Imogen’s lips twisted to one side. They were still perfectly painted, even this side of midnight; a feat Adeline was sure could only be achieved by the most skilled of Wielding hands.
“I know what you meant. And yes, it is that late. I’m going to have to skip about half of my creamsandmy face massage. But I have to get to sleep, unless I want to wake up with eye bags big enough to sling over a saddle.”
“Face massage?” said Os. He frowned, and rubbed absently at one cheek.
“It’s a beauty regime, you numpty,” mumbled Ceri. She had dropped her spoons, and now curled up on the armchair closest to the fire, watching drowsily as Os continued to poke at his own face.
Imogen clapped her hands briskly.
“Well, come on, off with it.”
She pointed towards the bedroom, and Adeline followed dutifully, squeezing Kai’s hand as she went.
???
Imogen had been right to insist on helping her, of course. The dress buttoned down the back in dainty little pearls that Adeline doubted she had the dexterity to undo, even if she’d been able to see them. Beneath it, she was strapped into a corset that would have taken her an age to unlace, and she’d probably risk popping her newly healed shoulder out of its socket if she tried to reach the cords.
“Right,” said Imogen, as Adeline gathered the loosened corset to her chest. “I think I’ve saved you both about half an hour.”
Adeline blanched.
“It’s not – We’re –”
“Oh, please,” Imogen drawled.
“No, honestly,” Adeline insisted. She clutched the open corset closer to her without really knowing why. Perhaps it was harder to get her point across while her clothes were literally falling off. And for some reason, shereallywanted to get her point across. She didn’t want to get her hopes up; didn’t want to be disappointed. “Getting me out of my dress is the furthest thing from Kai’s mind right now, I guarantee it. You haven’t spent much time around him, but I can tell you; the man ismadeof chivalry.”
She sounded a little bitter even to her own ears, but Imogen was still smirking as she picked up the discarded dress and carefully shook it out.
“Is he?”
“Yes.”
“So I didn’t just see him take you by the throat in front of half a dozen people?”
Adeline squirmed, and said nothing. She didn’t know what to think.Pity, he’d said, that they weren’t alone out there. But she remembered how he’d wrenched himself away from her in the forest, how he’d left her outside her rooms that night despite how entirely, dizzyingly obvious it was that he’d wanted her. How he’d avoided her for weeks afterwards.
I’m accustomed to a world where it would be improper.
He’d said that, too.
And all this, before she even let herself consider whatever cracks her ancestor had left scored across his heart.
“Look,” Imogen went on, oblivious to the warring of Adeline’s thoughts. “All I know is that the tension out there is positively suffocating, and I wasn’t about to let one ofmydresses become a casualty. Do you have any idea how long it takes me to create a single ice pearl? If your Merrow King snapped evenoneof these, I’d have had no qualms about Wielding the winds to freeze his bits off.”
Adeline gave an indignant groan, but Imogen just smiled sweetly, despite the wicked glimmer in her eye.
“You can take it from here, I trust.”
Then she kissed the air around Adeline’s burning cheeks, and swept from the room in a flurry of pearl-studded skirts. Once she’d gone, it took Adeline longer than usual to dress herself for bed, rattled as she was.
She’d taken her hair down, and her curls were wild with the warmth and flurry of the ballroom. Her eyes were bright, cheeks stained a deep and stubborn pink with the heat that refused to drain from her face.
The tension is suffocating.
Goddess above.
Adeline caught her own eye in the mirror and imagined her reflection glaring sternly back.
