“Strip,” Mabel ordered, not bothering to look at me.
“I’m not a dog.”
“As good as one in my eyes. Let’s get this over with.”
The butter-wouldn’t-melt facade didn’t extend to me, and I think I preferred it that way. Gritting my teeth, I removed my shoes, jeans, and T-shirt, placing them on a plush velvet chair in the corner of the room. I crossed my arms around my middle, and said, “Done.”
When Mabel finally turned around, with a dress in hand, her eyes immediately fell on the cuff that sat on my wrist. A smug smile came to her face, making me burn with humiliation.
“He’ll never trust you,” she said, crouching down and gesturing for me to step into the monstrosity of a dress she’d chosen.
“Why are you even helping him out, Mabel? Aren’t you bitter he didn’t choose you to be his wife? He divorced Larkin, and he still didn’t choose you.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “I’ve had time to think about it and I have the better end of the deal. It’s nothing more than a title. He’ll never love you.”
The thought alone made my stomach turn. “He’d have to be capable of love for that to happen in the first place.”
I’d been biting my tongue and perhaps it was unwise to loosen it around Mabel, but it felt good. Like some of the load was being lifted by just being honest.
“He’s capable of love.” As she stood up, she pulled the dress with her, covering my body. “Hold it.” She moved behind me and began to fasten it. “But it’s not his priority. He values trust and respect a lot more.”
“As long as he’s the one receiving it.”
“You know nothing about him.” The lace on the corset was pulled taut so violently that I gasped. “You know nothing about any of this. I’m not sure what it is you’re after, Quentin, but whatever it is, you won’t get it.”
“And you’ll get whatever you’re after?” I asked, genuinely curious to know why Mabel felt she had the upper hand.
“Of course I will. Hunter trusts me more than anyone else in this place. I’ve given him my unwavering loyalty. Even his own family couldn’t manage that.”
“But he wouldn’t marry you.”
Mabel laughed. The sound was too abrasive for someone who looked so dainty. “As if that matters. Wife is nothing more than a title and I couldn’t care less about it. Just because you have the ring, it doesn’t mean anything. Look at what happened to Larkin. Ring, title, seat on the council… it didn’t stop me warming his bed.”
I looked at her in the mirror and felt a pang of sadness for her. “Is that what he told you to placate you?”
“He didn’t tell me anything.”
“It is, isn’t it?” I said, realising that she was just another one in a long line of Gods and Goddesses who had been manipulated by him. By empty promises and charisma. “Hunter does that, you know. He figures out what women want, and he uses it against them. I wouldn’t trust a word that comes out of his mouth, Mabel. You’re smarter than that.”
“I am, and that’s exactly why I believe him. You wouldn’t get it. He doesn’t trust you. He never will, but I’m different.”
“Larkin thought she was different.”
A look of disgust crossed her face. “Larkin wasted the opportunity of a lifetime. She never understood his vision.”
It was at that moment I understood that for Mabel, it was more than a fling with Hunter. I meant what I’d said to her—that Hunter used vulnerabilities against people, particularly women. He knew Mabel was besotted with him and spun her sugared lies so he could keep her onside.
“I know things you’ll never know, Quentin,” she said, dropping her eyes to the fastening at the back of the dress. “I’m the one he confides in. He’s got no one else, and he knows I’d never let him down.”
“He’s not some poor, defenceless creature. He’s a monster.”
Mabel looked up, locking eyes with me in the reflection of the mirror. “And yet you’re making deals with him, so he can’t be that bad, can he, Quentin?”
The conversation with Mabel played on loop in my mind. She spoke so passionately about the trust that was held between them. Trust. It was a fragile concept that required time and connection. It required a sense of willingness that I was certain Hunter didn’t possess. As with most things in his life, he wanted to give the appearance of trusting her. It was another tactic in his arsenal as a polished politician: give the sycophants just enough that they believed they were on equal footing when really, he was ten steps ahead and had them exactly where he wanted them.
As Hunter carried the dress back to his house, the white cover a stark symbol to all the residents of the heavens, I tried to understand the way she saw him. Mabel felt like he was a man who had no choice, but I couldn’t see anything more than a vindictive God who was desperate to get his own way.
“I need to speak with Valen,” Hunter announced when we arrived back home. The dress had been unceremoniously dumped onto the sofa, proving that it was no more than a prop to both of us.
