Torrent of Tears (Scourge Survivor Series Book 3)(8)
I huffed and turned away from my new-found sibling. Picturing the noise as static coming out of a stereo I reached for my mental volume control and turned down the dial.
“Ha!” I shouted as the rush quieted to a background buzz.
When I glanced back to Freya she frowned. She swept her straight, jet black hair over her shoulder and strode off again. “You’ll stay at the Palace, of course, until after the celebration of our sixth. Then all Eligibles move to our new homes.”
“Cool. What’s—All of us? How many of us are there? And what are we eligible for? And what race of Fae are we, cause I’ve tried to figure out for years where I come from. I’ve researched them all. And if I’m staying at the Palace why are we going into the town?”
She sighed heavily and eyed me up and down. She fingered my battle vest and glared at my leathers. “You can hardly go before the Queen looking like this.”
Freya’s shoes click-clacked over another wide waterway that passed between a light gold office building and a chrome restaurant. With her skirts fisted in her hands, she booked it toward what looked like a busy part of the city. The gathering of her skirt exposed her feet and the gorgeous pair of midnight blue, open toed sling-backs she wore. Well, whatever her shortcomings in hospitality, she had good taste in footwear.
After a few more twists and turns down side streets and across storefronts, the street opened to a large courtyard. Bronze, metallic trees lined the streets on all four sides, bordering a wide, cement courtyard. From each of these fake ‘trees’, two or three shiny chrome, hula-hoop swings hung with teenagers perched and twirling in rotating circles. The reflection of the surrounding water pathways bounced off the hoops and glittered in sparkles around the courtyard giving everything a kind of happy-happy kaleidoscope feeling.
“Oh, my.” Freya froze then double-timed it along the row of storefronts. “Over here. Hurry.”
A crowd had gathered in the courtyard, voices meshed in raised whispers. I scanned the group and my heart beat faster. I had always stood out because of my size, or lack of it, but here I fit right in. The men were slightly taller than the women, but everyone seemed to have features which either matched mine or accented them. Could this really be where I came from? Where I belonged?
“Would you hurry up?”
I jogged after my sister. “What’s the crowd gathering for? What’s doin?”
“Nothing you need worry about.” Freya climbed the three steps to the entrance of a dressmaker’s shop and knocked on the door. “Simply a worthless lawbreaker getting his due.”
The door of the dress shop opened and a little man stepped into the doorway. His high-pitched trill cut through the hum of the bustling street. “Princess Love, come in, come in. A courtyard beheading is no place for you and your friend. Such nasty business. Come in.”
“Beheading?” I cast a glance over my shoulder. From the store stoop I could see a dozen men in battle-gear standing on a raised platform at the far end of the courtyard. They were erecting what could only be . . . “A guillotine?”
The dressmaker winced, ushering us in to the elegant shop. “Nasty business. Nasty indeed.”
After closing the iron door, the little man drew the window shades. I wasn’t sure if he had inherited some dwarfism through genetics or if he was suffering from a physical condition. The man barely topped four foot and his legs were proportionately smaller than his upper body. His skin had the faintest green tint to it and his hair was a wiry mass of white standing on end. It gave him the appearance of a summer dandelion gone to seed.
“Who have we here?” He hobbled in a quick circle around me. “Obviously an Eligible. That cannot be mistaken. No. But who? Who indeed. I know all the Princesses—” His eyes lit as his mouth fell open. “You’re the one. You are her. The missing. . . Oh, my. Oh, my, my.”
Amused by the total befuddlement of this odd, scattered man, I offered my hand. “I am Alexannia Grace.”
As the dressmaker gasped, Freya grabbed my wrist and pushed my hand away. “Eligibles do not touch the common.” She turned to the man, who was dabbing his wrinkled brow with a swatch of bunched up linen. “Stop sniveling, Stitch. She doesn’t know her place. She never had a mentor.”
“No mentor?” His eyes softened with an unmistakable sympathy. “How awful for you, Princess. To be taken from your home and not have a mentor.”
“I’m sorry.” I said, rubbing my temples. “I didn’t mean to upset everyone.”
Stitch waved my words away and tucked his hanky away “Shall we find you something to wear that exemplifies Grace as the virtue it is? You did say you were the Princess of Grace, yes?”
I caught Freya’s nod and repeated it. “Ah . . . yes, that’s right. Grace.”
Apparently, my second name was the virtue I represented and the Princess of Grace should be decked from toe to ear lobs in lavender. A lavender chiton with a smooth lavender rope twined around my waist and a lavender choker. I adjusted the gown where it gathered over my left shoulder. That, at least was good. If I needed to draw a weapon, I wanted my right arm free. I checked out the look from every angle, pivoting in the mirrored room Stitch and I were in.
It wasn’t hideous. Actually, far from it.
And other than giving me a hard time about strapping my thigh sheath under my dress and the fact that I preferred boots to the shoes he insisted I wear, Stitch had been decent about trying to not make me too much of a Faery creampuff. He was right though, I loved the brushed velvet platform pumps.