She sighed, and one of the rats played with the end of her hair. The creature seemed like it was brushing it, collecting the dark strands, maybe to make a nest. “Sasha will be alerted of the change in weight and will adjust your diet.”
Sasha was the dietician who Régine hired to keep me at a certain weight. Sasha was the keeper of my diet. She decided on all my meals and was the boss of my personal chef. It sounded fancy, and maybe under other circumstances, it would be nice to have one. And compared to my lowly room in the help’s corner, with the bed made of straw and the clothes made of potato sacks, it was a comically rich thing to have. But…given the fact that I had no say in what I ate, whether I liked the dishes or not, or if I was not hungry or feeling starved…a personal chef was nothing but another chain to me. Except it wrapped around my stomach.
The only thing I could say made my life worth living was the vanity in my room and the secrets buried in it. After Régine noticed how well I could do my own makeup, no one elsetouched my face. My mom had taught me how. It was something special we did. When she would be getting ready for a show, she’d sit me on her vanity and transform herself into an entirely different woman while I watched.
Sometimes she would tell me stories. My favorite one was about the dashing knight and the poor damsel. “Death couldn’t even separate the lovers,” she’d say. “It was a love born in the stars, Estella.”
So, sitting in front of the vanity in Régine’s house of torture transported me back to those times with my mom, and suddenly, it became a wonderful place to be before I was taken underground to dance.
“Étoile.”
“Hah?”
Régine gave me a look. It was a look that had to be felt to understand it. Part resentment, part love, and part jealousy. The love wasn’t actual love, but a love born of what I could give to her and her family. Money. And all those things were at war with each other over me. It was like she could separate the feelings most of the time, but when she looked at methatway, it was like an internal war was taking place inside of her. She might spew arrows from her eyes, and blood might drip from her lip. That look never gave me a good feeling in the pit of my stomach. Neither did the two words I’d been anticipating her to say.
“The coat.”
The coat that beautiful man gave me when we’d had a mouse and cat game in Sub Rosa.
That man.
Matteo Fausti.
Really tall-built-like-a-shield-with-the-face-of-an-avenging-angelMatteo Fausti.
His name made my heart race and my stomach fill with…some foreign substance that made me anxious. I’d encounteredhim the night in Sub Rosa when Ivan had been killed. Matteo tried to talk, or trick, me into coming into the light so he could ask me questions about Ivan after he’d chased me underground.
For a few seconds, I had considered it. Matteo was convincing, and maybe even sincere, but I didn’t take the bait. Still. I’d been thinking and dreaming of him since that night. He’d given me his coat, and I’d found his ring in the pocket. Since that night, he’d become the face of the heroic knight in my fantasies.
He was all I had left, in terms of hope, even if it was wishful thinking.
After all, the only faces I’d ever seen since my mom was the ones Régine allowed me to see, unless we were driving somewhere, and I’d get glimpses of people passing on the street. Even then, none of them were ever as handsome as Matteo. He was a…good dream while the rest of the world had become a nightmare.
It was important, though, that I did not lie to Régine. Like she’d once told me, she had more eyes than a spider. And besides not learning French, my truth was another defiance she couldn’t do anything about. I’d told her that I hated it here on, I was willing to bet, a million occasions. My misery only made her, and her daughters, chew up my truth and spit it out more.
“I told Boris that the coat was Ivan’s,” I said, my voice steady and clear. I never whispered for her benefit, and neither did I shout. “I really had no idea what was going on that night.”
“The coat is made of fine material,” she said in broken English. “I would want it too. It is better than the potato sack I give you to wear, no?”
“It is,” I said. “The sack makes me itch.”
She waved her hand. “This keeps you hungry for a better life.”
“Ha.” I made a sarcastic noise.
She took my hair and wrapped it around her hand, pulling my head back. “It has been a dream of mine to get in with the Fausti family, as a poison, and now they want what is mine. I will not make the same mistakes myfoolishcousin made. I will be the woman who wins the war between our family and theirs.”
I shrugged, like I couldn’t care less, but my heart was beating so hard it felt like it might explode out of my chest. She’d never been so honest with me before about what was going on behind the scenes. Sometimes I’d catch snippets of conversations, since Régine used me as a personal maid around her haunted castle, but she’d never been so direct before.
“What will I have to do?” I hoped she didn’t hear the tightness in my voice. Even the thought of seeing Matteo, in any way, did strange things to my heart and made my throat feel like it had a lump in it.
She gave me such a wicked smile that I felt a shiver inside of my bones. “Nothing. Of course, I will use you as bait, but you will stay out of all my affairs and only do what I tell you, or else…” She pulled my hair back as she snatched scissors from her desk.
Holding my hair in her fist even tighter, she started to cut it. She was cutting it so short that I knew it wasn’t going to fall below my neck. And she was almost hacking at it with the dull sheers.
I had to force myself not to think.
Do not think, Estella!
