Half Mad (Sequel to Half Bad)

Chapter 22

(two apologies-one for the mistake the the chapter had been updated. it wasn't posting in order so I spent a while figuring out how to fix it & I did, so yay! second, so sorry it's been so long, omg. but Daniel's, Rose's, and Harry's ball outfit are attached above <3)

✖ Chapter 22 ✖

THE NEXT FEW hours were maddening. Rose was still upstairs with Leah, doing whatever it is she planned to do to save Rose. The staff (yes, there was an entire staff), however, was frantic in party planning and decorating. The air was hectic and ecstatic, an odd combination that somehow seeped into my own bones.

Each of us males were swept away into a room for suit-fitting. Needless to say, I was not content with three maids measuring every inch of me. From the length of my torso and lengths to the width of my hips. I asked one if all of it were truly necessary, and she had sheepishly responded that she was merely doing what her queen requested.

I didn't enjoy being a doll for people to dress up, but I put up with it anyways because I didn't want to ruin a day that had miraculously turned out quite all right. Cecilia was gone, Rose was being fixed, and everyone was alive. After many complications, but alive nonetheless.

"You sure do have a lot of hair for a boy," one of the maids murmured, seeming as if she were speaking to herself. She happened to realize she wasn't and her face flushed immensely.

I managed the smallest of laughs. "Not too much time to worry about haircuts when you're hiding away in forests all the time."

She looked to embarrassed to reply, but gave a curt nod with a little smile on her lips. The rest of the time, the maids worked in silence and the after math was catastrophic. Me. In a suit. Looking halfway decent. The world had suddenly become laced with twisted humor.

"Don't you look spiffy?" Daniel's voice broke me away from frowning in the mirror and my eyes towards the door, where the maids were leaving and he was entering in a white suit.

"I could say the same to you."

"I know right? I look like a total slayer in this." He grinned widely, popping the vest as if to prove a point.

I snorted. "Please don't ever say slayer again."

"Would you rather me say king?"

"Fair point."

We walked downstairs to pursue our game of Which Maid Will Trip On Streamers First. There had to be at least a football field's length of streamer flooding through the extravagant ballroom. However, the staff members expertly danced around the loose material as if it weren't there at all.

The ballroom itself, to say the least, was massive. If the rest of the palace weren't so large, I'd bet the ballroom took up half it's space. But it's obviously not that huge, albeit not far from it. Daniel had said at least a dozen times that he could fit his old house in here one hundred times over.

I debated with myself over whether or not I should ask about his family. I decided against it, though, because if he's anything like me, he'd hate persistent questions on such a secret. Daniel typically acted as though he had nothing to hide, but everyone has at least one or two secrets they'd like to keep buried.

But he took it upon himself to turn the tables on me. "So, how exactly does your family work? You thought you had a mom but it ended up being a false mom and your real mom was the queen? What about Marcus?"

I cringed, remembering how I had let him dangle like an apple from a tree. Even after all he's down, guilt washed over me all over again. "I'm not sure."