t followed etiquette lessons with him for the past eight years, I wouldn’t believe this man was even educated in court.
Anne isn’t better. My mind keeps wandering, torturing me with images of what my wedding night will be, and how I’ll lose my virginity and kill my first man the same night.
And yet, even exhausted at the end of each lesson, it has never been so easy to get the upper hand over her.
I wish I could say that it means I got better, but I know it’s something else.
It’s not just me. Everyone seems to be off.
Saturday comes too quickly, and as I sit in Emmanu?l’s shop and see his eyes shining with what looks like unshed tears, I realize the reason.
I’m scared of what’s to come.
It’s easy to hate the world I was born into. It’s easy to despise what my father made of me. It’s easy to think I’m only a weapon to everyone surrounding me.
But I’m wrong.
These people, the ones who trained with me, who took care of me in their own way, they care.
I don’t think I’ll ever see Anne cry, or even Ari?l for that matter, but I know Léandre will, and I’m already dreading all of their goodbyes.
They’re supposed to send me off; not my father. He sent his guards this morning. They double-checked my bag, and left with it, right before I came to Emmanu?l’s shop. They’ll keep the bag until I’m done with my hair, and then they’ll give it back right before I walk out of Versailles’ castle.
Or so I understood.
I’m not completely sure. My mind is fuzzy, and I can’t wrap my head around the idea that, by the end of the day, I’ll finally be doing what I’ve been relentlessly training for these past eight years.
I’m sitting in the chair with the reclinable sink when I finally register what Emmanu?l has been saying.
“I’m going to miss you, little crow,” the giant man says as he turns on the faucet.
Emmanu?l is built like a mountain. Almost two meters high, shoulders that span almost all of his shop entryway and a beard that reaches the middle of his torso. The beard is the only hair you’ll ever see on him. He is shaven so close to the skin that I suspect he actually got a laser treatment and removed all his hair. He has kind eyes of the darkest brown, and the smile he usually can’t get rid of is nowhere to be seen today.
“I’m going to miss you, too, Em,” I say automatically. It’s only when the words cross my lips that I realize I truly am going to miss him.
Emmanu?l is a rooster-shifter, hence why he ended up being the hairdresser/barber of the court. He’s built like a warrior, and his arms look bigger than my thighs, and I’m no meek little thing. Yes, I train a lot, and I have no body fat, but I do train a lot and sometimes it feels like I built muscle on muscles.
I digress.
So, yes, he’s built like a warrior, but what could Micha?l do with a shifter who can’t fly?
I mean, other than the obvious answer, that is to train them more and marry them off.
Nothing.
He can’t do anything.
Especially since other shifters’ factions don’t care about getting husbands for their daughters. Alliances don’t work like that. Unless you’re from one of the fishy families, no one will want husbands.
Mermaids are quite different, though. They are queens of their kingdoms. Their matriarchs rule the seven seas.
But what would a rooster do under water?
Yep, I give him two minutes at best.
“Who is going to cut your hair there? I don’t want to think about the mess they’ll make of it…” he mumbles.
Today, he’s so far from his usual self, it’s heartbreaking.
The rooster is the French emblem, or used to be, and they say it was picked because roosters keep singing, even with two feet stuck in shit.
I used to think it was fitting for Emmanu?l. Fate gave him a shitty situation—a bird stuck on the ground—and yet he kept smiling and found something that made him happy, and in return, he made people happy each time they visited him.
But today, it’s like he’s a whole other person and I know it’s because of me.
I’m tempted to try to comfort him, but I already went out of my way by telling him I am going to miss him.
I can’t start feeling things about my departure or I’ll shatter.
“I don’t know, Em. Maybe I won’t even miss my next appointment.”
Yes.
I need to convince myself I’ll be back in no time.
No.
It’s my only opportunity.
I can’t wish that I’ll be back.
The only thing I can wish for is that I manage to evade the extraction team and that I can flee as far from Paris as I can.
This is my ticket to freedom and I can’t waste it on friends.
They didn’t go through what I had to go through. I’m scared to think what my father would do of me if I came back to Versailles.
No longer a virgin. What use would I have to him?
I shudder at the idea.
“Did I hurt you?” Emmanu?l asks.
”No, don’t worry. You’re perfect, like always,” I answer, still half lost in my mind.
