All I Have

Chapter 12 ~ The Lion, The Witch and the Audacity of This Bitch.

'This is disgusting, you disgust me.'

Asher's eyebrows raise a little at the way the man talks to me. The sneer on his face is close to that of absolute disgust and I can hear contempt in his voice.

'If it were up to me, you would not sit anywhere near that throne in your state.'

'Alright Ernesto, I think you're overreacting a little.' I roll my eyes at the Italian man shaking his head and tightly gripping his pointed chin in horror.

'Look at you!' He gestures, my grandmother close to agreeing with him, 'The nails! Bitten completely down to the bed. The hair! Her split ends have split ends. And don't get me started on the eyebrows, they're almost as hairy as my legs in winter.'

'Okay, does the fact that I'm the future queen mean nothing to you?' I ask, furiously.

He comes up behind me and pushes my shoulders down so that I'm sitting in his salon chair in front of the bright lights where he can properly examine the damage I've done to my appearance since I saw him last. Ernesto has been my family's stylist since he was the only one brave enough to stand up to my grandmother at my mother's wedding.

He told her that royal blue wasn't her colour and he refused to style her in it. The tabloids didn't forget it for months, but she has respected him ever since. She even ended up wearing coral to my mother's wedding instead.

I grew up being told exactly what to wear, how to hold myself, what colours worked with what by Ernesto Hemming. Emilio has an entire Pinboard on Pinterest dedicated to him and the most excitement he has about coming to Alania is meeting him, not coming home after all this time or seeing me.

'You are not sitting on a throne looking like this, lercio.' Ernesto grumbles in his thick accent. I think the man forgets I speak Italian. He turns back to my grandmother, 'What did I tell you altezza? Eh? What did I say to you?'

'You said-'

'I said she comes to me first.' He interrupts my grandmother. 'Before she steps in front of any cameras, she comes to me. She's on the front of every magazine in the country! Dammi la forza.'

Asher makes eye contact with me and widens his eyes at the way that my grandmother allows Ernesto to speak to her. Honestly it doesn't surprise me, my grandmother is the most patient woman I've ever met. You don't get to be one of the most highly acclaimed democratic figures in modern politics by losing your temper.

'Ernesto, how long is this going to take? We have a dress fitting in two hours.' My grandmother says massaging her temples with her thumb and forefinger.

'I will work my fastest but Rome wasn't built in a day.' He says pulling out various nail files and hairbrushes onto the work desk in front of him. He looks at me closely with a pained look, 'Although apparently it was destroyed in six years.'

Ernesto polishes and chops and tweases and messes with my appearance for an hour before he leans back on his mirror and finally nods. I say finally because everytime he seems satisfied, he finds something else he needs to work on. The fiasco of the eyelash tints was something I don't think I'll ever be able to forget. I'm scarred for the rest of my life.

When he moves onto makeup, he asks if I've slept at all since I've been gone, and Asher frowns, considering he knows from just under a week with me quite how much I love to nap. He tilts his head but I just make some joke about how many years I've aged sitting in this chair and hoping no one will take his comment seriously and ask why my bed is still untouched.

I try to think about something else the whole time and decide to go over the evening I spent last night with Adanna, Tegean and Ansel. The thought at one point makes me smile and Ernesto cusses that he plucked the wrong eyebrow hair because of my movements.