Page 62 of The Prince's Mage

Marcella was certain Aimilia had the wrong words again. “Pardon? What for?”

“Saved Gavril. Saved me.”

That didn’t make anything clearer.

Marcella blinked. “I saved Gavril from the challenge with his brother, but I’ve never done anything but make you upset.”

Aimilia rolled her eyes. “Saved mefromGavril. From life of… not enough. We do not fit the way I wished we did. Did not see it until you. Man who has to drag his feet to—” Aimilia gestured in the air for a moment as she searched for a word she did not seem to find. “—promise—not right. Gavril and I—hurts, but not right. So thank you.”

Marcella didn’t know how one could possibly respond to that.

Aimilia continued, “Gavril loves you. Do not hurt.”

She especially didn’t know how she could respond to that when she was planning on kidnapping his brother and handing him over to Hypatia that night.

She whispered, “I do not want to.”

It was the only truth she could offer.

But not wanting to didn’t mean she wouldn’t.

Aimilia nodded, seemingly satisfied, before hauling herself out of the bath and wrapping her towel around her. While her back was turned, Marcella hurried after her, her curls sticking to her shoulders and skin and mercifully hiding the scars that weren’t covered by the linen towel. They changed into the fresh clothes Aimilia had brought and the second Marcella had tied the sleeves, she was grabbed by the arm and hauled away.

The rest of the day was spent in Marcella’s room, Aimilia bemoaning Marcella’s thick curls and Marcella hissing at her every time she pulled on a knot. Eventually Aimilia pulled out fabric of a peplos Marcella had never seen before and knew for a fact hadn’t been in that dresser that morning and threw it at her, barking at her to put it on.

Marcella shoved Aimilia out of the room to do so, hoping that would be the end of it, but the second she’d secured the clasps, the door was flying open again and Aimilia was practically wrestling Marcella onto the bed to again try to “fix the mess” of her curls.

Eventually, Aimilia finally released Marcella and clapped her hands to look at them in the mirror. “Ah! Finished!Pulchra!In your tongue, beautiful. My work is beautiful.”

Marcella looked up to see that Aimilia’s vicious pulling on her hair had actually been her twisting it into various braids and pinning them into place. Marcella went ashen when she saw what her neck looked like with her hair up. The scars of an incision to the back of her neck curled around it to the front where they met under her jaw and down her neck and started to travel across her shoulders, splitting into lines going down her arms and one dipping beneath the much lower neckline of her peplos.

Marcella hadn’t even gotten the chance to look at herself in the peplos before Aimilia had been fighting her over her hair. Again.

She wrapped her arms over her chest and said to Aimilia in the Inimicus tongue, “Wear something else. Not this.”

Aimilia shook her head and replied in Marcella’s language, “No. I go ready now. You wait for Gavril. Nothing else to wear.”

Aimilia rushed out the door as the sun was beginning to set and Marcella knew the banquet was starting before it finished setting. She sneered at where Aimilia had been before hurrying over to the dresser and pulling open the drawers to at least find something she could use for sleeves.

The peplos was beautiful with gold and silver patterned trimming on the edges, but it clasped over only one shoulder, exposing the other and the top of Marcella’s chest as well as all of her arms. There was also a slit in the fabric up one side of the skirt to the knee. Marcella could live with that—actually, it would be useful for mobility when she was trying to get out of the palace—but despite what she’d said to Gavril about not fearing his people, she did.

She feared their stares at her scars. She wouldn’t be able to take it if she heard one of them whisper gleefully about the marks of their work on her skin. She couldn’t. She just couldn’t—

But the drawers were all empty.

Marcella was going to kill Aimilia.

She was willing to bet that’s part of what she’d been doing that morning chatting with the kitchen girls, telling them to take everything but the peplos Aimilia had picked out for her.

She flung the last empty drawer to the ground, the thud it made doing nothing for her raging heart when the door to Gavril’s room opened.

“Marcella—”

His voice cut out, and she turned to see he was just gaping at her. She imagined she looked a little unhinged with the dresser emptied out onto the floor around her.

To be fair, she was.

He stood in the doorway, something tucked into his arms as he stared at her. He whispered, “Pulchra.”

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