When I wasn’t helpless.
For over ten years, though, that’s exactly what I’ve been.
Helpless to make Duncan love me. Helpless to stop Barclay from gambling. Helpless to demand college or a career.
I’ve been living, but I haven’t been alive.
That ends today.
Nodding to myself, I lift the lid and peel back the tissue paper.
I raise the smoke-colored dress, my teeth grinding as I hold it up to the light.
Mary was right to hesitate. Calling this a dress is generous.
This thing is a sheer robe.
With only a single button at the waist and nothing else.
I’m going to be exposed.
Ridiculed.
Or worse. Lusted over as I’m nothing more than a piece of flesh.
Furious and shaking, I stare into the box. No undergarments or a slip wait inside. Nothing.
Whatever.
If this is what it takes to get him to have a conversation with me, so be it.
I’ll wear the goddamndress.
Angrily, I put the garment back in the box.
Out of the corner of my eye, something dark catches my attention.
Lying on the floor to my right is a note that reminds me of the invitation The Restorer sent me.
I bend to pick it up. Two commanding sentences, scrawled in elegant gold script, stare back at me.
Wear this for our meeting. Don’t leave this room until Mary comes for you at midnight.
“We’re going to meet, all right.” I scowl at the note, toss it back into the box on top of the dress, and head for the shower, still huffing to myself. “But if you think you’re going to lay a finger on me again, you’re wrong. Dead wrong.”
8
ELOWYN
“Who are you?” I whisper to the pictures on the wall.
For some reason, I left them there. Couldn’t bring myself to tear them down.
It felt like a test, one I didn’t yet understand, but knew I was being judged on.
Didn’t mean I had to like it.
Even after my shower, I couldn’t walk past them without bile rising in my throat.
