But, as I imagine most little girls do, I often wondered how I would look wearing it for the first time. I just never imagined that first time would be while being held captive in a demon’s house across The Hinge in Elisium.
While a Diablim woman applied said makeup.
Because I was going to a Diablim event with a demon.
Surreal doesn’t even begin to describe it.
“Close your eyes,” Pattywort demands, and I do. Light brush strokes flick over my eyelids. “Not much I can do about those eyes of yours,” she muses. “If Kincaid had warned me, I could’ve brought some colored contacts for you to wear at the Court.”
“What did Kincaid tell you, exactly?”
I peel back an eyelid to see her frowning. “Only that he would be bringing someone to the Court with him this eve and wanted her to blend in with the other courtiers.”
Of course he would want me to blend in. He’d warned me once before of the dangers of standing out. It’s why he didn’t leave the house over the last four days. Not even once. He said he wouldn’t be leaving me alone anymore. That it isn’t safe.
It made the prospect of going to a place where—if Artemis is right—there will be Diablim as far as the eye can see more than a little daunting. And not just any Diablim, upper levels. The most powerful beings in all of Elisium. Apparently, even Nephilim are known to attend. With the occasional angel showing up to the festivities.
“How well do you know him?” I ask Pattywort.
“Who?”
“Kincaid.”
Another frown.
“I don’t think anyone knows him very well, dear,” she says, and I sense a tension in the words. I don’t miss how she’s lowered her voice, and I bet if I opened my eyes, I’d see her beady black ones flitting toward the door.
Unperturbed, I press on. “Why not?”
Pattywort sighs. “Because that’s how the lord likes it. He’s never been one to flaunt his pomp and circumstance—like some of the other lords. Though he’s been acting peculiar of late…”
Her tone’s changed to one of intrigue and her voice has become hushed.
“He bought that healer boy out from under a few Diablim just last week. That makes two slaves he’s purchased in barely two weeks when he’s never purchased one before.”
My back stiffens, and I hope she doesn’t notice. No one knows why Kincaid bought me, save for the lord himself, and I don’t think he would like anyone asking questions about it. In asking Pattywort about him, I could be putting her in danger of getting too curious. And in turn, in danger of meeting the business end of Kincaid’s silvery horns.
“Right,” I say, licking my lips, trying to put an end to the conversation.
But Pattywort isn’t sated yet. She leans in, pausing in her brushing of some soft powder on my cheeks. “Curiouser still how he has you both here, living beneath his roof as though you’re both guests instead of slaves...”
I open my eyes to see her black ones glimmering with intrigue. She’s trying to glean information from me, I realize, and my fingers curl under the chair’s edge, steadying me as I attempt to keep my face impassive.
“I don’t pretend to know his intentions,” I say. “I only do as he commands.”
This reply seems to subdue Pattywort’s curiosity, and she deflates a little, setting back to work with more vigorous strokes of her brush along the bottom edge of my cheekbones.
“Suppose I shouldn’t be surprised,” she says on a sigh. “The lord has always been a little off. I once saw him save a stray kitten from becoming sold off as dinner at the market, you know. Some might’ve thought he meant to eat the thing himself, but I know better,” she says with the cavalier smirk of someone who thinks she’s in the know.
“I saw how he coddled the thing to his chest, tucking it into the fold of his jacket against the wind and cold. He never meant to eat it. He meant to save it from being eaten.”
It’s clear Pattywort expects me to hold up my end of the conversation, so I swallow hard and ask, “Why would he do that? He’s a demon. Why would he care about a stray cat being eaten?”
Surely, he’d done much worse things prior to his escape from Hell.
All the while, I’m wondering if that kitten he saved is the nameless white cat with the belled collar who now lives in the house with him. I’m thinking it must be.
“A curious thing for a demon to do, no doubt,” she says. “But darkness and light often hide in the most surprising of places.”
“What does that mean?”
“Your Kincaid wasn’t always as he is now, you know,” she answers in a hush as she sweeps a wand of heartsblood crimson over my lips. “Once, he was an angel, and I think deep down a part of him still remembers that.”
She says this as though it’s something to be ashamed of, with a sneer curling her upper lip and the gleam of disgust in her beady eyes.
I can’t help feeling the opposite.
Kincaid was an angel?
I can hardly picture it and am immediately wondering if this Diablim woman is blowing smoke. Or maybe if she’s insane.
The beast I saw tear that daeva to shreds could not be anything other than what it looked like. A demon. There’s no way those haunting yellow eyes could’ve ever belonged to anything else.
Pattywort startles me with two bony fingers gripping my chin. She jerks my gaze to meet hers. “But don’t tell him I said so, or he’ll have my head on a platter. Got it?”
I shake off her grip and pleat my fingers in my lap. “Yeah. Fine. I won’t say anything.”
“Good girl,” Pattywort says with a little pat on the top of my head. She gives me a last once-over and a slow smile pulls her lips apart to reveal her pointed teeth again.
The more I see them, the less horrifying they become. In some strange way, they suit her.
“I think that’ll about do it. Let’s get you into the gown and then have a look, shall we?”
Pattywort leads me from the stool and away from the mirror to dress. I try to protest as she strips me down, but she bats my hands away, telling me I’d never be able to get the gown on by myself. Not with all the laces and fine, thin fabric.
“You’ll shred it to ribbons tugging on it like that,” she scolds. “Let go.”
Giving up, I let her dress me as though I am the doll I didn’t want to be after all, staring at a particularly large crack in the corner of the ceiling to distract myself.
“All right. We’re done,” Pattywort announces, checking her watch again with a little gasp. She shoves me in front of the mirror, her face turning a shade of blanched gray. “Hurry and have a look, miss. We don’t want to keep Master Kincaid waiting.”
What I find in the mirror is a version of myself I never would’ve thought existed.
I thought once Pattywort was through I wouldn’t look at all like myself, but I’m pleasantly surprised to find that I still do. The Diablim woman has worked some magic into my dull skin and ratty hair.
She’s made the faded purple and pink dye look like it might have been a purposeful choice. She’s pinned back two sections on either side of my face and placed a small headpiece atop my skull like a crown. It helps to hold my hair in place—she’s wrapped sections of it around the thin silver circlet—and a tiny black jewel dangles against my forehead.