No one can now.
Oh, how protection has spurred on my courage (or foolishness, maybe).
The seamstress grabs me by the arms and angles me just right in front of the mirror. In the reflection, I watch as Sira ducks out through the curtains, carrying a pail, brush, washcloth and duster with her.
Terry lingers at Hilda’s side, who doesn't seem all that keen on leaving me alone with the dokkalf seamstress. But the fae is minded by other things. She crouches down at her netted bags, drawing out instrument after instrument, then setting them in a row on the tree stump beside the mirror. I eye the tools, from the measuring string to the rows of pins and needles.
Then she pulls out sheets of fabric, and my face falls.
“It’s beige,” I say, finding Hilda’s eyes in the mirror.
Her answer is a sympathetic look. “You are still a slave.”
I pucker my lips and give a faint nod.
“Oh,” is all I say as the seamstress lays out rows of material over an ivory-leathered armchair.
Though all the colours are various shades of beige—some even more on the ‘cream’ side of the scale—some of the fabrics catch my eye, and others bring a hot blush to my cheeks. Like the curtains, a few of them are sheer. I spot one that’s closely netted, like the seamstress’s bag, and another that’s a deep shade of metallic brown. Not quite on the beige colour wheel, but murky enough that it tells of my position—ultimately a slave.
I turn my cheek to the armchair as the seamstress whips up the measuring string. As she starts to wrap it around all areas of my body, I realise that I’ve got a long day ahead of me just standing here.
Hilda and Terry must realise this too, because they eventually excuse themselves and leave me alone with the seamstress. That’s when the pinching starts.
Each time the string is tied around a body part—an arm, my shoulders, my waist—it comes with a pinch of her long, sharp nails. If it wasn’t for the dress I wear, I’m sure I would bleed.
The seamstress only stops her attacks on me when the curtains part with a rustle and in-steps the prince.
I find him in the mirror instantly.
In the same clothes he left the castle in at the start of the Warmth, he steals my breath and flurries my stomach with a blizzard of fear. He wears his usual breeches and black silk shirt, only he goes without the button-up coat he saves for official duties. His black leather boots are casual today, and the strings of his shirt undone.
Without a crown atop his head, his slightly curled hair has been tousled from the steed’s ride back to the castle, and I ache to run my fingers through it.
His clear-blue eyes find me in the mirror. A dark smirk steals his mouth for a fleeting moment—a smile just for me.
The seamstress pauses her work to give the prince a deep nose-to-floor bow before she turns her attention back on me. She becomes the ghost I was trained to be.
Prince Daein holds my gaze in the mirror as he comes up behind me. The faint trace of his smirk flitters over his pink lips.
Stopping at the rear of my shoulder, his hand comes up my back to my damp curls, and he combs his fingers through them. His eyes don’t stray from mine.
I get the feeling he’s enjoying this a lot. The pampering of his new lover.
I suddenly feel like a possession in his castle.
Holding my gaze, he lowers his mouth to the shell of my ear and whispers a kiss over me. It prickles my flesh.
“Did you read the parchment I had delivered to the butler?”
Faintly, I shake my head.
He plants a chaste kiss on my earlobe. “You will meet me in the Hall for meals before the Quiet,” he tells me, his breath hot on my skin. Heat swells in my belly at this lost tenderness he once showed me. “And each Quiet, you will come to my bedchamber. I expect you to stay until I dismiss you.”
Again, I give a nod, this one sharp.
“You will dress only in your new attire,” he goes on.
At my frown, he grins wide enough to bare his teeth at me, and explains, “Your new clothing.”