Page 56 of Spark of Sorcery

“I think they must be really into me.” She raises her voice even louder. “Unlike some people. I mean, have you noticed how some thralls don’t have any gifts at all? How they’re still wearing the same scummy clothes they arrived in?”

I assume she’s referring to me, even if that statement isn’t strictly true. After all, all my original clothes were destroyed.

I ignore her, pretending to be thoroughly fascinated by my boiled potatoes and pretending not to hear. I know her type. She thrives on attention. And denying it her, will be like cutting off her oxygen.

“They must not care about her much. Wouldn’t they want her wearing something more … respectable?”

“She had a nice dress at the ball,” some brave soul pipes up. “Did you see it? She looked really pretty then.”

“That!” Odessa cackles, the sound brittle. “The color didn’t suit her at all. Washed her out.Ithought she looked positively sickly.” No one is brave enough to contradict Odessa a second time. “I heard her friend patched that dress together from rags and off cuts – if you got up close, you’d have seen the appalling stitching and the crooked hemline. It was a complete mess. I would have been embarrassed to have been seen in it.”

That’s it! I can take all the insults about me personally on the chin. It’s nothing I haven’t heard from Muriel athousand million times before. Those types of comments no longer cut so deep.

But criticizing my friend? Implying that his work is bad when it was anything but? I won’t let that stand, especially as that kind of comment will be the gospel truth within hours and no one will actually remember how stunning my dress was.

I throw my cutlery down on my plate, pick it up and pace towards the table. Odessa is no longer looking my way, so she doesn’t see me coming, but several of her friends do, their eyes drawing wide in astonishment as I approach their table. I smash my plate down right beside Odessa, making her leap in her seat, and lean down to glare in her eyes.

“The hemline was straighter than a ruler, the stitching immaculate and the color perfect. The Princes couldn’t keep their hands off me andyourprotectors spent more time looking at me than they did at you.”

At first, she’s simply astounded, gaping at me with her mouth open in a not very Odessa-like manner (she’s usually all coy smiles and fluttered eyelashes), but soon enough her face is turning ugly.

“Excuse me, but I don’t remember asking you to join us and we definitely aren’t interested in hearing what you have to say.”

I remember the night Beaufort came home with his knuckles grazed and his lip split and told me he’d sorted the Odessa problem for me. I was concerned he’d hurt her. Now, hearing the way she’s speaking right to my face, seeing the disdain in her eyes, I know he didn’t hurt her. He also, most definitely, did not fix the Odessa problem. She may not have attempted to murder me again recently, but the look in her eyes tells me she’d still like to see me dead – she just hasn’t had a chance recently.

I wish I’d had that realization three seconds earlier. Maybe then I’d have seen what was going to happen next. Odessa lifts her right hand and jabs her knife hard into mine. I cry out as the blade slices straight through my skin.

The others around the table gasp in horror, several leaping up from the table. The toothless friend grins in admiration.

Odessa ignores them all, pressing the knife more firmly into my hand and leaning in closer to me.

“Don’t ever dare speak to me again, scum,” she spits.

The pain in my hand brings tears to my eyes and blood seeps from the wound, sliding down my hand and onto the table.

I’m done with this bitch though. If I’m going to endure all this bullshit with the Princes, it may as well be for something – something like knowing I can come back at this bitch without suffering the consequences.

I swing my other arm forward and punch her right in the throat.

Once again, she’s more than a little astonished; choking and grappling at her throat as tears glide down her face, taking most of her makeup with them. Is that my imagination or is Odessa’s smooth skin not as flawless as it seems under that layer of foundation?

Yanking the knife from my hand which, I won’t pretend, hurts like hell, I toss it on the table.

“Don’tyouever dare speak shit about my friend again.”

Back in my room five minutes later, the stone in my lap as I tie a bandage around my hand, all the adrenaline slips away, and I start shaking so hard, I’m forced to curl up in a ball and hug my knees.

What the hell was I thinking? She could have launched that knife at my throat not my hand and the Princes, for alltheir promises of protection, wouldn’t have been able to do a thing to stop it, all the way over in their snooty dining room.

I’m being unfair. If I wore the damn collar, I would be safe – according to them anyway. Then again, Odessa’s own collar didn’t seem to stop me from punching her in the throat. Which, now I think about it, is strange, isn’t it?

I roll onto my back on the floor, my body still trembling and hold both my hands in front of my face – the bandaged one and the one I punched her with. The punching hand is uninjured.

How was I able to hit her?

Chapter Twenty-One

Briony