And clearly, she wasn't going to be fed, so at least that was consistent with her hostage expectations even if inconvenient.
The next morning, she woke up when her door flew open and she startled, knocking one of the pillows to the ground as two female elves came into the room while two hovered at the door. The two guards who entered were dressed in matching uniforms, likely servants, while the other two at the door were clearly guards. At the sight of her, completely disheveled and dirtying the pristine bed, one of the servants gasped.
The other tutted under her breath and said, “The king will not be happy about this.”
Well, if the king cared that much, he could have come and seen her for himself and at least given her the use of her handsback. Although he was smart not to. She was deadly when all she needed was her hands and something to write with in order to bend the world to her will.
“Come, Your Highness, we must clean you up,” the first one said, hurrying to her side.
Hellebore snapped, “Your king doesn't want his hostage to look like one?”
At their blank stares, she realized she’d spoken in Chymesian and repeated herself in Iubian, her words losing some of their bite as she had to walk slowly through the words. But even when using their tongue, they didn’t respond.
She didn't know if they couldn't understand her beneath her accent or if they simply chose to ignore her comment. Likely the second.
Instead, the servants helped her to her feet and undid her hands. The first maid gasped at Hellebore’s bleeding wrists before shooting a glare at the guard. One of the guards shrugged. “She's an alchemist.”
The next second, a tub was being carried into the room by another set of female servants, who began filling it with water and using their magic to heat it. Hellebore watched them intently, taking a little pleasure in how the longer her gaze stayed on them, the more their hands shook. The original two servants exchanged glances as they pulled fresh clothes from the wardrobe. One of the guards at the door took a few steps toward Hellebore, moving to stand between her and the elves using magic.
Before Hellebore could speak, one of the original elves grabbed the guard by the arm and hissed, “Stop that. You know His Majesty’s orders. She’s not doing any harm.”
Hellebore turned her head slightly, catching the guard’s eyes and grinning.
The guard ripped her arm out of the servant’s grip. “Maybe not yet, she’s not, but you see that look in her eyes. She’s—them all with her eyes, and if she had a knife, she’d be doing even worse.”
She’d missed one word, but overall she wasn’t doing too poorly.
Hellebore turned her head to face the guard fully and lied through her smile. “Actually, I’m focusing on translating your language in my mind. Forgive me, my Iubian is rough.”
The guard returned to her post, hand on the hilt of her sword, eyes tracking Hellebore’s every move. The second servant cleared her throat and cut in, pulling Hellebore to her feet.
Then the original two elves were trying to help Hellebore out of her dirty clothes, but the construction was clearly foreign to them, and Hellebore shoved them off. “I am capable of getting out of my clothes myself. I am a princess, but I have lived most of my life without—” The word for attendants escaped her, so she fumbled for another one. “—without maids.”
When she was a student at the academy, she lived like all the other students, no servants or special treatment.
At least, that’s the way it was supposed to be. She hadn’t had the servants, but she was never sure about the special treatment.
When Hellebore had returned to the castle for holidays and breaks, it had always been a strange adjustment for her to get used to being attended by servants, specifically disrobing and bathing in front of strangers. However, she figured this was on the lower end of uncomfortable things about being a hostage, and there were far worse, so she'd accept this strange situation. At least the guards were female.
Of course she caught the whispers of the girls, but she couldn't blame them too much. She was a foreign species to them, and she was rather bruised from the rough handling, notto mention the scars she'd accumulated from experiments gone wrong.
She ignored them and safely sank into the tub, hissing when her raw, cracked wrists hit the warm water. The stinging sensation went right up into her jaw, but the heat did help relax her sore back and ease the ache in her shoulders.
“Your Highness, your wrists, let us—”
She held up her vivid red wrist and snapped, “Unless it's an order from your king, don't. If he wants a cleaned-up hostage, I will oblige, but do not push me further.”
She remembered the word for oblige; that was a victory.
The servant fell silent and simply returned to waiting off to the side with a towel. Hellebore gritted her teeth and ignored the stinging in her wrists with every motion as she cleaned herself from head to toe. While she did so, some of the maidens stripped the dirty bedding and replaced it with a matching fresh set. Hellebore ran her fingers through her warm, brown hair.
She stepped out of the tub only for the servants to attempt once more to take over, and this time she let them as they dried her off and got her into a shift that was a foreign style, but it was at least some covering. That was when three more female elves came in with an assortment of tools and fabrics and the measuring tapes around their shoulders that left Hellebore assuming they were seamstresses. The two guards rolled their eyes; one crossed her arms and muttered something that Hellebore thought translated to something involving “commotion” and the “lifespan of a fly.” One of the servants stifled a laugh at whatever the guard said, both receiving glares from the original pair of maids.
The three seamstresses moved in a whirlwind, having Hellebore lift her arms and positioning her to their liking as they took a flurry of measurements and held up fabrics to her face, all talking so fast Hellebore caught very little of it. What shedid catch was about fabrics and necklines and a comment about wide hips Hellebore should probably be offended by. Her cheeks flushed, but she managed to stay still and hold her tongue.
Now she knew what her experiments must have felt like being measured, poked and prodded all the time.
It was humbling if nothing else.
