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It was hard to feel like that with Gran, especially because she still looked like an old woman.
Not that I believed that act for a moment.
Though, the quiet moment gave me a pause. “What do you really look like?”
“You saw a glimpse.”
“So why look likethis?”
Gran took a sip of her tea, then rested it on her leg. “I learned a long time ago that a pretty face was a detriment.”
“I’d think it was helpful. Men get stupid around pretty faces.”
“Men want toownpretty faces. They get obsessive, determined, and it makes life far more difficult. I prefer to move without that complication.”
The way Kase had noticed me, how Troy had distracted me even as just my neighbor, how Grant and Hunter had entangled themselves in my life made me unable to argue with her point.
It wasn’t that I acted as if I were beautiful, and honestly because of the spell my parents had put on me, I was usually ignored.
Hadn’t the men made my life more difficult in many ways?
Hadn’t they helped, too?
I tried to think about what my life would have been like if I hadn’t met them, if I’d had to face this all on my own.
And all the times I wouldhave probably been dead.
“Is it worth pretending to be something you’re not?”
She laughed. “You’re asking me that? You, who has spent your entire life trying to pretend to be normal?”
The jab landed. It was true…
Still, it also felt like an odd moment with Gran. She normally felt so…different. She felt wise and unreachable. Sure, she was my friend, but it had always been borne of a different level.
Sitting across from her made me look at her differently.
Maybe it was my time in hell, my experiences. I didn’t feel like the girl who didn’t know where she belonged, the one who felt unprepared for life, hiding behind her skirts.
Instead, I felt like an equal.
Okay, so I wasn’t quite an equal—no one feared me the way they feared her—but I wasn’t a girl afraid of life, either.
And I finally saw that she wasn’t quite as together as she pretended to be. She wore a different face just to hide a part of herself she didn’t like.
“Maybe neither of us needs to hide so much,” I said.
“Maybe,” she said, and for a moment the real vision of her shimmered, showing me a glimpse of the woman she was beneath that. “Get yourself ready, dear. No doubt that green-haired woman stuffed with far too much cheer will be here to escort you when it is time.”
With that, she got off the bed, leaving my cup with me. When she got to the door and opened it, a guard stepping in front of her for a moment.
Then the guard took another look at her and stepped backward faster than I’d seen them do with anyone else.
She offered one more smile before leaving me be to get ready.
