Page 37 of Disillusioned (A Lay of Ruinous Reign #2)
“ M y,” came Isabel’s high-pitched voice, her ringlets tickling Lilac’s nose. “This powder is something else.” She was scrubbing so hard, she feared her skin might start peeling. “Are you sure there are no oils in it?”
“Yes,” Lilac snapped, her shame and tact long gone, only exhaustion and confusion left in her body. “That is because I am not wearing powder, nor oils, as I am reminding you for the…” She counted on her fingers.
“Third day,” Yanna said from her perch on the end of the tub.
“Third day now.” She lounged back in the tub, leaning away.
“And your skin has a lovely flush about it. It is more even. How?” Isabel lost to her impulsive thoughts and swiped a finger down her cheek.
Lilac swatted it away, equal parts glad and disappointed her burst of inhuman strength had seemed to fade quickly in the time since she’d left Garin, just as he said it would.
She’d been so blinded by anger that she hardly remembered what had happened after he’d entranced her. She remembered it in glimpses.
Bastion and Lorietta had escorted her out of the room as Garin sat at the edge of the bed with his head in his hands.
They’d led her downstairs to the waiting carriage outside, where Adelaide sat in the innermost corner, complaining about being forced to accompany them, until Lilac began to yell expletives out the front window.
Lorietta then nudged a mug-shaped flask in her direction, and, too riled to fight anymore, she got one last, “ You bloodsucking, big-eared coward! ” out the carriage partition before gulping heavily from Lorietta’s proffered cup—milk and lavender tea, mixed with a powerful calming tonic, she was sure.
She’d spent the rest of the ride with her head on Lorietta’s shoulder, hiccuping through her tears. Even Adelaide couldn’t bring herself to make fun of her.
Lorietta had nudged Lilac awake as they rolled through the bailey gates; Lilac woke in terror and tried to brace herself, both palms on either wall, hooking her fingers into the lip of the windows and readying for the violent force that might expel her from the carriage.
She fought to conceal her horror as, instead, she felt her fury shift, her refusal slowly turning to indecision, then consideration while the witches took their time in opening the carriage door.
Garin’s words, some of his first to her during their first meeting at the inn, echoed in her memory. Faerie ether, imbued in their arts and music, imprisoned one in their body. A vampire’s entrancement dealt with the mind, making its victim a willing slave.
Peeling herself off the seat, Lilac had cursed them both before stepping out, ignoring the astonished greeting by her guards already surrounding the carriage and stomping through the front doors of her castle. She barked an order for all in her party to be left alone and that they remain unhanded.
Her friends—at least, those she’d begun to trust as friends—had betrayed her.
The witches couldn’t possibly have been under Garin’s entrancement too; though, the faraway smidgen of logic she’d retained reasoned, they would be idiotic to go against the vampire’s demands with how determined he was to get her to leave.
Yanna hovered over the tub, scrutinizing her counterpart’s work. “Isabel, that is enough .” She slapped Isabel’s cloth away from Lilac’s face. “Nothing on your eyelashes, either? No rouge?”
“No,” Lilac bit out.
Yanna—and by extension, a very curious Isabel—had brusquely cut off any attempt to interrogate Lilac as they’d flanked her, Giles, and the witches.
From the carriage through the bailey, into the courtyard, and past the Grand Hall door they journeyed, where they met a small crowd: her father and his council, her mother, several guards, John, and their family cartographer, Riou, who glanced up and did a double take from their kingdom map.
Seeing two witches nervously bowing beside their puffy-faced, tear-streaked daughter at the courtyard entry aided greatly in distracting anyone from questioning her further than necessary.
Her parents immediately ambushed her, her father pulling her into a bear-like hug as her mother stood at a near distance.
Marguerite’s eyes were rimmed in tears while she informed her coldly about the murmurings of a loud carriage crash heard from Paimpont in broad daylight, with no marks or debris to be found.
There were also reports of a wandering lone horse that had been spotted without a rider who would take off every time someone approached. She could at least truthfully claim to not know anything about that.
