Getting up early only prolonged the time she had to reflect on how bored she was, so once Tannar’s car pulled away each morning, she let her perfect wife smile drop and tucked back into bed until mid-afternoon. Getting dressed rarely extended beyond leggings and one of her sorority hoodies, swapping her cozy night clothes for what she’d mentally been calling her daytime pajamas, and the most excitement she saw in any one given week was a trip to the grocery store with a list she’d made from a recipe she saw on social media.
You’ve had your fun playing house; it’s time to go back to your actual life, dove.
She didn’twantto accept that this was the life she’d chosen, like it or lump it, and refused to view her existence here as anything but temporary.
She was being a spoiled brat, was well aware of it, but she couldn’t force herself to care.
“Ready!” she announced brightly. All she’d done was brush her teeth, swap her cozy leggings for compression leggings and toss her swimsuit in her gym bag, hardly the mark of an Elvish fashionista, but she was only going to float in the pool upon their arrival, Silva thought.Or find a secluded corner in the terrible steam room and cry. You can pretend you’re sweating.She still had the benefit of youth and beauty, and there was no sense in overdressing when it wasn’t necessary.
She had a key, Silva reminded herself a short while later, staring up at the ceiling of the pool room, the water lapping over her long ears.
A key was more than she had a month ago. A key was a step closer than she’d been since the morning she woke up in her bedroom apartment alone, her head pounding, finding him gone.You just need to figure out what it opens.
Her searches thus far had been unfruitful. She knew the lingo, had picked up enough in that dank little sub-basement of a server to know that she needed to ask the right questions — she was seekingpassage. That was the word to use, and if she used it with the proper audience, they would understand what it was she was looking for.
Silva remained unconvinced that the opportunity to find such an audience here, in the real flesh-and-bone world she occupied when she wasn’t tumbling down a password-protected rabbit hole, would ever arise.
But look at the auction, she reminded herself, climbing out of the pool once she’d decided a sufficient amount of time had passed.You did well enough there.
Tannar would be at least another hour. His match would have finished by now, but he’d be in the sauna, at the bar.You may as well kill another hour at the spa. The facilities were adequate. Half of what she was used to, but the techs did a good enough job.
Silva sighed mournfully.
There’d been a time when the thought of spending a Saturday at the club with her husband filled her with giddy excitement. They would play croquet together and enjoy afternoon tea in the garden room. She would leave him in the gentlemen’s lounge with a whiskey flight and a kiss, finding him after she’d gotten a facial or a massage. They’d be hand-in-hand, meeting her grandmother for an early dinner before going home together.Happily ever after. An unrealistic scenario as any in her books, she thought ruefully, checking herself in.
The goblin who led her to a chair for her facial asked if she was feeling like conversation, a forthrightness Silva appreciated. “No, actually. Zoning out is the goal.”
The goblin laughed, moving out of her sightline, behind the chair. “Zone away.”
The auction had practically landed in her lap. Granted, shehadreached out to the shop, but that the swing in the dark had amounted to something was an accident.Our procurers can find most anything. Perhaps she ought to call the shop that had sent her the book.After this trip. Then you call them.
“I don’t know, sheseemsnice enough.”
Silva recognized the voice instantly. Esta, the mother of the little boy at brunch, one of the neighbors Tannar had grown up with.
“She seems like a snob.” Finnea, Lucine’s mother. They were somewhere to her left, two or three stations away.
“What’swrongwith her, though? That’s what I want to know.”
Silva didn’t recognize the third voice, but she had likely seen the speaker’s face.It doesn’t matter, they’re all the same. Inelegant.Is this what passes for high-class, dove? Can’t imagine why I was worried. He’d never needed to worry. He had better manners and upbringing than more than half the elves she knew, and certainly more than any she’d met in this boring little suburb.
“There must be something wrong with her. Why else did she move away from her family?!”
Silva gasped from beneath her thick mask of clay. Instantly, the goblin was right there, talking over her face.
“Is everything alright, miss? Please let me know if the temperature is too hot.”
“No, it’s nothing like that,” she managed to half-whisper through her mask-tightened lips. “Those girls are talking about me, that’s all.”
It was the goblin’s turn to gasp. “Oh, dear! What-what would you like me to do?”
“Nothing,” Silva assured her, trying not to laugh and ruin the mask. “Honestly, they’re kind of trash, so I don’t care. We’re just going to listen.”
“I don’t know, but she puts on airs. What was she even asking about the other week? Afashionshow?! Where does she think she is, Aulendale? Tannar is besotted, but it won’t take long for the perfect princess routine to get old, just wait.”
“What does she even do all day?! Probably just sitting at home, online shopping with his money. Or having an affair with a human.”
The three elves laughed at the thought, as the goblin above her clicked her tongue.
