12. Girl Talk

Girl Talk

I scrubbed myself dry with some towels from the attached bathroom and passed out the second my head hit the pillow, dressed in Danica's borrowed underwear and nothing else. Not only had I been up for days, but I hadn't been near a bed since the opal mine, and for the seven months I'd been stuck there I'd been sleeping on a shitty cot. The huge featherbed might as well have been enchanted. The hour didn't matter.

Voices roused me in the early evening. A spectacular sunset still painted the sky, the orange light spilling across the bare stone floor. I didn't move, willing the people to leave, too worn to want to get up and face whatever the rest of the day held.

"…and she's your soulmate," Danica said, her voice low and insistent. "I can't play go-between forever."

A sharp exhale—Cass. "It's been six weeks, mageling. Six weeks of walking, and surviving, and dealing with me." He sounded exhausted; bitter, almost. I could see him in my mind's eye, gesturing down his body with disgust. "I had no idea, and I should have. I don't want to trespass into her personal space more than I already have." His wings sighed as he resettled them. "You know what it's like to be blood-linked to me, and I suspect that's merely a taste of what Quyen's been facing. Can you imagine what that was like for her? For weeks ?"

Danica sighed. I heard fabric rustling, and the door to the massive bedroom cracking open. "Just this once , Cass," she said quietly, leaning into the word. "You're the one who told me I had to face things down, so don't be a hypocrite. You can't run from a soulmate."

My jaw clenched as his body went tense. "I'm not running," he gritted out. "I'm trying to give her any amount of consideration after spending five weeks fucking sexually assaulting her—"

"I'm awake," I said in a muzzy voice. "Stop arguing about me."

All my skin went hot, then cold, and then every sensation I was getting from Cass reverted to what had to be purposeful calm. Steady heartbeat, relaxed shoulders, mild wakefulness, a complete lack of adrenaline… all things I was fairly sure weren't natural emotions on his part, and which definitely weren't on mine.

I shoved myself up in time to see Cass' dark shape turn and stride away. So much for not running, I thought, mentally rolling my eyes.

"I'm fine, by the way!" I called at his retreating shadow. "It's really not a big deal!"

A door shut forcefully, not quite a slam.

Danica slid in through the doorway and leaned against the frame, crossing her arms over her chest with a rueful expression. "It is, actually," she said. Her mouth tugged to the side. "You probably weren't around a lot of fae, right?"

I shrugged, a little awkwardly, given that I was topless and wearing her underwear, with only a sheet for modesty. "Not really. The overseers were fae, but probably ninety percent of the people at the mine were humans. Maybe more."

"Well," she said, flipping open the shield on one of the eternally-glowing lamps, a glass shape filled with a liquid the fae called lambence. "There's a couple pretty key cultural differences."

"You don't even know what culture I'm from," I pointed out. I crossed my arms over my chest. "Human cultures are pretty diverse."

She flashed me a smile. "What culture are you from?"

Well, bluff called, I supposed. "Vietnamese-American. I'm from Long Beach. Los Angeles area."

"What a coincidence," Danica said, in a way that suggested it wasn't coincidental at all. "I got picked up from L.A., too. Used to live in Koreatown." She blew a breath out through her nose. "Faery doesn't correspond exactly to the mortal world, but there's regions that are more associated than others. This part of Faery, you see a lot of mortals from the western coasts of North America, Europe, and Africa, for some reason. It doesn't really matter, though."

"Oh?" I asked, not moving from my position on the bed.

She didn't seem to mind the combativeness. She just smiled again, and said, "Not a lot of mortal cultures where a guy caught groping an unwilling girl gets his hands cut off for it."

I stared at her.

"Yeah." Danica came over and took a seat in one of the two chairs at what was probably a breakfast table. "As you might imagine, people who can literally feel the balance of debt are pretty weird about it. Their biggest crimes are theft, and the closer that theft is to your core being, the worse the crime. Theft of life, theft of autonomy… Basically, you're not gonna end up on the receiving end of someone's orgasms unless you explicitly consented. So. You know. Cass is pretty torn up about it."

With a grunt, I rubbed at my temples. "He didn't know."

"Yeah, no shit. Hence why he's not submitting himself to a goddamn tribunal." She shook her head, dark strands of hair drifting behind the motion. "It'll be easier for him if you give him a way to make retributions."

"He didn't do anything wrong —" I started, frustration showing in my voice.

Danica held up her hand, palm out. "Hey, don't bite the messenger. I'm just trying to say that you're probably not going to be able to convince him that everything is hunky-dory, so if you want him to chill, give him something to do about it." When I didn't answer, she shrugged. "The other two points of interest for tonight are that fae don't care about nudity—"

"You mentioned that earlier," I said drily.

"— and they see public spaces as an extension of private spaces," she continued, as if I hadn't said anything. "You're probably going to see people having sex, dueling, making bargains, whatever. Don't stare. Don't look at all, if you can help it. It's rude."

I filed that away. It made a couple of my encounters with the fae overseers make a bit more sense. Not that they still hadn't been assholes, but at least I could scratch "exhibitionist" off the list of crimes.

