Lady Mutiny

Thirteen

It had been some time since Lilia had an excuse to wear a dress, but that part of her they could never touch- that never broke- still remembered what it was to be a Lady.

She didn't know where Andro had the dresses made, or how the seamstress knew her exact measurements, but she wasn't about to ask either. Not as she stood before the floor-length mirror in a dress of ruby red taffeta that cinched to her in all the places it should and billowed out to the floor to complete its elegant form.

Running her hands over the delicately embroidered bodice, Lilia's eyes almost stung with tears as she tried to remember the last time she could wear such a garment. Or considered the times she thought she would never wear one again.

Almost.

She had to remind herself this wasn't a ball or any other social engagement- it was merely an invitation to dinner with the Lord of the castle where he was going to finally explain to her why Sebastian Gaylen had a Mark on his head, and how she was thrown into the middle of it.

But if that was all it was, why was her heart feeling as though it was beating right against the boning of that bodice?

She placed a hand on her chest, right above that beating heart, and Lilia made herself take a breath- once in and once out. Her attraction to Andro was ill-placed and had been ever since that damn Solstice masquerade. And somehow, someway, Baz knew it too, and she played right into his deceitful trap. The bastard...

She hissed as her nails dug into the flesh of her breast, where it peaked out over the top of the corset. Lilia needed to get a grip on her temper, or else find some way to channel it, or she was going to get herself, or someone else, hurt in the process.

Groaning at the red marks the nails left in their wake, Lilia reached down to her vanity and applied a few puffs of powder to the affected area. Hopefully, that would be enough to conceal the self-inflicted damage to keep anyone from asking questions at dinner.

Dinner. Of course.

It was only dinner.

A dinner where it would be only she and Andro, where she was wearing a gorgeous gown and he- well, she could only imagine what he would be wearing. He could show up wearing a page's riding leathers and it would suit him perfectly.

She shook her head violently, grateful she had yet to do her hair. Only dinner, only dinner, only dinner...

If she had allowed the maidservants assigned to her to remain, she would have been ready by now, but she dismissed them as soon as they brought her the dress. Not that she didn't appreciate the offer from either of them or Andro, but Lilia was more used to dressing on her own that having anyone else. It used to drive Lucas mad she would never hire herself a personal assistant- she wondered if Cass would have done that for herself as yet.

Oh, Cass...

Lilia all but crashed onto the bench before the vanity, looking at herself in its mirror. She hadn't allowed herself to think of her sister since the day she signed her life away upon Baz's gods-damned contract, and now that her younger sister's name flitted across her mind, she couldn't get the image of her from her head.

What was Cass thinking of all of this? Did she truly believe her dead? Long and deceased after a folly of a mission?

Was she moving on, accepting her new role, her position as the Lady Cortova?

Or was there a chance she finally saw through Baz and his lies- that she would discover what a monster he truly was and what he had concocted while he shared her bed...

A knock on the door sent her reeling, almost falling from the bench as she snapped from her thoughts.

"Dinner is ready," of one the maidservants said through the doorway.