Of Whispers and Daggers ✓ [TLRQ #2]

Chapter 48.2 - Leavi

That night, my brush runs the length of Riszev's long, smooth hair. It's an oddly personal action to perform for someone I only met a day ago. I've helped friends make themselves up for nights out, but there is less flurry in this, less excitement. The closest thing I can recall is my mother brushing my hair for me as a child, but I have few memories of that. She stopped the first year I entered school.

Riszev doesn't seem to think anything of it.

We sit cross-legged in the floor of her room on pillows she dragged off the bed. Though I have to hold her hair up so the tips don't drag the ground, the position is strangely relaxing. Much less stilted, I imagine, than if she had been in the vanity chair with me standing behind. Instead of a servant, I feel like a child spending the night at someone else's house.

"Are you always quiet?" Riszev asks.

A short laugh escapes me. "You're not exactly talkative yourself."

She twists to glance at me. "But you never ask me any questions."

I gently press her shoulder so that she turns back. The brush strokes through her hair. "What do you want me to ask?"

"That one does not count." She sounds like a vexed child, and I suppress a laugh.

The bristles stick in her hair, and I work gently at the knot as I think. "Are you nervous about tomorrow?" From across the room, her two wedding dresses hang on mannequins, silent and inescapable spectators.

"It is a great honor."

"Doesn't mean you can't be nervous." I'm nervous, and my only involvement is to help prepare the bride. My eyes skim over the blue and silver dress. I wonder what it will feel like on, how her star-strung necklace will lie against it, how Aster will look at her when he first sees her. My insides twist.

She shifts on her pillow. "It is... more real than it has been before."

I force my eyes back to my task.

"And I wish my sisters could see. It is a strange thing to marry so fast, in another woman's land."

"You have sisters?" For some reason, I never imagined this girl with family.

"I am the second of six."

My brows shoot up. "My."

She glances back at me again. "You sound surprised."

"A bit," I admit. "I don't have one sibling, never mind six."

She grins. "I have two brothers also. They are both spoiled troublemakers." She turns so I can continue brushing. I wonder what it would be like to have someone speak so disparagingly of me in such a fond voice.

"It must be nice."

She nods, more serious now. "My family and my land have always been very good to me." More softly, she says, "It is time for me to be good back to them."