Chapter 29

Chapter 29

M ariah stumbled from her bath when the water grew cold and stagnant, toweling off before slipping into an oversized tunic. She shuffled to her bed, collapsing into the down.

She’d forgotten this bed. How comfortable it was. Her lingering worry and panic and fear simmered below the surface, but the familiar quiet wrapped around her. So much had changed, so quickly, but that silence was still her companion.

Sleep pulled her down quickly, and she let herself fall.

Mariah awoke early in the morning, faint sunlight streaming through her window, dark matted hair splayed across the silk pillows.

She sat up with a jolt, chest heaving and tight, panicked breaths laboring as she shoved back the comforter. Comfortable, at ease . Trapped . The way the heavy blankets wrapped around her like a vice, drowning her in greedy, foreign opulence.

She was safe, but her mind had yet to catch up.

Mariah closed her eyes, forced her breathing to slow, for her heart to stop racing. Shaking slightly, she swung her legs off the bed, touching the soles of her feet to the soft rug below. Her feet were still bruised and scabbed from her time in the dungeons and had just started to heal after being swaddled in socks and proper shoes for the past few days. They ached dully, but Mariah didn’t mind.

She’d spent so much time barefoot in those cells, she’d forgotten what it was like to not have her toes cold and numb.

She stood fully from bed and padded across the rug until her feet found cool marble.

The cold was much more familiar. More welcome. She savored it, just for a moment.

Drawing a breath, she cracked open her bedroom door, peering into the living room of her suites.

They were just as she remembered, just as she’d seen them last night. Just as empty, just as familiar, just as strange. The spring sunrise lit the Attlehon Mountains in an ethereal glow, and as she walked to the balcony door and opened it on its silent hinges, she smelled the snowbell blossoms blooming, could hear the wingbeats of the eagles echoing off the mountains.

Another inhale. An exhale. A rumble of her stomach.

Mariah turned, leaving the door open, and strode with a sudden purpose toward a cabinet beside the stove. She wasn’t sure how good of an idea this was, but she wanted to make something. Create something that would bring her just a sliver of that past joy she once felt, a happiness she could remember but no longer felt.

Swinging open the cabinet, she spotted the familiar cast iron device, clean and seasoned. She squatted, rocking back on her heels, knees and ankles and the wasted muscles of her thighs screaming.

She wrapped her hands around the sides of the waffle iron. And lifted.

Or … tried to lift. But her arms gave out, and so did her balance, and she collapsed backward. She fell on her tailbone, back slamming into the island behind her.

Her scars itched and pulsed.

Mariah stared hard at that waffle iron. Looked down at her hands, at her arms. At how weak and thin they were, how unfamiliar they felt.

Tears pricked behind her eyes. Another unfamiliar feeling, but one she couldn’t suppress for much longer.

“Mariah? Are you … are you awake?”

Mariah sobbed at the familiar sing-song voice that called out, hesitant yet still filled with hope. She turned just as Ciana burst into the kitchen, appearing around the island, a wave of shock flashing over her bright golden features.

The shock didn’t last long. It was quickly replaced by undiluted joy, the kind of happiness that made Mariah’s heart jump into her throat.

Somehow, she pushed out two words.

“Hi, Cee.”

Ciana answered with a sob of her own before throwing herself forward, straight to the floor, and wrapping her arms around her queen. Around her best friend.

“Oh, thank the Goddess. You’re alright. You’re alright.” Ciana kept repeating those words, pressing harder into Mariah. Mariah’s back dug further into the island, scars rubbing, but she didn’t mind. Ciana’s sweet lilac scent wrapped around her, the first familiarity that didn’t carry with it a sting of what she’d lost.

“The boys made me wait until the morning before coming to see you. I couldn’t find Sebastian, but Feran and Trefor told me you needed to rest. I told them I would come see you as soon as the sun was up, so that’s what I did.”

Mariah smiled. It felt unnatural, but also … right. “I’m glad you did. I missed you so much, Cee.”

“I missed you too, M. Don’t you ever fucking do something like that to me again.”

“I promise. Never again.” Mariah heard the coldness that crept into her voice. She didn’t try to hide it. And Ciana didn’t miss it.

Her golden-haired friend leaned away, peeling off Mariah. Her bright amber eyes scanned Mariah more closely, and she could only imagine what Ciana saw.

A ghost. A wraith. A shadow of herself.

