DUALITY /#Wattys 2021

Chapter 25

Ridley slipped on her suit jacket and stared at a stranger in her gilded full-length mirror.

The past two days had been as surreal in their own way as her previous stay in the Guildhall. After her conversation with Devane, her guards escorted her back downstairs, where a slender blonde woman stood waiting for her. Ridley stared at her elegant face painted with makeup, and hair swept coolly into a twist over a white lab coat.

"Hi, Ridley, I am your concierge, Mirabella." The woman held out a slender hand with lacquered pink nails.

Ridley shook her hand. "My what?" she asked.

Mirabella laughed. "Just consider me your personal assistant while you're here."

Mirabella showed her to a suite—not just a room, but a suite—with big airy windows and a sweeping view of the city. Not nearly as dizzying as Devane's—that view was like flying, it was so high up. 

She had a large bedroom with her own beautiful bathroom, all in shades of green and white, and her own sitting room, mauve, green, and white, with a fireplace already ablaze when she walked in. She had a bed almost the size of her entire bedroom back home, and her own dining area. A bouquet of fragrant flowers, brilliant pops of color, adorned each room. Devane had informed her that he had two other Guild candidates waiting to be initiated. He would simply schedule an early ceremony and induct them and Ridley together. Or rather: Marrow would induct the others. Devane would induct Ridley himself.

Ridley's windows showed her the ornate side entrance of the Civic Center next door, with its gardens out back, swarming with workmen hanging lights for the upcoming Christmas season. In the middle of the gardens gleamed an ice rink, as white as a flat moon. Children and adults glided round and round in the cold, dressed in jewel colors and skating boots that glided over  the ice. The afternoon she got there, Ridley went across the street and skated, herself. Mirabella saw her fascination with the skaters and told her she could get her free admission.

She'd spiraled around the edge of the rink, laughing when she fell. Later, enjoying her view again over a steaming mug of hot chocolate, Ridley thought of how much fun it would be if her mother and Sannah could be with her in a place like this in years to come. 

She wished she could accept Devane's offer for real.

But she reached below her collarbone, where the secret tubing emerged from her skin to connect to the collection pouch, which she had folded and hidden in her bra, and she knew she could never really do that. What had Devane done to her heart, to her mind? To the Queen's? To those of everyone who worked in this building? How could she leave that question unanswered? Her King counted on her, and she would never let him down, even though she knew he would never want her.

Maybe that kind of life could happen one day for the three of them in Mannaz. Because Ridley would never come back here after this was over.

Her dining area included a bar stocked with wines and other kinds of drinks she had never heard of. Once she was alone for the night, she opened a bottle of wine and practiced with it, directing the tingling, fruity liquid with her tongue to the new opening in her mouth, figuring that if she didn't feel tipsy, she hadn't absorbed any.

She practiced in the bathroom, disconnecting the collection pouch and letting the wine drain through the tubing into the toilet, not wanting to allow anything in the pouch except the liquid it was intended for. She didn't want some other substance to interfere with Popish's chemical analysis. She chased the wine with water and guided that into the sink.

Mirabella escorted her out to be fitted for clothing to wear on her initiation day and for the remainder of her stay; only a few things, since she would return to the King and had clothes there. Her attendant—whom Ridley suspected had been assigned to monitor her and spy on her as much as to wait on her—guided her to a small exclusive shop in an ornate corner of the city.