Page 13 of Even Angels fall
Ariël has been eating my pastries without even asking anymore, and if I hadn’t followed etiquette lessons with him for the past eight years, I wouldn’t believe this man was even educated in court.
Anne isn’t better. My mind keeps wandering, torturing me with images of what my wedding night will be, and how I’ll lose my virginity and kill my first man the same night.
And yet, even exhausted at the end of each lesson, it has never been so easy to get the upper hand over her.
I wish I could say that it means I got better, but I know it’s something else.
It’s not just me. Everyone seems to beoff.
Saturday comes too quickly, and as I sit in Emmanuël’s shop and see his eyes shining with what looks like unshed tears, I realize the reason.
I’m scared of what’s to come.
It’s easy to hate the world I was born into. It’s easy to despise what my father made of me. It’s easy to think I’m only a weapon to everyone surrounding me.
But I’m wrong.
These people, the ones who trained with me, who took care of me in their own way, they care.
I don’t think I’ll ever see Anne cry, or even Ariël for that matter, but I know Léandre will, and I’m already dreading all of their goodbyes.
They’re supposed to send me off; not my father. He sent his guards this morning. They double-checked my bag, and left with it, right before I came to Emmanuël’s shop. They’ll keep the bag until I’m done with my hair, and then they’ll give it back right before I walk out of Versailles’ castle.
Or so I understood.
I’m not completely sure. My mind is fuzzy, and I can’t wrap my head around the idea that, by the end of the day, I’ll finally be doing what I’ve been relentlessly training for these past eight years.
I’m sitting in the chair with the reclinable sink when I finally register what Emmanuël has been saying.
“I’m going to miss you, little crow,” the giant man says as he turns on the faucet.
Emmanuël is built like a mountain. Almost two meters high, shoulders that span almost all of his shop entryway and a beard that reaches the middle of his torso. The beard is the only hair you’ll ever see on him. He is shaven so close to the skin that I suspect he actually got a laser treatment and removed all his hair. He has kind eyes of the darkest brown, and the smile he usually can’t get rid of is nowhere to be seen today.
“I’m going to miss you, too, Em,” I say automatically. It’s only when the words cross my lips that I realize I truly am going to miss him.
Emmanuël is a rooster-shifter, hence why he ended up being the hairdresser/barber of the court. He’s built like a warrior, and his arms look bigger than my thighs, and I’m no meek little thing. Yes, I train a lot, and I have no body fat, but Idotrain a lot and sometimes it feels like I built muscle on muscles.
I digress.
So, yes, he’s built like a warrior, but what could Michaël do with a shifter who can’t fly?
I mean, other than the obvious answer, that is to train them more and marry them off.
Nothing.
He can’t do anything.
Especially since other shifters’ factions don’t care about getting husbands for their daughters. Alliances don’t work like that. Unless you’re from one of the fishy families, no one will want husbands.
Mermaids are quite different, though. They are queens of their kingdoms. Their matriarchs rule the seven seas.
But what would a rooster do under water?
Yep, I give him two minutes at best.
“Who is going to cut your hair there? I don’t want to think about the mess they’ll make of it…” he mumbles.
Today, he’s so far from his usual self, it’s heartbreaking.
