𝐚𝐧 𝐚𝐥𝐭𝐚𝐫 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐦𝐚𝐝𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬

𝐢.

𝐢. 𝐚 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐧𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐠𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐬 𝐬𝐨𝐟𝐭

Pinpricks of warmth avail themselves in Alerah's touch—freckled, sun-bathed fingers wet inside an attar of roses.

She watches Helaena through half-shut eyes, leaden with the desire for repose amidst soft flickers of candlelight, a rapture of sheets lulling her to the same shared catharsis. Helaena's chambers are no less filled with exuberance than hints of hidden danger.

It's with a diligence that Alerah combs through milk-white curls, twines them together like tapestries of old, and smoothes a thin bead of oil across each newly fastened plait.

Curtains hanging in loose folds—strewn over the oculus eye of the room—sift moonlight like flour across their faces. Dashes of colorless light gently sweep across Helaena's profile.

As though divinity clings to her features and effuses from her skin, Alerah's fingers quicken to make a spectacle of her goddess before she burns.

"Would you like to hold one?"

Helaena's voice splashes like cream. "They're harmless, truly, Alerah."

A lizard—but not quite—takes the appearance of a snake inside Helaena's palm, curled into itself, legless. Alerah is reminded again of the tittering of beetle wings, the warble of bush crickets and scarabs clustered in the man-made contraptions the queen has commissioned.

She's made worse judgements, Alerah thinks. Setting aside a meager sum for her daughter's leisures will not bring the house to ruin.

The creatures are both smooth and squamous, delicate and durable, a collection of contradictions Alerah bears no impulse to understand. The bulbous, rutting head of the hazelworm in between Helaena's fingers writhes, as grease-skimmed as an eel, before it escapes under the aegis of her deliberately slack fingers.

"Careful," the princess hums, turning back to look upon Alerah's now-contorted face.

Under the labyrinth of skirts between them, brilliant shades of vermillion and blue-green for Alerah, the lizard burrows.

Helaena lifts a row of her gown as ivory silk-velvet cascades onto the floor, and Alerah moves to steady herself on the headboard. A moan escapes from the foot of the bed, weight shifted too eagerly and too suddenly, and Alerah digs the oily pads of her fingers into the wood with as much might as she's able to gather.

Enough to keep herself immobile as the creature squirms with agitation.

Helaena dares offer the worst outcome to consider when she asks, "what if he avails us?"

"We shall sleep in the godswood then," Alerah says, breath shallow, hastening. She can't decipher the cleverness in Helaena's voice through its honeyed veneer. "Or I shall find myself in the servants' quarters for another night."

She manages a laugh, albeit, one that's been worn to a sputtering crackle of static as though she's entertained the princess from dawn's rolling light. She'd summon what little magic swims inside her if only to see Helaena's every proclivity granted—sumptuous, stinging, saccharine, it needn't matter.

Helaena rummages through the layers of their fountain of skirts before looking up at Alerah's face, amusement casting rogue onto Helaena's cheeks, ashen-touched terror onto the latter's now self-abasing expression.

"Assure me," Alerah whispers. "I swear fealty, anything."

Helaena smiles, almost sickly-sweet, then plucks the hazelworm from the nest of linens it's explored during the commotion.