Nobody's Goddess (Never Veil #1)(73)

Avery tensed in front of me. She crouched down and stuck her hands out behind her, grabbing at my bodice and trying to pull me down with her. I followed, but I hadn’t yet reached the ground when Goncalo spoke.

“You cut your hair?” He spat. “How unseemly. But you won’t hide that way.” I dared to lift my head slightly and saw he was pointing directly at me. “That one’s coming with us,” he said.

Avery rolled around to face me, pretending she was falling forward against me in the ruckus of the men moving about the shack.

“Find Ailill,” she whispered.

“Are you coming?” I asked.

“No, they can’t take me to the lord,” she replied. “He won’t speak—Ailill. But find him.”

Before I could ask why, two sets of hands seized me and dragged me across cowering women and out into the night.



I recognized the black carriages straight away. However, the black horses that pulled them shook their tails and stomped their feet, unlike the ghastly horses I had seen before. I thought that we would all be shoved inside the carriages as I’d always been, but the men instead dragged us to the back of the last carriage in the procession and bound our hands together before hooking the rope on the hitch. Then they piled into and on top of the carriages and cracked a whip. The horses trotted away. We stumbled after them.

Some of the women fell straight away.

“Keep up!” I whisper-shouted. “Keep up or the pain will be worse!”

The fallen women grimaced and pushed themselves up.

We continued to stumble as we headed up the dirt road and through the village. A few women fell, but I was never among them. I kept coaching the other women to stand up, to keep up, to ignore the leering eyes and the whistles of the men we passed along the way. By the time we broke free of the heart of the village, the other women and I had gotten used to each other’s rhythms, and we trotted evenly in a straight line.

We continued over the hilltops, maintaining our grit and determination not to fall even then, and broke through the woods in a single formation. The central dirt road through the woods made for easy travel after the ups and downs of the hills. And before we knew it, we were there—at the castle. I was still not used to looking at it so freely. Its spires seemed less menacing now, even if I knew what lay ahead was sure to be worse than what was inside the castle when I’d lived there. But it was still so large, even larger so close. It loomed tall above us, threatening to swallow us up.

The carriages stopped before the large open doors. Fire and candlelight poured forth freely from inside. Roaring laughter and music filled our ears. Men came back to cut the rope loose from the carriage. Goncalo walked down the line, inspecting each of us. I noticed too late that it was I alone who still faced forward. He was drawn instantly to me.

“You all seem more sound than the women usually are after this journey.” He grabbed me by the chin again and peered down at me. He needn’t have bothered. I wouldn’t have let his gaze intimidate me into looking away.

“I thought I heard you saying something to the others as we traveled,” he said.

It wasn’t a question, but I answered anyway. “I just told them to keep up, so we wouldn’t all be dragged down by ones who fell.”

Goncalo’s lips trembled.

“Sir,” I added, too late.

He smacked my cheek with the back of his hand.

“Good,” he sneered. “Then you are all well enough to entertain us straight away this evening.”

The women gasped, and more than one sent a surge of loathing in my direction.

Goncalo finally released my face. “Freshen them up!”

A series of women, old or scarred or altogether plain, came out from the castle. They bowed slightly and then grabbed our rope by the lead, like we were livestock to be pulled onward.

We were dragged upstairs, and more than one woman stumbled and fell this time, whether from exhaustion or just to spite me, I didn’t know. But the women not bound by ropes didn’t stop.



***



Without a word, the castle women freed our hands and got to work making us over. They washed us from head to foot, put us in slips and dresses, and combed and styled our hair. I was outfitted in a white gown, not unlike the one I had worn that day so, so long ago for the chess game in the garden. The one difference was the black shawl the old woman in charge of me draped over my shoulders.

I had a strange feeling about the old woman. She said nothing, did nothing that would make me think “crazy old crone,” but her large, dark brown eyes had been burned into my memory. I couldn’t help but think of Ingrith.

The woman made one perceptible noise, a disgruntled sigh when she picked up the brush and took hold of my cropped hair. Her hands went to work, brushing what little hair I had left. In the end, she managed to make my jumble of locks look presentable—even attractive—which defeated my purpose for cutting my hair in the first place. She finished the job by wetting the tendrils that caressed my cheeks and pulling them back, tucking a fresh red rose from a vase on the vanity behind my left ear.

Then she did something I didn’t expect. She bent forward and whispered into my ear. “What sets you apart will be their undoing. Don’t hide it.”

I met her eyes in the vanity mirror and opened my mouth to speak, but she silenced me with a pinch to the cheek that was not still stinging from Goncalo’s blow. It brought forth a rush of darker color. “This won’t do,” she said, lightly touching the bruise.