Someone who …

“You look like shit.”

That … wasn’t what she’d expected to come from Ciana. It shocked Mariah, but also made her feel, for the first time, at home.

Mariah smiled a second time. “Yes, well … a stint in a dungeon will do that to a girl.”

Ciana’s face fell, and she pushed further from Mariah, but not out of fear or worry. What Mariah saw on Ciana’s face was complicated. Contemplative. Observant. A look into the brilliant, tortured mind lurking behind those shining smiles and lighthearted jokes.

Ciana watched Mariah, then darted her eyes to the open cabinet. To what was inside. Her golden brow twisted. “What were you just trying to do? Before I came in?”

Mariah couldn’t help it. She was so tired, so broken, so defeated. And this was her best friend, something she’d never had before in her life.

Tears sprang into her eyes, and another sob shuddered through her. She took a deep, cleansing inhale before she could steady herself and meet Ciana’s amber gaze.

“I-I just wanted to do one thing. One thing, for me, on my own.” Her voice wavered and shook.

“I just wanted … wanted waffles. You know—I loved waffles.” She didn’t correct her use of the past tense. The girl she used to be loved waffles.

But this girl? Mariah didn’t know. She’d wanted to find out, but her own body had betrayed her.

“I know. I love waffles too,” Ciana murmured, voice gentle. “Why couldn’t you?”

Mariah stared at the iron, pouring venom into her gaze. “I couldn’t lift it.”

Those words settled in the air for several heartbeats, neither woman moving.

“Do you still want them? The waffles, I mean.”

Mariah shook her head. She was hungry, but it hadn’t been about the food—not really.

Ciana drew in a breath. “Okay. Mikael will be here in a little bit, anyways. He’ll cook us something.” She shifted onto her knees, forcing Mariah to meet her stare.

“What do you really want?”

Mariah met that amber gaze unflinchingly. She knew what Ciana was asking, and for once in her life, she wasn’t afraid to be vulnerable.

“I want to be strong again. I want to feel strong again.”

Ciana nodded, a single, brisk movement. “Okay. We can do that. Where should we start?”

That had Mariah pausing. She glanced down at her hands resting in her lap. In doing so, she glimpsed her hair, the matted layers nearly reaching her hip. She lifted her head to look back at Ciana.

“A haircut. I need a haircut.”

“Oh, thank the Goddess , I was worried you’d never admit that.” Ciana pushed to her feet, reaching a hand down to Mariah.

Mariah took it. She was inches taller than her friend, but in that moment, Ciana felt like the unmovable force, the unstoppable object. Mariah was simply floating in her orbit.

Her friend gripped both her hands tightly.

“You will be strong again. You will heal. And you will take your vengeance. But you don’t have to do any of those things right now. Right now, you can focus on what you can control. And that just so happens to be a haircut.”

Tears fell freely down Mariah’s cheeks, and she didn’t bother stopping them. Ciana only smiled, before pulling her gently from the kitchen, back into Mariah’s bedroom, and into the bathroom. She pulled out the vanity seat, tapping the back.

“Sit.”

Mariah sat.

From somewhere—a drawer, maybe—Ciana withdrew a hairbrush and a pair of slender shears, the kind reserved for hair. Mariah twisted in her chair.

“Have you ever done this before?”

“What, given my best friend and queen a haircut after her nine-week imprisonment in the dungeon of a villainous, power-hungry lord? Surprisingly, no.”

Mariah blinked, unamused. Ciana grinned.

“Calm down. Yes, I’ve given people haircuts before. Girls are expected to know all things about beauty and caring for a household, remember?” Her words were thick with bitter memories. Ciana gestured at the mirror. “Now, turn back around and let me work my magic.”

At the beginning, Ciana tried to comb out as many of the matts as she could. Tried to salvage as much of the once-beautiful ebony curtain that had dripped down Mariah’s back like streaks of painted night.

It soon became apparent, though, that it couldn’t be saved. So Ciana took a steely gulp and made the first cut, just above where the matts began.

Mariah watched on, mute and emotionless, as her hair fell to the ground.

When Ciana was done, Mariah’s hair brushed her collarbones, just barely past her shoulders. She felt naked and exposed … but she also felt new. Yet another metamorphosis, another transformation.

She was lighter. Cleaner. Less like herself, but more like someone she wanted to become.

Hair would only get in the way of her vengeance.