Vengeance (The Prince's Games Book 1) by Rebecca Grey (electric book reader TXT) 📕

My legs shake, feeling weak as the mix of new emotions shake through me. I don't want to feel them. I didn't ask for them. So I turn them off as I sit still wet on the edge of my bed, gripping the dark violet hued gown. I let my body go numb until my mind goes blank and there isn't room for guilt, fear, or even the slightest bit of excitement, I shouldn't be allowed to feel.

How did this get so overwhelming?

Over the years, I've grown used to the press of leather against my skin. My clothes should be skin tight to keep from allowing an opponent to grab a hold of anything. In a way, the dress I'd finally slipped into feels somewhat similar. A smooth, pearly-pink, satin clings to my body like static, falling away at my hips to drape over my feet that I'd forced into some sparkling silver heels.

Hedda laughs, wearing her own dark blue gown dotted in sparkling stones, with a few missing here and there. She is dressed like someone who comes from The Bend. Genovese had dressed me like royalty.

"You look like a toddler learning how to walk."

"I feel like a toddler learning how to walk. How are heels this high even useful?" I whine. Maybe I should slip back into my boots. Sure they don't go with the dress, but at least I'll be more comfortable.

"Come on ladies!" Juilliard yells from our shared living space. Him and Marcello have been ready for nearly thirty minutes, occasionally prompting us to exit our room so we can all leave together.

Their screaming had started about the time I realized that I didn't know how to do anything with my hair, or my face for that matter. The trunk provides more than dresses I don't want to wear, but also small compacts of makeup and ribbons for tying up my hair. Hedda emerged from the bathroom just in time to see me throw myself on the bed ready to give up and tell everyone I wasn't going.

I would have stayed like that too if she hadn't yanked me up, still in her towel mind you, and propped me up at the small vanity outside the bathroom door. We didn't talk as she gathered my makeup and brushed it over my red swollen eyes and dabbed color to my lips. She'd left my hair down, ran a brush through it as it dried relatively straight. With skill and practice, she braided a thick gathering of hair near my face, tying it off with a pink ribbon to match the dress. It works well enough to keep my hair from my eyes, I guess.

On multiple occasions I shrunk away from her touch. I’d lose myself in my head and forget what she was doing only to see a flash of her green skin in my peripheral and think she was trying to strike me. She never said a word about it, only sighed and went back to work.

"Tonight we will have fun." Hedda doesn't just say it, she commands it, looking straight into my eyes as she grips my arms to steady me. "Here." She pulls a flask out of the cleavage of her chest and offers it to me. "Liquid courage."

"I don't need courage," I press my lips together, even as I take the drink.

"Yes, that's why you dissolved into a puddle on your bed and tried to wrinkle such a pretty dress as this."

That's part of the issue. I don't want to wear a pretty dress like this. It doesn't feel like me. I don't look like me, I'm someone else pretending to be me. The Ghost would never wear a dress, especially not one that gives me limited range of movement. It does help that a slit runs up the length of the skirt, stopping mid-thigh. At least there's that. I'd been able to double strap my regular belt around the opposite thigh and hide both daggers. I can't breathe without the press of them on my body.

Forcing my shoulders back, I tilt my head and let the chilled liquid in the flask worm down my throat and into my stomach. Liquid courage, she calls it. We'll see about that.

"Okay, we really can't wait any long—” The door swings open and Marcello steps into the room. His attention jumps to me, to the flask, to Hedda, and finally back to me. His eyes drift down, lingering as his lips part on the words still caught in his throat.

I hand Hedda back the flask. "We're ready, you don't have to barge right in." Gone is the nervous, unsure girl from moments ago.

"Let's go," Marcello collects himself and adjusts his suit jacket. Often men in suits look much too... stuffy and old. Maybe it's just the style of suit that men in The Bend are able to get a hold of, because Marcello's outfit doesn't make him look stuffy and old at all. Navy pressed pants with the slightest hint of a checkered pattern in another shade of blue that shines with a matching jacket over a black dress shirt showing off his broad shoulders and lean waist.

The only thing that makes him look truly proper is the very last buttons of his black shirt are done up all the way to his neck. The edge of my lip curls just looking at him. I take a step closer and trail a long nail up his buttons. My eyes tick up to his face. He lifts one brow, watching without speaking. Good. Quickly, I undo the top button.

"You look like you have a stick shoved up your ass with it buttoned all the way up. You're an attractive man, that alone can be intimidating. Let them be intimidated." I say it quietly, inhaling