Page 36 of Wolf Caged
“Ouch!” I snatched my hand back and scowled at her. “Is all this prodding and poking really necessary? It’s only dinner.”
They both looked at me as if I had lost my mind, or perhaps my grasp of the situation I was in. I locked eyes with the one attending my hair in the beautiful oval mirror on the dark red dressing table. Her wide gaze and parted lips relayed her shockas much as the way her hands had stilled in my hair, a reprieve from her torture that I savoured.
“Our king rarely dines with others.” The one who had been attempting to pry my nails from their beds looked to her companion and then me. “It is a great honour.”
I scoffed at that.
An honour?
It wasn’t as if I had been invited to dine with him.
I had beenordered.
And if I didn’t comply with his demand, I would probably find myself back in my cell before I even had a chance to explore my new accommodations.
My gaze strayed to the enormous black-stone-walled room reflected in the mirror. I didn’t know whether I had a view beyond the arched shuttered windows that flanked my bed or the one in the curved annex to my right that hinted at being part of a tower, close to the door to the bathroom, and I wanted to live here long enough to discover what lay beyond them.
So far, the only thing I had really noticed in the room behind me was the huge four-poster bed made of the same glittering lustrous cherry-coloured wood as the dresser before me.
Whenever I dared to look at that spacious bed with its black covers and pillows edged with fine gold embroidery, my mind raced forward to imagine what I might expect tonight from this dinner with the king, and in the coming days of my new servitude.
He had so easily agreed to my clause about not asking me for sex, and suspicion still lingered in my mind over that.
I wasn’t sure what I was to expect from him and these tasks he would set me, but I supposed I would find out tonight, or at the very least get a taste of things to come.
The two females continued their work, looking almost like twins with their dark brown hair pulled back in a severe bun thatrevealed fae really did have pointed ears and plain black fitted dresses covering them from neck to ankle and wrist. A thousand questions bubbled to the tip of my tongue, each bursting before I could voice it. Neither seemed inclined to talk to me, and when I had tried asking them things while they had been scrubbing the skin from my flesh in the boiling bath, they hadn’t even acknowledged that I had spoken.
I drew down a steadying breath as they finished with my nails and my hair, staring into my own eyes in the mirror as my nerves slowly built. I wasn’t sure what to expect from the king or this dinner tonight, but I was beginning to feel I was meant to be some kind of object for him to admire while he ate, a form of entertainment to amuse him while he unwound after his work.
Like a doll.
Or a concubine.
I felt like one as one of the servants daubed crimson on my lips and added a sprinkle of pink to my too-pale cheeks, and the other female went to the bed and returned with the dress that had been laid out on it.
“Rise.” The one who had done my make-up took hold of my arm, pulling me onto my feet when I hesitated, and I tensed as she tugged the dark cloth robe off my back, exposing my bare body.
Before I could protest, I was being stuffed into a dark silver strapless dress with a corset studded with a swash of diamonds that swept from my right breast to my left hip and then curled around the back of the skirt, growing wider as it glided towards the hem. The twinkling gems reminded me of the Milky Way and my view of it from home, a pang lancing my chest as I looked at them.
The dress was beautiful, but far too revealing for my liking as I tugged at the heart-shaped front of it, trying to pull it a little higher so I didn’t feel as if my breasts were about to fall out.
“Isn’t there something a little less… I don’t know what.” I went to look at the servants in the mirror as they selected matching silk slippers and placed a diamond diadem against the tangled knot of my hair on my crown and stilled as I caught my own reflection.
I wasn’t sure I had ever looked so beautiful.
I whispered, “I look like a princess.”
All the times Everlee had teasingly called me one came back to me in a rush and tears pricked my eyes as that hole in my heart opened up again, that emptiness at the other end of the bond I shared with my pack tearing at me.
Were they okay?
Had Lucas done anything to them?
I needed to know.
And I needed them to know I was fine, that I would find my way back to them.
Reluctance to attend the dinner and have the fae king staring at me as if I had been made to amuse and please his eye swiftly morphed into a burning need to see him and a determination to ask him about contacting my pack.
