Page 135 of Terror at the Gates

Be on your best behavior tonight, and please dress appropriately.

If I hadn’t already decided on my outfit,thiswould have pushed me over.

My father had given me a lot of leeway over the years, and I was grateful he’d let me escape to Nineveh, because that was what he’d done. He’d let me. He knew it, and I knew it.

But I didn’t think he expected the freedom to push me further away from who they wanted me to be. I’d done my best over the years at our biweekly lunches to respect him. I’d dressed according to family rules. I’d avoided topics of work and friendship. For a time, I’d even let him think I’d returned to reading from theBook of Splendor, but I was done pretending.

Saira had given me a different type of freedom. As skeptical as I was, the possibility of other gods had unraveled what little faith I had in the teachings of the church. I’d only held on out of fear of not believing in something. What was the point of life without the promise of eternal paradise?

But that was the great lie, wasn’t it?

Life was life. It was as meaningful as I made it.

I moved my laundry from the washer to the dryer and started another load, then took a shower. By the time I was finished, I felt even more determined to show my parents who I had become. As much as my father had begged me to attend tonight, I knew the truth. He didn’t really want me. He wanted the daughter I’d been five years ago, but she didn’t exist anymore, and it was time he realized it.

I wiped fog from the mirror and stared at my misty reflection. My sleep schedule was catching up to me. My eyes were puffy and a little dark. I could also use some drops to lessen the redness, lest my mom think I was high.

When I opened the cabinet to retrieve them, everything fell.

Motherfucker. I stared at the sink full of medicines. I considered putting them in a box and leaving them on the floor, but after a deep breath, I began arranging them.

I was surprised to find a pair of metal scissors amid the bottles. They belonged to Coco. I’d just forgotten they were in here.

I left them for last, and when I picked them up, I shut the cabinet door and looked at myself in the mirror.

I had always wanted bangs. Coco used to get excited when I’d talk about it. She offered to cut them, and once, she’d made all the necessary parts before I’d backed out. Now, when I mentioned it, she didn’t even react.

I had always hesitated because they were such a drastic change and also because, as much as I fought conforming to the expectations of my parents and the church, some things gave me more anxiety than others, and one of those things was my appearance.

I’d never made a change my mother liked. It didn’t matter if I thought it looked better. She claimed it was a sign I was becoming vain. She didn’t recognize her own hypocrisy.

I started parting my hair. I didn’t know what gave me the confidence to do this on my own. Maybe because I’d watched Coco do it a million times before. Maybe I was just being reckless. Whatever the case, I continued combing a section of my hair forward. I folded it back to see if I liked the way it looked and to assess where I wanted the bangs to land.

Then I reached for the scissors, and with no hesitation, I made the first cut. It was a straight, horizontal line, and the bangs landed just past my brow bone. I dried them and made a few additional snips until I was happy with their shape.

For the first time in a long while, I felt like me.

Moving on to makeup, I painted on dramatic wings. As I leaned close to the mirror, the electricity surged again. When the light came back on, it buzzed loudly.

Maybe the wind had gotten bad near the coast.

I hurried to finish my makeup, finishing with a bold red lip my mother would hate, and then slipped into my dress. I was trying to zip it on my own but couldn’t manage it past a certain point when I heard a knock.

“Coming!” I called, still fiddling with the closure as I made my way to the door. I assumed it was Zahariev but checked to make sure. Instead of greeting him as I answered, I requested his help. “Can you zip this for me?”

I didn’t wait for him to respond. I just gave him my back, shivering slightly as his knuckles brushed against my spine. He was finished in seconds, and I turned, intending to thank him, but the way he was looking at me produced a different response.

“What?” I asked.

My first thought was that he hated the bangs, but then his gaze dropped, lingering on the plunge of my neckline and the curve of my hips, which were exaggerated by the fit of this dress. Zahariev never looked at me this way. That he was doing so now, and so openly, made my stomach coil tight.

“You look nice,” he said when his gaze finally returned to mine.

I raised a brow, challenging that word.

“That’s the best you can do? Your jaw’s on the floor, Zahariev.”

He smiled, tugging gently at my bangs.