Assholes.
All that did was piss me off, which was good. Anger felt a whole lot better than terror. I knew that much from experience.
"Please, Bethany. I'm flying blind, here," I whispered, hoping to play on the maid’s sympathies. “Anything at all you could tell me…”
Bethany rubbed my skin briskly with the warm towel and then wrapped it around me tight before leaning in.
"Duchess Evangeline," she whispered. "She is your everything, Miss. She'll make sure you're taken care of, she’ll be your mentor..." The younger girl swallowed hard and looked away. "As best she can be, at least. And she'll make sure you have the best possible chance of —"
"Fifteen minutes!" a voice called through the closed door.
"Damn it! She's going to be cross with me if you're looking a mess." Bethany whipped the towel off me and started furiously drying my hair. "Sienna, if you promise to work with me and get ready fast, I promise I'll tell you more later. Deal?"
Flush with the promise of more information, I nodded and snatched the towel from her. "I'll do the hair, you grab my clothes."
For the next fifteen minutes, we worked together toward a common goal: turning me from a sea hag into a passable-looking young woman. When I stepped out of the bathroom and into the dressing room to peer into the full-length mirror with only sixty seconds to spare, I had to admit, we'd done fairly well.
Bethany had dressed me in an emerald green confection that six-year-old Sienna would've blown a gasket over. It had a sweetheart neckline and nipped in sharply at the waist...a waist that looked impossibly narrow due to the corset that she'd stuffed me into and tied shut with one knee in my back. I smoothed one hand over the silky ruffles and lifted the other to my hair.
I'd managed to wrangle it into a passably fashionable—if somewhat damp—knot that Bethany had tucked tiny sprigs of flowers into. The deep auburn color looked even richer against the green of my dress, and I found myself wishing that life was normal again. That this was me, going to the prom I'd never had, to meet a boy I'd never kissed, and have a magical night that would never happen.
But as I turned my head, the light caught the golden butterfly pin I’d slid into my hair and my whole body tensed.
Poor Hannah. She’d not chosen to get into those pens. At least I could blame myself for ending up here.
This was no fucking prom. I was nothing more than an extra in the most macabre horror movie ever made.
In a word?
Expendable.
Which meant there was no more time for foolish daydreams about proms, or becoming a maid. I had one job and one job only, to find a way to Jordan, and from there to the boat. And I had fifty-seven days to do it.
Once I'd figured that out, I'd move to the next step.
No problem at all.
I fisted my hands at my side and turned to face Bethany, who was fussing with the bow on my bustle.
"Am I going to pass muster?" I asked through suddenly numb lips.
"You are," she said with a satisfied nod. She frowned and snapped her fingers. "Almost forgot."
She rushed back into the bathroom and returned a moment later, a beach stone pendant on a leather thong. "You'll need this."
I bent my head low and let her fasten the clasp, gasping as the cool, clear stone settled between my breasts.
"Need it?" I asked, staring down at it. Granted, it was lovely, giving off an almost ethereal glow. Despite that, though, I wanted to rip it off my neck. Because it strangely felt too much like the chains I’d been wearing in the pen. "Why?"
Bethany wet her lips and opened her mouth to answer when the door swung open.
An older woman wearing a black and white maid's cap like Bethany's stuck her head in and hissed, "Let's move it! The Duchess awaits the girls in the north parlor. Quick, quick!"
"We've got to go, right away. The last thing you want to do is start off making a bad impression," Bethany said, grabbing my hand and half-dragging me out of the room and down the wide, marble hallway.
Fear gripped my heart as we jogged hand in hand, darting past the older maid toward a wide set of open doors at the end of the hall.
"Please, Bethany, you've got to give me something, here. Anything. Is she looking us over like Christmas hens and the plumpest, prettiest bird winds up on the menu tonight?"
Bethany didn't answer, she just ran faster, urging me along with her.
"I'm begging you. The anticipation is killing me," I gasped, my slippered feet sliding along the marble as the open doors loomed just yards away, now. "I seriously think I'm going to explode if someone doesn't tell me something. Am I going to die tonight in that room? Because if I am, I want to at least, you know, prepare a little. Say a few prayers to some gods that might still be listening. Something."
Bethany skidded to a stop and wheeled me around to face her. Blue eyes flashed fire as she glared up at me, her plump cheeks high with color. "Damn it, Sienna, mind your mouth! You will survive the night well and fine if you would just—"
She broke off a second later, cheeks turning pale as the sound of the doors slamming shut echoed down the cavernous hallway.
I shot a glance at the massive doors, then back to Bethany, who let out a groan and shook her head.
"Bloody hell. Now we’re late!"
Chapter four
Sienna
"S-so what does that mean?" I asked, blinking at the doors, unsure of why Bethany was so upset. "We can't go in? Because that's fine by me. We can go back to the dressing room area, maybe play some cards or something until—"
The slap was a shock, and if it wasn't for the resounding crack that shattered the silence, I'd have almost thought I imagined it. But then my cheek started to throb.
"Did you just hit me?" I demanded incredulously as I stared down at Bethany. Damn, she was fast.
I towered over her by a good four inches, but she didn't back down.
"I did it for your own good, you nitwit. If you don't get into the parlor, you don't get to meet the Duchess face to face. If you don't get to meet the Duchess face to face, you don't have a chance to earn her favor. And if you don't earn her favor?" She shook her head slowly. "You're as good as dead."
It took a moment for the words to sink in, but when they did, I swayed on my feet like I'd been struck a second time.
No matter how bad things had gotten, through the death of my parents and the veil coming down, losing Jordan . . .one thing had remained constant.
In order to protect and save my friend, I had to stay alive.
Bethany must've read that truth in my face because she tipped her head in a clipped nod.
"All right, then. Follow my lead, stop with the jokes, and get your head on straight. You speak when you're spoken to and not before. And for gods’ sake, don't ask any questions. They no more have to answer to you than you would have to answer to a cockroach, and they have little patience for impertinence. Understood?"
I swallowed hard and nodded. Maybe it was my fear, or maybe my defense mechanism triggered attempts at humor had won her over a little, but for whatever reason, I knew in my gut that Bethany was truly trying to help me in what little way she could manage.