Emmanu?l keeps shaving me slowly while he hums a song I don’t recognize.
When he’s done, he rinses my head and adds some oil.
I should ask him what it is and take some with me. He’s right, I don’t know who is going to cut my hair when I’m in Notre Dame, or if they’re going to take as much care of me as he does, but then he gets me up and engulf me in a bear hug, and I completely forget.
It feels like a goodbye. One when people know they aren’t going to see each other again.
Maybe everyone knows it’s my only chance at freedom.
He finally releases me, goes behind a shelf, and sticks something in my hands.
“I was told you can’t bring much with you. Take that. At least with that, I know that you have everything you need to make that beautiful head of yours shine.”
He doesn’t give me any time to ask questions or to thank him before he pushes me to the door, where Léandre, Anne, and Ari?l are waiting for me.
They aren’t alone, though. Emmanu?l’s shop is two streets down from the main entrance of the Versailles’ palace, and just on the other side of the street, four shifters are waiting for me. Two of them are in their half-shifted forms, and the other two are in bird form: vultures. From the matching colors of their wings, the two who are half-shifted are vultures, too.
If there is one kind of bird I would have pegged for mercenaries, those are it.
One of the half-shifted men is holding my bag at arm’s length, as if it is poisonous.
It might be if he broke any of my jars, though, so he better be cautious.
Léandre doesn’t wait for anyone to talk, and like the giant rooster-shifter, he engulfs me in a bear-hug.
It’s different, though.
Léandre is my best friend, and his hugs feel as if he pours all the love he has for me into them. They don’t happen often, but each time, I feel it.
Last time he hugged me was when he found me crying after my latest ten lashes.
Like always, I managed not to cry when my father manned the whip, but once I was alone again in my room and Léandre joined me to help clean the wounds, I burst into uncontrollable tears.
Careful with the wounds on my back, Léandre hugged me as if his arms could hold my broken pieces together.
It feels a bit like that today, and if I don’t pay attention, I’m going to be crying this time, too.
Except this hug isn’t just a hug.
I feel Léandre slip something inside the back of my pants and cover it with my loose shirt.
“There’s no extraction plan. Do what you need to survive and never come back. I’ll find you. In this life or the next,” he whispers so low that I barely hear him.
He releases me, and under his usual smile, I can see the worry he has for me.
Then it’s Anne’s turn, and I think she’s going to stick with a handshake—formal and strong—but I’m surprised when she pulls my hand to her and circles my shoulders with the other arm. I feel her stick something to my shirt and then, like Léandre, she whispers under her breath.
“It’s a tracker. Get rid of it when necessary. Your father expects you to die tonight.”
That’s all she says, and then Ari?l pushes her to the side.
“You’re a shit etiquette teacher,” I mutter for myself, and I know he heard me when a light chuckle escapes him.
“Etiquette won’t help you survive,” he says, even lower than Léandre and Anne did. Weirdly, I can’t even see his lips move. The only thing that confirms he truly said anything is the way he looks at me.
He holds his hand in front of him, waiting for me to shake it.
I comply, finding it odd that he’s the only one not trying to hug me, but I realize people would find it weird for him to do so.
He’s not known to be one to show his feelings, and until this week, he was a stickler for etiquette. He closes his other hand over our shaking hands, and I feel something ridiculously small slip between them.
“Not everything is as it seems,” he says cryptically, his lips still not moving.
It’s kind of creepy, but really cool at the same time.
Then, all of a sudden, he releases my hand, and I have to react fast not to lose whatever he slipped between us and tuck it between two fingers.
Before I know it, Léandre hugs me again, but this time, it doesn’t last.
Douchebag half-vulture number one grabs Léandre’s shoulder and separates us.
He holds my bag for me to take.
“It’s time.”
I only nod at his command and release my friend.
But before he turns his back to me, I whisper, “In this life or the next.”
I don’t care if the vultures heard it. It doesn’t sound like anything other than a goodbye.
They can’t know that Léandre and I promised to find our way back to each other even before I turned into a crow. They can’t know those words are like a secret handshake for us. A wish upon a star.
Even if I’m not sure I’ll see him ever again, he’s the family I picked.
He’s my brother and I’ll always come back to him.
In this life or the next.