"Anything else?" I asked.

She pursed her lips. "Uhhhmm… no? Oh! Yes. There will be bugs."

"…Bugs."

"Yeah, fae aren't weird about that. Or are, depending on your point of view," Danica said, shrugging one shoulder. "In addition to regular food, they eat bugs, so. There will be bugs at the feast. Probably you won't have to eat them," she added, her lips twitching. "But, you know. Just in case. There's bugs."

I groaned and flopped back onto the bed. "Okay, fine. Public sex and bug snacks. When's the damn thing?"

"You've gotta be ready in about an hour." She got back up and brushed imaginary dirt off her pants. "Me, too, since in addition to being one of Cass' Archangels, I'm the Mirage Duchess. There's already three potential body-servants who've assigned themselves to you," Danica added with an overly-dramatic expression of woe. "All female, two fae and a mortal. A fae man was in the running, too, but he took one look at the expression on Cass' face and changed his mind."

"Whatever," I said, rolling my eyes. Cass hadn't even been aware I existed before this morning; he had exactly zero right to be possessive about me, especially if the rules of the game included hands chopped off for unwanted sexual touching.

"Soulmate possessiveness," she said with a shrug. "It can be pretty bad when you're unbalanced. Sometimes it goes away afterwards, or changes shape."

"Whatever," I said again, still not getting up. "You can send them in, I guess."

In the periphery of my vision, I caught sight of her frowning. I told myself I didn't care. What right did Danica have to judge me? She obviously knew how to exist in this world. She was a duchess and some sort of special attendant to the King, all full of helpful advice for the bumbling newcomer.

Maybe it was just the contrast of our meeting: the glorious Archangel with her bad-boy soulmate doting attendance on her, decked in white and gold… and the filthy, exhausted, half-crazed Queen-by-fiat in her stolen bandit's clothes, whose soulmate didn't even know she existed. Even knowing she was only trying to be helpful didn't make me resent her any less. Someone else could be helpful, not this gorgeous, self-possessed woman who knew my soulmate so much better than I did.

If I said something to that effect, though, I knew she'd just file it away as soulmate possessiveness. It might have even been from the soulmate bond, but I didn't care. She was prettier than me and Cass liked her more than me and I wanted her to go away.

Petty, probably, but after the six weeks I'd had, I felt entitled to being a petty bitch.

"Okay," she said at last, sounding disappointed. "I'll send them in. I know this is probably hard for you, but Cass is my friend, so I hope we can get to know each other later."

I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to ignore the guilt as she walked away. Auntie would have been giving me that look , the one that said she was disappointed in me for being so self-centered. Danica had been nothing but nice, even if she'd clearly taken some wicked glee in my misfortune—or, rather, Cass' misfortune, since it seemed that she and her soulmate found it amusing that he hadn't known of my existence, and that I'd appeared on the day of his coronation like a vulture alighting on his throne.

By the time I sat back up, though, she'd managed to escape the enormous bedroom, and three women were filing in, all smiles. They had to be my self-assigned body-servant hopefuls.

I decided not to tell them that the King had already taken over their putative room. Maybe whoever ended up being my personal assistant could sleep in the consort's suite.

Me, with a personal assistant. Now wasn't that a weird thought.

The human looked to be in her late forties or early fifties, with her graying blonde hair pulled back in a french braid and crows-feet stamped at the corners of her eyes. She had a determination in the set of her expression that I liked. It had to be difficult to age in this ageless society.

The two fae were probably much older, but looked like they were in their mid-twenties. One was tall and slender, with an elegant bearing. Her creamy white shirt emphasized the warm fawn of her skin, and the auburn curls falling down around her face were a dark true red, the sort of color no human ever wore naturally. The other had a sharp and hungry look, her blue eyes too pale and her pin-straight brown hair pulled back so severely it tugged at the skin of her face.

I flashed them a tight smile, choosing to be unbothered by being shirtless. Whoever was my body-servant would probably see me naked a lot, especially if all fae clothing was of the kind that required someone to lace you into it and help you out of it.

"I hear I'm supposed to attend a feast tonight," I said, keeping my tone light and pleasant.

The redhead curtsied. "Yes, your majesty," she said, in a delicate soprano voice, the sort where you just know their laughter could be described as tinkling bells. "The Feast of Bronze Voices."

"And that's a religious festival?" I hazarded. "I haven't been in Faery for very long."

Both fae women exchanged a glance. It looked troubled.

"Yes, your majesty," the hawkish one said, sounding like she was choosing her words carefully. "The feast calendar has a five-day week, the final day of which is the feast-day. The final feast of a septet of weeks is the high feast, and the feast cycle contains thirty-five high feasts." She inclined her head towards me. "The Feast of Bronze Voices is one of the lesser feasts. It wouldn't do to place a King at the same heights as the gods."

"Of course not." Hopefully I didn't sound snarky about it. "Let's get me ready for my social debut, hm?"

She bowed. "Of, course, your majesty."