This was it.
I stood, if a bit uncertainly. They were calling for Merit, but I wasn’t sure if I’d mentally prepared to slip into her headspace once more. I was still unmasked and woefully naked before immortals.
The Duchess rose as well. “I’ll be accompanying as an escort.”
One brow lifted on Shri’s line-free face. “I assure you, she’s perfectly safe.”
The Duchess nodded. “I have no doubt that there’s nowhere safer in the world. That said, Azrames is her sworn guard at the Prince’s behest, and neither of us will be contesting his inability to enter Alessia’s presence. I’m sure you’ll understand why I’ll be going in her stead. It’s the will of Hell’s Royal Family.”
Shri’s nails dug into her hip ever so slightly. I couldn’t be sure, but her brilliant, beautiful smile seemed to slip with the barest of tugs. “And I expect you understand, Duchess, whyAlessia may be insulted that Merit is in need of a guard.”
The Duchess’s smile was as cooling as spring water as she placed a hand on my lower back. “In need of, perhaps not. Has access to, yes. Come now, Merit. Off we go.”
Perhaps Shri was wonderful. She may have saved one thousand burning orphanages, intervened in a million difficult pregnancies, and caused half of the world to fall in love and stay in love. I was sure she was important and treasured. I was certain she was too powerful for me to comprehend.
But I didn’t like her.
Between her flirtatious advances toward Azrames and her standoff with the Duchess, I wasn’t confident that she was someone Hell considered a true friend. Then again, perhaps I was just a bitch.
It took a moment for my eyes to adjust. Stars bloomed in the center of my eyes as I moved from the too-bright room to the sacrosanct hush of the corridors that ran along the auditorium. One was meant to be quiet in these halls, whether for performances of Shakespeare, songs of an opera, or empowering political speeches happening just on the other side of the wall.
Azrames stayed behind to remain with Kirby and Nia, though I could see how it pained him to do so in the milliseconds our eyes touched. I was grateful that the Duchess kept her hand firmly on my back as we followed the swing of Shri’s hips and the swoosh of her steps. Every word was like caramel as she waxed poetic about the work they did, the pantheons, fae, practitioners, and entities they employed, the laws they’d passed, and how much Alessia did without recognition.
“And what do you get out of it?” I asked. I’d meant to make conversation, but the gentle flex of fingers on my back informed me of my overstep.
Shri glanced over her shoulder, profile perfectly outlined as she winked. She faced front once more as she said, “She was beautiful, you know.”
I blinked. No, I didn’t know. I looked at the Duchess, but she kept her face forward.
“Alessia. Some will tell you she was a gorgeous human woman. Some tales say she was a priestess. Some say she was assaulted; others say she fell in love. Some say Athena blessed her; others claimed she was cursed. But she was beautiful. Whether the god of the sea saw it and took it, or if Athena coveted it and punished her for it, she was beautiful.”
Whatever she had in mind, I was not meant to speak. My fingers pinched the paper cup in my hand a little too tightly, squeezing the dregs upward. I continued to follow her through the dimly lit halls of the theater, watching shadows dapple and puddle as we moved.
“What was she wearing?” Shri said, voice a sad mockery of an all-too-familiar phrase. “Why did she have so much makeup on? Why did her breasts develop so young if she didn’t want people to sexualize her? Why did she flirt? Why did she go home with him?”
Pebbles filled my stomach one at a time. Each rhetorical question toppled down my throat, settling in the sensitive lining of my guts and rubbing together as they piled one over the other. The goddess of lust and seduction had more in common with an icon of sexual assault than I’d realized. And I was right: I was a piece of shit.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
She looked over her shoulder once more. “Why? Have you done something worthy of apology? Aside from deem me more or less worthy of you or your friends’ time or attention due to my sexual expression? So interesting, from Merit Finnegan—Maribelle, who sold her companionship on her way to the top. We saw you on the news, you know. The world did.”
The pebbles merged together into one solid, horrid mass. Duchess Vapula planted her entire hand firmly against my back, preempting any wooziness I might feel.
“Internalized misogyny, internalized whorephobia…noone is above it.” Shri wrapped her fingers around the handle of a door.
I was flanked by ethereal beings as the Duchess’s hand remained on my back, Shri’s planting between my shoulder blades as they ushered me into the room. I hadn’t thought Alessia’s speech had ended, but then again, I didn’t have a great handle on time. The door in the far corner of the room made a high, metallic sound as a number of mechanisms clinked into place behind it, as Alessia Clovis, international human rights lawyer, women’s activist, and deadly gorgon of lore, stood before me.
