“I’ve… never done this before.”
He could have fooled me. I opened one eye, and he was staring at my bundled hair with his eyebrows drawn together again.
“My sister talks about things like ‘cream rinses’ and ‘conditioners’ and ‘hair masks,’ but I admit I’m not very good at listening when she talks about it.” His sulky frown shouldn’t make me want to taste his lips. Had we kissed at the wedding? I couldn’t remember, and that left an odd pang in my chest.
I had to smile at his mildly grouchy tone. Siblings had a special way of getting under our skin, and my own brother would have been just as lost in a trial involving women’s hair care products. “I usually put some kind of detangler in it,” I explained, watching his eyes grow wide with horror at the additional mention of one more type of product, “but we can just let it dry, and I’ll sort out the tangles later.” My hair would probably be a mess, but the scalp massage had been so worth it. At least it was clean now.
Victor frowned at me again. Not as though he was angry, but maybe disapproving. “How do I figure out which one of these is a detangler?”
I rolled my lips between my teeth again.Caring for the living indeed.“Any kind of conditioner would be fine,” I ceded, trying to make his task easier.
He was quiet for a bit as he stared at the cluster of bottles he’d brought in the same way my grandmother stared at her war maps. “I’m afraid I might have been overconfident in my assurance that I could ‘figure this out.’ What does conditionerdo?” His tone was oddly distrusting, as if conditioner might be something scary. “And don’t tell me it conditions, I don’t even know what that means.”
I lost the fight with my grin, enjoying his reactions and the fact that he was finally talking to me—something he didn’t seem terribly comfortable with. I appreciated the effort. “It makes your hair slick and shiny.”
The frown on his beautiful face deepened as he looked at my hair out of the side of his eye. “Wet hair is already slick and shiny.”
“I know,” I told him with a tired sigh, my mouth still pulled up into an involuntary curve. “It keeps it that way once it dries, too.”
He began opening bottles from the nightstand and sniffing at each one, poking at the contents and eyeing them suspiciously. “I just don’t know. What if we put something horrible in your hair? Wait—is this one it?” he asked finally, holding it out for me to see in the low firelight. When his shirt sleeve gaped open, I could see dark marks on his skin where he’d been cut during our ceremony. I touched the surface of the pale-colored cream and rubbed it between my fingers, noting the light floral scent.
“Seems like it,” I told him with no small amusement. “You can water it down so that you don’t have to rinse my hair afterward again.” I watched him curiously as he placed some in a bowl and added water, stirring it in while maintaining a distrustful expression. “What do you wash with?” I asked him curiously a few minutes later as he was smoothing the watered-down mixture along my hair.
“Soap.”
“I meant your hair,” I explained with a chuckle. He had such glossy dark hair.
“Still soap.” He stacked more pillows behind me and then lifted me into a sitting position while willfully ignoring my squawking.
“You usesoapon yourhair?” It was more of a protest than a question. Life was so unfair. My hair needed a minimum of four separate products a week or my wavy texture became completely unmanageable frizz.
He didn’t answer me, focusing instead on combing through my hair in small sections, starting with the bottoms and working his way higher.
I watched him out of the side of my eye, not wanting to turn my head and disturb his efforts. It seemed I did anyway, as he paused when we made eye contact, lifting an eyebrow in question. “I thought you hadn’t done this before.” I supposed brushing hair out wasn’t terribly complicated, but he was strangely skillful at avoiding creating new tangles with his comb in a way he hadn’t been with his fingers earlier.
“I didn’t think it would be good to leave your hair pinned up as it was from the wedding while you slept,” he responded, returning to his careful brushing.
I tried to picture him letting my hair down and combing it out as I slept, his eyebrows drawn together as they had been before. Clearly, he had no lady’s maids. What a baffling situation. I found myself strangely grateful for this realization. True, it would mean that I would have more work to do for myself on a daily basis, but hopefully as I healed—if I healed—it wouldn’t be too much of a burden to do so. The freedom of being able to do those things for myself was an odd thrill. Not having to wait on the maids’ schedules to dress or bathe, or to worry about the listening ears and wagging tongues that eagerly carried all the latest gossip about the kingdom’s notoriously infirm princess and her newest ailments beyond the palace walls by dinner time. No more “helpful comments” about howthis coloremphasized my sickly skin tone, orthat stylehighlighted how underweight I’d become.
Of course, there would be some style or type of garment that was required of the spouse of aVeardur.They all wore simple, neutral colors, after all, so maybe I wouldn’t have that much freedom in what I wore. I mourned a little for the loss of all the bright colors that I so adored, but duty and the importance of dressing for one’s station was one thing I understood well. Hopefully he would help to guide me in that, since I wouldn’t have someone to dress me any longer. But the thought of not having a bustle of women stripping me and dressing me and commenting on my body and fluffing my wings and pushing my hairpins in too tight… I let out a shaky breath.
Victor paused, his long fingers freezing exactly where they were in my hair. “Am I pulling too hard?” How was it possible this enormous, gravelly-voiced man, who felt so out of sorts at the thought of caring for the living, managed to handle me so much more delicately than my own caretakers?
My smile was tremulous but genuine. “No. You’re being so gentle.”
Chapter 11
Celeste
I’dlostanysenseof time. All I knew was that it was light outside when I finally woke up again. I darted my gaze around the room, expecting Victor to be there when I woke, just as he had the last two times, but even when I propped myself up in bed, he didn’t appear. I felt a little silly, expecting him to still be there watching me sleep. And even more so at my disappointment that he wasn’t. Would it be strange to have a crush on your own husband? I didn’t think I was there yet, but…
Now that I knew where the restroom was, I thought I could get myself there on my own.Maybe. I climbed very carefully out of the bed, testing my ability to remain upright without the aid of a healing draught and half a dozen enchantments like I’d needed for our wedding ceremony. Even then it had been incredibly questionable to me whether I would succeed in making it down the aisle.
I gripped the edge of the mattress for a few steps, until I was confident I wasn’t as dizzy as I had been the day before. The tray by the door was empty, save for a steaming pot of tea, and the room was silent other than the popping of low burning coals in the fireplace. The hallway outside was eerily quiet and devoid of people.
Once I found the lavatory, I did my best to avoid looking in the mirror, knowing nothing good would come from a close inspection of myself at the moment. My cheekbones would be too severe, my color too faded, and my wings were a horrible mess. I thought that I might actually have enough energy to shift to my wingless form today, but staying that way would be another story. I didn’t want to push my luck when my energy was still so limited. After relieving myself, I took a blessed moment to really scrub at my body with the chilly water from the taps. We still hadn’t made our wedding official with the necessary consummation, and I was sure my new husband would want to initiate that soon. The thought of him finding me unwashed for such a rite was mortifying. I paused at the bandages encasing my right arm.Best to leave those alone for now, I thought, afraid to see what was underneath. I did brave the mirror after replacing my clothing, just long enough to ensure my hair wasn’t a disaster, but it only served to confirm that my feathers were as mangled as I knew they would be.
I padded quietly back down the hallway to the bedroom, noting the rough-hewn blocks that made up the walls and the high-arched ceiling. While I was truly grateful for the privacy, it felt rather strange to be so alone. The room was still empty, and I noticed that the side of the bed opposite mine was entirely undisturbed. Was he sleeping somewhere else? I didn’t know why the thought of that made my stomach sink. Maybe he simply rose early and had straightened the sheets before he left.
