Spin Me Sweet Tales

Chapter Ten

The curtains conceal daylight as I slumber. When I awake to the bedroom door opening and Deeba and Khaivya's ankle bracelets clinking together as they walk, I open my eyes and feel like I should still be asleep. My internal clock tells me to lie back in bed and sleep the rest of the day away, and when Deeba opens the curtains and the sunset stares back in endless arrays of reds and oranges, I understand why I think I should still be asleep.

"Will I ever get used to it?" I ask the women, specifically Khaivya, who is the only one who looks at me. "Being awake in the nighttime but asleep when the sun is out?"

"Truthfully?" Khaivya asks. "It's been twenty years since King Shaharuddin and the other Parasites took over Oraxto and changed the sleeping schedule, and I'm still going used to no sunlight."

"Khaivya!" Deeba glares at her friend with unmistakable worry in her enormous eyes. "You say too much when you shouldn't."

"No, my sweet, you don't say enough," Khaivya retorts in return.

Deeba's body slackens and she murmurs. "If you keep speaking like this to her, your head will meet a spike."

"You worry too much," Khaivya says gently.

I want to ask Khaivya more questions. I want to see if she will tell me about the Fae because Christof refused, but I also want to know about the Parasites, King Shaharuddin's overthrow, and why I can read Oraxten. Questions swarm me like bees, but I see Deeba with fear, and I stop myself from imploring more.

For now.

"What's for breakfast?" I ask instead.

Khaivya laughs, and Deeba rolls her eyes.

The women prepare me for dinner. Deeba pulls my brown locks back into an intricate braid that stops in the middle of my spine, and she places silver butterfly clips into the braid. With my hair pulled back, Khaivya applies makeup in delicate shades that matches the pale purple gown hanging on the back of the bedroom door.

Khaivya helps me up when they finish, and she gifts me with conversation as she and Deeba guide me into my gown. With each tug of the corset strings, Khaivya distracts me with more stories about her nani. As she tells me about the time her nani conjured a hurricane to attack a rogue pack of feral werewolves, Deeba ties the back of my corset and materializes a pair of silver heels.

"No wolves ever dared to land on Daayan soil after that day," Khaivya says with a warm smile, which lights up her thin, angular face.

I slip on the heels, and I comment. "What I would've paid to be a fly on the wall on that day."

"Flies?" Khaivya asks with confusion.

For once, I'm the source of knowledge, and a genuine smile peels over my lips for the first time since I was kidnapped. "A fly is a little winged bug in my realm. The term fly on the wall is a phrase meaning that I wish I was there to witness what your nani did."

"Oh," Khaivya says, but I do not really think she understands.

"Time to go, your highness. Your husband waits," Deeba says, breaking our conversation with the gravity of where I am.

In Khaivya's company, I will sometimes forget where I am and the predicament that I have found myself in. Her stories, her laughter, and her optimism help me drift away from a forced marriage to a murderous vampyre king, and all the secrets that my arrival here has brought. Deeba is here to remind me, though.

They guide me out of the bedroom and lead me towards breakfast with my new husband.

Deeba and Khaivya walk two paces ahead of me with the same muteness as the castle's occupants, who flinch at my presence. I do not ignore the shocked second glances they make as we walk through the castle hallways, or the occasional gasps. In a world where I do not belong, I'm hyper aware of everything and loathe my circumstances more with each vampyre who gives me a fanged grin and each pixie who runs when I walk nearby.