Total pages in book: 192
Estimated words: 192810 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 964(@200wpm)___ 771(@250wpm)___ 643(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 192810 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 964(@200wpm)___ 771(@250wpm)___ 643(@300wpm)
“You know, you have a mirror,” Cat returned.
“I know I’m not…hard on the eyes,” I forced out.
“Gods, she can’t even say it,” Gayle muttered.
Monique sighed.
“Who says, ‘I’m gorgeous’? That’s gross,” I sniped.
“Do you know you’re gorgeous?” Cat asked.
Ulk.
I decided not to reply.
Cat did not share my silence. “You’re thirty years old, already lead costume designer for some big gigs, and have also already been nominated for two, I’ll repeat, two awards. And they aren’t some rinky-dink awards from some obscure digi-pane. One was the Golden Screen, and the other was the damned Edgy. Everyone watches those ceremonies on display. Everyone. There are parties across all Four Realms when those awards shows are on.”
“Well—” I tried.
“How many jobs did you turn down to pick this one you’re currently on?” Cat demanded.
“Okay, so I’m good at my job too,” I snapped. “But I already know that as well.”
“So what gives?” Gayle asked.
“What gives is that you all”—I circled my finger at them—“get totally weird when stuff like this comes up.”
“Stuff like, something good happens to you, and we’re not as surprised about it as you are?” Monique queried.
“Mon, I’m going out on a date with the future king of Night’s Fall. Tell me that’s not something to be surprised about,” I retorted.
“She has me there,” she mumbled to Gayle.
I looked to the ceiling and requested, “Deliver me, Beelzebub.”
“He’s not up there,” Cat joked.
I set my glower on her.
“You deserve good things happening to you, Laura,” Cat pressed.
“Yes, if beings are nice beings, everyone does,” I returned.
Cat spoke on like I didn’t. “And you deserve it without fighting, scratching and breaking your back working for it. Like a hot guy, prince or not, giving you an expensive glass of champagne and taking you to touch troll skin.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t,” I retorted.
“No, you didn’t, but you don’t believe it,” Cat shot back.
“Mm-hmm,” Monique hummed.
“Can we not do this now?” I requested. “I need to change. I need to accessorize. I need to program a bag switch.” I shook my head. “This isn’t that big of a deal. It’s not like he’s going to marry me. It’s just a date.”
“And there it is,” Gayle mumbled.
“What?” I snapped.
“Who says he’s not going to marry you?”
I loved them all.
I really, really did.
But they were crazy.
I threw up my hands. “By the gods! It’s just a date.”
“But you’ve already decided that’s all it’s going to be,” Cat returned.
“He’s courting me. I don’t think it’s all it’s going to be. He’s got me going to this Garwah female, so obviously, for whatever reasons he has, he wants to get to know me.”
“And then what?” Monique asked.
“I don’t know. I’m not thinking about that. But I’m also not dreaming up some impossible dream that I’ll be wearing an extravagant Celestina gown and floating up the steps of the Star Cathedral toward a midnight mass to marry the True Heir.”
“And why wouldn’t you do that?” Gayle asked quietly.
Gods!
They needed to let this go!
“I don’t know, Gayle, because it hurts when you don’t get what you want really, really badly. It hurts a fuck of a lot,” I bit.
“Oo, damn,” Monique whispered. “She’s cussing.”
“Everybody has to dream,” Gayle replied, still going quietly.
“You can. Cat can. Mon can. But I learned the hard way that if shit happens, it will. Like parents hating you only slightly less than they hate each other…and the whole world. Like you can be walking home after getting yourself a whirly-whip, be dragged into an alley and—”
“Okay, shh, okay,” Cat soothed. “Don’t go there, honey.”
I snapped my spine straight and turned to the valet rails. “I need to change.”
“We really fucked this up,” Monique muttered.
They grew mercifully silent as I shrugged off my robe and headed to my plethora of bottles of perfume (yes, I was old-fashioned there too, I didn’t even have any scent loaded into my bath pod).
I was perfumed, dressed, accessorized, had the bag switch programmed and was seated on my lilac velvet poof, buckling the thin straps on my shoes when Cat broke the silence.
“I just want you to think about the idea that, if this was just a date, if this was just the prince wanting a break from the monotony of his fabulous life, why he’s arranged for you to go through instruction with Madam Garwah.”
My head snapped up to look at her as my lungs compressed all the air out of me.
“I can guaran-damn-tee you, his aide does not call on Garwah for every female he dates,” Cat continued.
“They taught you not to dream,” Gayle said.
“We’re just saying, maybe, just maybe, they were wrong,” Cat finished it.
“Mm-hmm,” Monique hummed.
And I knew, while I was getting dressed, they’d conspired their coordinated exit to punctuate this last point because, completely synchronized, once they delivered it, they all blinked out.
Chapter 8
Something
Shocker: Royal protocol was actually kind of interesting.