Page 51 of Obsidian Prince

"I need help." Liliana stroked the velvet of her wrap. The little boy's hand stroked the denim seam of his mom's pants leg.

"You've been such a great help to me,” Janice Willoughby said. “Anything you need. Just name it."

"I need to be pretty."

"But you're already pretty.” The rabbit-kin bristled. "Who said you weren't pretty?" She seemed ready to fight whoever dared to say such a heinous lie.

Liliana smiled at Janice's knees, warmed by the rabbit's protective instinct, even if it was misplaced. "I have a date tonight."

Kayden grinned back at her, peeking around his mother’s knee.

"Oh, Anna, I mean, Lilly!” Janice clapped her hands together and bounced on her toes in their sneakers. “You have a boyfriend? Girlfriend?"

"Boyfriend," Liliana clarified. She winked at Kayden.

He scrunched up half his face trying to wink back.

The rabbit-kin bounced even more, making her ponytail swing. "That's wonderful." She pulled Liliana into her house by the hand. "Tell me everything. Where did you meet? What's he like?"

Kayden ran away as Liliana followed Janice into a living room littered with puzzles and toys. Wendy the dog barked at the spider-kin until Janice shushed her by tossing a stuffed animal. The very big, shaggy blonde dog made the toy squeak repeatedly as she bounded into another room.

"I met him in a parking lot.” Liliana found that first question easy to answer.

“In a parking lot?”

Since she didn’t want to elaborate, she tried to answer the other more difficult question – what was Alexander like. “He is complex and intriguing, tall and handsome, scarred in body and soul but stronger for it. He is smart and honorable, but very dangerous. He makes my knees wobbly when he kisses me."

"Well, that all sounds wonderful, except for the dangerous part." Janice steered the spider-kin around a Lego construction that looked and moved kind of like her room-bot. She pulled the spider-kin toward the communication center in one corner of the room.

"I like dangerous men.” Liliana found Janice’s living room as alien as a moonscape. “It's a species trait. My sister Isabella married a Komodo dragon-kin assassin. My father Simon was a lion-kin prince. One of my mother's sisters married Ghengis Khan."

"Well, I can help you get ready for your date, but I don't think I particularly want to meet your new boyfriend."

“He would not harm you. He strictly follows rules and laws, whenever they don’t interfere with his best interests.”

“That’s um, good to know, I guess.” She started punching buttons that brought up holo-projected menus above the comm center. "So, do you have a budget for this that we need to stick to?"

Liliana showed her the handful of pay cards she’d pulled out at random. Many of them were pre-loaded cards with specific denominations stamped on the front.

The rabbit-kin laughed. "With that, I could get you ready for a date with a king."

"He is only a prince," Liliana told her.

The rabbit-kin looked at Liliana for a long moment. "You have a date with a tall, handsome, dangerous prince, who you met in a parking lot?"

"Is his rank important to date preparations? My father and first mother taught me proper royal court etiquette, but I did not think any of that applied at this point."

Janice snorted. "Having never dated a handsome prince, I don't really know. Knowing men, though, if he's kissed you enough to make your knees wobbly, then I suspect you're past worrying about how to do a proper curtsey."

"That’s good, but I already know how to do that anyway."

In a matter of a few minutes, the rabbit-kin used the comm center to call one of her neighbors to watch her children for the day and instructed the house AI to make several appointments.

Liliana found the disembodied voice disturbing. She decided that no matter how much money she had, she wouldn’t purchase a house AI. The soulless, chillingly polite voice reminded her of HAL 9000 from Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001.

Janice and Liliana spent the entire day getting ready for the spider-kin's date. Janice took Liliana to Raleigh for shopping first, to pick out a new dress, a matching bra and panties set, new shoes, and jewelry, and a tiny, beaded pocketbook that she particularly liked. A salon was next. Her hair and fingernails were carefully trimmed, shaped, and adorned.

The spider seer also got her makeup done for her. She bought all the makeup. She asked the woman to show her how to do it herself, including a less dramatic style for days when she wasn't going to a fancy restaurant. Until then, Liliana hadn’t known there were different ways to do makeup based on the occasion or time of day. She had only ever used stage makeup in her circus days, but now she felt a powerful need to be extra pretty as often as possible.

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