“You’re horrid,” I said, dropping the bird and wiping my palms atavistically on the sides of my dress.
Then Rocco did smile, showing even white teeth.
“We’re just getting to know one another,” he said.
Rocco has not improved on further acquaintance. Every time I see him, I loathe him more.
Tonight I’ll be expected to dance with him, to hang on his arm, to gaze at him as if we’re in love. It’s all a performance for the guests.
He doesn’t love me any more than I do him.
The only thing he likes about me is how much I despise him. He enjoys that very much.
That’s the man for whom Daniela demands that I wax my pussy.
I stare at her with deep distrust, wondering what she knows that I don’t. Why does she think it’s important that I be perfectly smooth from the chin down? What does she expect to happen?
“I’m not doing it,” I tell her. “He’s not touching me tonight.”
Daniela tilts her head to the side, eyes narrowed.
She’s quite beautiful, I’d never deny that. She has the austere look of a saint in a painting. Like a saint, she worships a cruel and vengeful god: my father.
“You’d better learn to please him,” she says quietly. “It will be so much harder on you if you fight. The things a man can do to his wife when she’s trapped with him, all alone in a big house like this, with only his soldiers around. . .”
She blinks slowly in a way that has always reminded me of a reptile.
“You should learn how to flatter him. How to assist him. How to serve him with your body . . .”
“I’d rather die,” I tell her flatly.
She laughs softly.
“Oh, you’ll wish you were dead . . .” she says.
She nods to her team of estheticians. With something approaching force, they push me down on the chaise, pry my legs apart, and spread hot wax over the entirety of my pussy, all the way up to my anus. Then they rip the wax off in strips, until I’m bald as an egg absolutely everywhere.
Daniela watches the whole thing, then examines the final result. She checks my bare pussy for any sign of deformity that might derail her plans. Then she nods her approval.
“When I was presented to your father, I was stripped naked in front of a dozen of his soldiers. They evaluated me like a horse at auction,” she says. “Be grateful it’s only Rocco you have to impress.”
She leaves me with the aestheticians so she can complete her own beautifying.
Daniela has already selected the clothing and jewelry I’ll be wearing.
The aestheticians carry out her orders, zipping me into a suffocating gown that hoists up my breasts and cinches my waist to a fraction of its usual size. The gown is long, gold, and sparkling, with the sort of sleeves that are not sleeves at all, but only fabric draped below the shoulders. My hair is piled up on my head with a gold band as a tiara.
It’s all undeniably beautiful, in impeccable taste.
I’m a glittering golden gift.
A black shroud would be more fitting. I feel like I’m going to my own funeral.
I’m like those maidens the Incans used to sacrifice to the gods: the Virgins of the Sun. All year they were fed delicacies—maize and llama meat. They were bathed and beautified with feathered headdresses and exotic shell necklaces. And then they were carried to the mountaintop tombs, to be sealed inside as an offering to a god that craved their death.
Catalina comes into my room, likewise dressed for the night ahead.
Cat perfectly suits her name. She’s small and lithe, and she moves as silently as a little black cat. She has a pretty heart-shaped face, large, dark eyes, and a dusting of freckles across her nose. She’s dressed in a pale lavender gown.
Even though we’re only a year apart, she looks much younger.
She’s always been timid.
I can see how nervous she is for the party, for everyone staring at us. Lucky for her most of the attention will be pointed in my direction. And she doesn’t have to worry about being roped into some hateful marriage contract, at least not yet. That was part of my agreement with my father: Cat doesn’t have to get married until she graduates college, and neither do I.
My father and stepmother are allowing me to attend Kingmakers for all four years, as long as I agree to marry Rocco directly after graduation.
It was a last, desperate ploy on my part to delay the inevitable.
They only agreed because Rocco is also at Kingmakers, as are plenty of his cousins and mine, always around to spy on me, to make sure I’m not drinking or dating or breaching any of the rules of the betrothal.
Kingmakers is no normal school.
It’s a private college for the children of mafia families from around the globe, located on Visine Dvorca, a tiny island in the Adriatic Sea.
You couldn’t imagine a more lonely or isolated place.
And yet, I almost enjoyed my Freshman year.
It was my first time living away from my father. The relief I felt, alone in my tiny dorm room, was like nothing I’d ever experienced. When I attended my classes I was free to study and learn, and even make friends without constant judgment, constant criticism.
Kingmakers is a castle fortress, a city unto itself. So vast and sprawling that I could easily avoid Rocco most of the time. Since he’s a year older than me, we don’t share classes together.
The relief I felt was painful. Because I knew it couldn’t last.
Tasting freedom might only hurt me more in the end.
I felt guilty leaving Cat here alone. I know it was a hard year for her. I can see it as she sits down on the edge of my bed. She has a flinching reaction to noise that has worsened since I was gone.
But she should experience the same freedom soon enough—she’s been accepted to Pintamonas and will be leaving in the fall, the same as me.
Cat is a talented artist. She loves drawing, painting, and graphic design. She’ll flourish at school.
The further away from our world she goes, the better off she’ll be. Maybe she’ll escape it entirely, someway, somehow.
“You look stunning,” Cat says to me, wide-eyed and impressed.
Cat is so innocent. I’ve always tried to protect her from the uglier things in our lives. Like how much I loathe Rocco.
She knows I’m not thrilled about being pushed into the marriage. But I’ve never told her how much he terrifies me. It would devastate her. There’s nothing she can do to help me.
“The Princes will be so impressed by you,” Cat says sincerely.
“You look lovely, too,” I tell her.
“I made this for you,” Cat says.
Gently, she lays a bracelet in my open palm. It’s delicate and intricate, a net of tiny golden beads strung on woven wires. I can’t imagine the hours of painstaking work to braid those fragile strands.
It makes me want to cry.
Knowing you’re loved, truly loved, by at least one person makes all the difference in the world.
I put my arm around my sister and hug her hard, closing my burning eyes.
“Thank you Cat,” I murmur.
“I’ll help you put it on,” she says.
She circles it round my wrist, closing the tiny clasp. It fits perfectly.
Daniela will be furious if she sees that I’ve augmented her meticulously curated look, but I don’t give a fuck. I can’t express to Cat how much it means to me to wear something I actually like, one good omen in this awful night.