Page 40 of The Devil May Care

Sarai raises a brow, amused. “The room heard you.”

“I didn’t say it out loud.”

“You didn’t have to.”

I stare at the mirror. My reflection stares back. She looks… unfamiliar. Regal. Haunted. Like someone halfway between sacrificial lamb and chosen one.

I clear my throat. “So, the room just gives me what I want?”

“Sometimes.”

“That seems like a lot of trust to put in the architecture.”

Sarai smiles faintly. “You’re the one controlling it, you know.”

I scoff. “Sure. Me and my unlicensed magical intuition.”

“You’re more than you appear,” she says softly, gathering a small vial of pigment and a brush. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t be going to court.”

“That or they’re really desperate for entertainment.”

She ignores me. Instead, she leans in and begins brushing something dark along my upper lashes. It smells faintly of clove and something sharper.

“I hope this isn’t arsenic.” Wasn’t that the main ingredient in antique makeup?

“It’s not.”

“Have you used it on anyone else?”

“No.”

“Well, that’s encouraging.”

She moves with steady hands, staining my lashes, then dabbing something red gold onto my lips. There’s an intimacy in it—not romantic, but old. Ritualistic. It feels like being prepared for something I don’t yet understand. No one has ever done my make up for me. I let her work in silence, watching my reflection shift under her care. I look dangerous. Not because I am, but because someone wants me to seem that way. When she finishes, she places the pigment aside and gently brushes out my hair. The tangles ease. My breath doesn’t.

On the table nearby, the court summons scroll rests—unfurling slightly with a breeze that doesn’t exist. I glance at it. The letters shimmer, curling like flame, absolutely unreadable.

“I don’t know how to read that,” I say, almost to myself.

Sarai hums. “Most don’t.”

“But I understood the man who brought it. I understand you. Caziel.”

She’s quiet.

And in that quiet, something clicks.

“I shouldn’t be able to,” I murmur. “You guys aren’t speaking English, are you. That’s magic too, isn’t it?”

Sarai meets my eyes in the mirror. She doesn’t confirm it. She doesn’t have to.

Sarai pauses. Then she says, so quietly I almost miss it, “Don’t let them mistake you for something simple.”

I go still. And something inside me—something low and quiet and cornered—burns just a little brighter.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” I say.

She rises, smoothing her skirt, but before she leaves, she pauses at the door and glances back.