I closed my eyes, supremely relaxed. Goddess help me, I felt really good.
My mind drifted back to the tree situation. Usually I did not allow people to strip me of my control. With the ex, I’d never wanted my hands bound. I hadn’t trusted him with my vulnerability.
But with Nyfain earlier… I’d trusted him completely. I had been completely at his mercy. Yet instead of being scared, I’d been incredibly turned on. I’d trusted him without a thought.
I’d still push back when he was being Broody McFucker, but I believed in his ability to protect me. I believed that he wanted to. Hell, I even liked when he got all possessive over me with the demons.
He was getting to me. Damn it. I shouldn’t have let him help with the everlass. He’d wormed under my skin, and now he was starting to fester. That couldn’t be good.
Save the man. Save the kingdom.
Why are men so breakable? I thought as my eyes drifted shut.
Because it gives us room to swoop in and save the motherfucking day, my animal chimed in.
She had a point.
12
“Step lively, my darling. Lots to do.”
Hadriel greeted me earlier than normal the next morning, dressed in the same weird butler’s outfit but with a little grease plastered across his scant mustache. That was new. I pointed at it.
“Why?”
“Oh yeah.” He lightly touched it. “Ridiculous, right? After the close call yesterday, I thought maybe I’d better up my efforts at standing out in a bad way. I plan to wear this to the party tonight and let the demons make an ab-solute fool of me. They love doing that. It’s the price we pay for not suffering at their hands.”
“But you are suffering at their hands.”
“Well, right, but not eternally, know what I’m saying? Oh…” He paused as he noticed the marks on my neck. “Did he…bite you?”
My face heated. I’d seen the effects of last night in the mirror this morning after my bath. “Yeah. Apparently the hickey wasn’t enough.”
“Did he just bite you on the neck, or…maybe the shoulder, too?”
“Why?” I covered my shoulder with my opposite hand. “He didn’t do it hard enough to—it wasn’t like grabbing my throat. This was…a different thing.”
“Sexual, yes, obviously. But did he also bite— Here, just let me see.” He pulled the neck of my shirt a little, peering at the juncture between my shoulder and neck.
I swatted his hands away.
“Just the neck,” Leala said as Hadriel persisted.
“Ah. Well. That’s strange.” He gave me a smile. “Lame kink, right? Anyway. You’ve eaten?”
“I brought her up a tray before her bath,” Leala said, turning and clasping her hands. Her wrists had angry red welts. She had certainly been busy last night.
“I wondered about the…you know…” I circled my finger around my crotch. “The salon. For the lady beard. But maybe not the demon part. Maybe I can just…trim things up a bit? Just for…cleanliness and…ease of…getting to…things.” I grimaced and my face flamed.
Leala ducked her face to hide a smile.
Hadriel tilted his head and clucked his tongue. “Ah, aren’t you cute? When is the last time we’ve had someone bashful around, Leala?”
“A long time,” she replied demurely.
I rolled my eyes to distract from my face continuing to heat.
“Well.” Hadriel squeezed my shoulder. “We’ll definitely look into that. But for now we need to do a bunch of other things. First, we need to meet the seamstresses.” He led me out. “Now, I warn you. One of them is very sweet. Very professional. And the other is a real shitbox. It’s hard to stand the awful bollocks. But he is amazing at what he does, and so we’ll have to suffer him. Try not to hurt him.”
Two hours later, I stood in a middle-aged seamster’s messy workroom. A chaos of fabric swirled around me, draped from poles, slipping down from desks, flowing in the wind next to two open windows letting in the cooling air. A pincushion lay on the ground at the base of the pedestal on which I perched. Bright red against the beige floor, it kept attracting my gaze for reasons I couldn’t explain. Pins stuck out at odd angles, each little bead at their heads a different color. Occasionally the seamster would nudge or kick it with his foot, no idea it was even there. It had been set aside and forgotten like everything else in this room, used when needed or not at all. It felt like a metaphor for the villages clustering around this castle. Or maybe our kingdom as a whole.
This was my second stop on the measuring train. Before this, I had been in a very neat and orderly work room on the third floor, overlooking the Forbidden Wood. In that room, each piece of fabric was crisply folded and stowed in its place. Each thimble had a home. Each measurement was carefully measured and promptly recorded. It had been quick and efficient, and I didn’t see the point in this second visit. But apparently the seamstress, a plump older woman with a pleasant disposition and easy smile, excelled at humdrum work clothes, and the eccentric seamster did up fashionable attire. Leala and Hadriel thought I needed both, though I had no idea where they thought I would be wearing the fashionable attire. There was no way I was going to parade it around the demons at night. That was a lot of drama I did not need.