Not thinking clearly, she first intended to tell her parents she’d been safe at The Fenfoss Inn.
The thought of Garin instantly brought angry tears to her eyes again, and all that came out were broken words and a sob.
Lorietta quickly interjected by introducing herself as the owner of a nearby tavern and Adelaide, one of the witches from town, both of whom Giles and Lilac had graciously saved in their travels when their horse escaped from them.
It was then that Giles chimed in as if rehearsed, informing everyone that he would be dropping them back off in their town before returning that evening.
They left with haste, leaving an open-mouthed Henri and Marguerite to stare at their daughter as she weeped into her dress, the tear stains magically disappearing.
Through her sobs, she began to mumble that the clothier from The Hemlock Haberdashery would have to fit her at the castle—when a stifled gasp from Marguerite stopped her.
Her mother marched over, took one close look at her, and decided there was something unsettling about her appearance; after demanding everyone else from the room, Henri said it was her hair, that maybe she had dyed it with ink and minerals.
Marguerite suggested, looking faint, that she thought Lilac might be with child .
Lilac was so taken aback by the suggestion, she silently stopped cursing Garin and instead thanked him for his inability to father children, offering to urinate upon barley with them acting as witnesses—to which Henri had responded by actually fainting.
At this point, her determination to immediately fulfill Garin’s demands was suddenly replaced by a slow burning horror that ate at her from the inside out. Feeling ill, Lilac quickly excused herself and dashed down the corridor, up the foyer stairs to her tower, Yanna and Isabel huffing behind her.
She’d swung her door open, gripped her vanity, took one look at herself, and saw what everyone else had seen—understood what Garin had meant when he was snarling at the guài .
Lilac went to the tub and grabbed one of the cloths placed on its rim, then grabbed the fresh pitcher of water that had been placed upon her bedside table.
Eliciting a small, sad cry from one of her handmaidens, she dumped half the pitcher onto the cloth and began scrubbing her cheeks upon returning to the mirror.
The only progress she’d made was ensuring her already beet red face was even more inflamed.
Panic rising in her chest, she chucked the pitcher across the room; half hoping she’d shatter it against the wall with her unusual strength, Lilac was simultaneously relieved and irked when it flew only halfway across the room and broke into two large pieces upon the floor.
Her glamor on her skin and hair had indeed not worn off, and it did not do so even when she tipped back the rest of the pitcher water into her mouth—even as she snatched one of the croissants Hedwig delivered shortly after her outburst. She was stuck , the subtle but profound effect from Adelaide’s tonic not yet faded.
Tearfully, she ordered Yanna and Isabel out and spent that first night in bed praying, begging for sleep to come.
It never did, wakefulness causing her to toss and turn with what started as a tightness in her chest that grew into a most uncomfortable sensation of unease throughout her body—the unbearable feeling that nothing was right in the world, and the dreadful knowing that it would not be improved by any amount of sleep she chased.
Then, she attempted to push him from her mind, facing the fool’s task of shielding herself from his influence head on.
She imagined announcing her official intention to rule without a spouse, as she supposed she should have done at her ascension.
She imagined throwing herself into another public scandal so large, it would dissuade even the most desperate of nobles and kings.
It didn’t take long for her skin to start to crawl. She sat up in fright at one point because she thought she’d seen a shadow move in the corner of her room. The dread began to set in, then—a slow, seeping horror accompanied by thoughts of him . His ruddied mouth and hands.
In the silence, it seemed impossible to rid her mind of Garin, not when desperation and turmoil so often found one in the night.
At some point before dawn, Lilac dragged herself from bed, her back cold with sweat, and pulled on her robe.
She left her room, only to be startled by none other than Yanna, who sat leaning against the wall outside her door.
Roused from sleep, the usually colder, judgmental handmaiden said she sent Isabel to bed, but couldn’t bring herself to leave while hearing Lilac’s sobs echo throughout the second floor.