To Lovingly Hate You

Hollow

Adeline POV

I stayed perfectly still as Evie yanked at the strings to my corset and attempted to get it as tight as possible, looking around their dorm room slash design space as she did. I'm finally getting the final fitting done for Cotillion which is in... three weeks? Either two to three weeks I'm not quite sure, but whenever it is, I'm stoked to wear this dress.

It's a mermaid style, duh, and is a gorgeous iridescent light purple with sequins all over it, Evie said she did them by hand, which is insane seeing as she only wants five hundred dollars for it.

Now that's psychotic, hand-done sequins or gems or anything this extensive automatically makes it worth at LEAST a thousand! That's not even with the time it takes her, I will be giving her an extensive tip, because I will not be taking no for an answer, this dress is worth so much more than what she's trying to make it for me for. Which is another thing, it's fucking custom! Yeah, at least twenty-five hundred, AT LEAST.

Mal came in a few minutes ago, whispering nonsense to herself as she sorted through random papers and parchments, all while cursing under her breath every so often. I can imagine it's been difficult for the VKs to integrate into this brand-new life, but I can see it's especially hard for Mal, as she was ever so lovingly picked by the King.

I'm not the biggest fan of him about it either, not because I don't like Mal, but because I disagree heavily with how he left Audrey.

She was in shambles for months and still has breakdowns to this day, for fucks sake she barely even left her room for the longest time! I had to convince her to wash her hair and get back on her self-care routine in general! He left her a goddamn mess, all because of the fact that he... broke out into song in dance about Mal out of fucking nowhere like we were in some sort of cheesy kids' movie.

Ridiculous, absolutely and utterly ridiculous!

Anyway, once again, I don't hate Mal, from what I know it wasn't exactly her fault that Ben did what he did how he did, so I have to feel sorry for her. She's been thrust into the royal life, and with King Ben's Isle Reformation Project in full swing, I don't know how she's holding up or if he has even the slightest bit of time to help her navigate this new world. I glanced her way as she suddenly seemed to remember something that caused her to go rapidly digging through her bag, and out of her bag she pulled out a spell book.

I've seen that before, especially when she cursed Jane's hair back to that horrid bob cut when they first got here because Aud flew a little too close to the sun with her banter. For the record, I was still having a slight identity crisis when that happened, so while my head of luscious hair remained untouched, I also knew I should've probably stopped them from going so hard on the VKs. I had personal issues going on, I was honestly disassociated until I saw Jane's hair go up in a poof of smoke anyway. But that thing must have some serious firing power in it, and as I heard her mutter some magic enchantment from it, my phone began to ring.

Oh... it's four, yeah, great.

I sighed and glanced to Evie who nodded essentially immediately, allowing me to answer the FaceTime call right in front of her. I let out a low groan as the connection picked up and the video started,

"Hi honey, we- who's room are you in?"

Yup... that checks out.

My mom looked immediately concerned as my dad rushed back over to the camera from doing whatever he was doing to look through as well. I didn't even say anything at first, I just panned my phone around the room and showed them,

"Getting my dress fitted for cotillion remember? I'm in Evie and Mal's room"

I said through a groan, once again, always thinking the worst of me, especially at the worst times. I mean I was literally thinking about texting Grant tonight so he can come over cause I know damn well that would piss Chad off a shit ton after what he did today, as he's always the ring leader of that bullshit after... he left.