Cinders [Completed]

Chapter 31: Beautiful

"You must be proud to have such a fighting little sister," says Carol as she measures the length of my arm. Carol is a plump, grey-haired woman who has an accent I don't recognize. Irish, maybe?

"I am," I say. Part of my brain is whirring away anxiously. Is she noticing how much different my body is from a normal werewolf my age? Is she judging me for it? Comparing me?

"We'll do the announcement on Saturday," the King had said in his library an hour earlier. "I'll arrange it with the press, but you understand that it would be best to keep the information private until then. Please pass that instruction on to your family."

I wince just thinking about it. The only member of my family that I haven't told directly is Mom. I think she knows, but we haven't exactly had open conversations lately. That's, uh, probably something I should tell her before it's announced.

Then the King had finished his speech cooly. "We'll start with wardrobe."

Clothes had been a bit of a sore subject since I was twelve. We didn't have a ton of money, so most of my clothes came from the donation box of second hand stores, or from my mom. As Carol measures from my shoulder to my feet, I look down at my outfit - my one formal pair of shoes, which just means slightly less dumpster-ish flats, and the single dress in my closet paired with a sweater that looks like it premiered on the catwalk in 1963.

Perhaps as a coping mechanism, I stopped caring about clothes when I started high school. It just didn't top my priority list. In fact, I'd be happy to throw away my closet.

Lucky for me, that seems to be the plan.

Carol, luckily, supplies most of the conversation, and she even brought up Lucy herself. I smile at her. I could talk about Lucy for hours.

"I saw the skirt you made for her," I say as Carol measures the length of my arm. "I appreciate it. It made her very happy."

"Pretty girls like you," she says, pressing on my upper arm in a small show of support, "should have pretty things to wear."

This actually makes my mind go blank in surprise.

I haven't been called "pretty" in a long time.

It's Monday, right now, so that means four more days until the world knows that I'm Orion's mate. Four more days.

Four more days to tell Mom.

Four more days for Orion to change his mind.

I shake this last thought away. Carol moves on, asking me about colors. I ask her if we can do anything but black. I've never liked wearing dark colors. But talking about it makes me think of Orion, with his soft eyes, and I realize I don't dislike the color as much as I used to.

And I realize that I miss him. I hadn't seen him since meeting his mother this morning, and it seems like entirely too long. Guiltily, I also think about Lucy. I hadn't seen her since before the trial, which felt like a lifetime ago. I used to see her every day.

"I heard," Carol continues, "that they're buying some clothes for you, too, so something will be ready for you by tomorrow morning."

I nod, still thinking of Lucy.

My mother usually cuts my hair in our backyard with dull kitchen scissors. I remember, one time, in a rage, I had cut my hair with pink kids' scissors, sawing off six inches so that it was above my shoulders. Dad hadn't liked that, of course - it was an emotional decision that made me look sloppy and ridiculous, not like a beta's daughter. Those cinders had gone cold before he'd taken them from my shoulder blades.