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)
Actually, this sounded good to me. I suspected I’d need all the help I could get. And due to reasons no need to explain, I’d missed my instruction with Madam Garwah last night (though, of course, I’d commed her to let her know I would).
“Are you okay for them to come up?” Aleksei asked.
“Full disclosure, I don’t know how to feel about Germaine,” I admitted.
“Which shows you have excellent instincts. Allow me to assist. She’s brilliant at what she does, but her loyalty comes from her salary, which I’m sure you can imagine, is considerable. If she got a better deal, and if she hadn’t signed an NDA that would mean we’d take everything even her grandchildren might earn, she’d turn and share every detail she knows about us if it benefited herself or her client. She’s a master at weaving tales, telling lies and harnessing the art of manipulation.”
Well then.
There you go.
“That said,” he carried on, “I genuinely think she cares deeply for my mother. I wouldn’t say she’d take a stream for her, but she’d shed an actual tear if something happened to her.”
“And how does she feel about you?”
“We have mutual respect, as it were. I don’t like that we need her, but I know we do, and she excels in her role. She knows I don’t like that we need her or what she does, but she knows I understand the game needs to be played. And I trust her to do right by my family, and now you.”
“So, cautious acceptance?” I asked.
He smiled with approval. “Another good instinct, darling.”
I smiled back.
“Allow them up?” he inquired.
“Sure.”
He turned back to the tablet. “Resume video and audio.” Pause and, “Send them up.”
“Yes sir.”
The agent blinked out.
Aleksei sipped coffee.
I gratefully closed down my Palm.
The lift didn’t open, but I heard a rustling from the back of the flat.
“Freight lift,” Aleksei murmured, and I saw his brows had titched together in surprise.
The need for a freight lift was explained when Germaine and Madam Garwah emerged from the back hall where the door to the landing pad was, and they had a long, stuffed-full clothing rack floating with them.
I wasn’t thinking good thoughts, because I was who I was, I did what I did, and even at just a glance, I could tell the clothes on that rack were terrifying.
“Of note,” Madam Garwah barked. “Attempts on your life are the only excuse to miss my class.”
“I’ll be there tonight, Madam,” I promised.
“See that you are,” she said, and then she dropped into a curtsy. “Your royal highness.”
“Always good to see you, Madam Garwah,” he said. Then he turned his attention to Germaine. “Have you lost your Palm? Or Allain’s sequence?”
“You weren’t very happy with me the last time I was here,” she pointed out. “And this needs to be done.”
“I didn’t ban you from my penthouse, Maine.”
“Good to know,” she said as she put a box on the kitchen bar and slid it down to us.
Aleksei threw out a hand and stopped it from crashing into his breakfast plate.
I gasped in delight.
It was an Ultra-Paint 5000, the enchanted moonstone of cosme-masks.
It had twenty more settings than the closest top model. It had a scanner so you could scan your outfit, and it would take that into account when it manifested your look. It administered the premier serums, moisturizers, primers and dews, had advanced cleansing that gave it spa-visor functionality, and its cost was astronomical (but it came with its first year of reloading free, though I’d heard the yearly subscription after that was super steep).
I nearly knocked the coffee cup out of Aleksei’s hand when I reached beyond him to snatch it up.
And I held it to my chest like the beloved treasure it was.
“Is this for me?” I breathed.
“Of course,” Germaine replied. “Now we need to talk wardrobe.”
My delight turned to horror as she touched a button on a remote in her hand, and an outfit Madam Garwah would wear cycled out from the others on the rack.
I fought retching.
I was now very worried that this visit would not help me to face what was to come that day at all.
“I’ll just go get some work done,” Aleksei, ever the male, murmured, sliding off his stool to escape what was to come next.
Instead of grabbing his arm and begging verbally, I gave him don’t leave me alone with them eyes.
He bent, kissed the top of my head, straightened, turned to Germaine and reminded her, “My mate knows clothes.”
“And I know that sixty-seven percent of the population of Night’s Fall value their royal family due to nostalgia, historical protections, the inherent wealth, status and glamor of it all, and you remind them of esteemed traditions,” Germaine retorted. “And you can’t have traditions without being traditional.”
I was not traditional.
I had not a traditional bone in my body.