“You’re doing okay so far.” I wasn’t used to the idea of anybody trying to impress me ever, and she definitely had a certain likable quality to her.
“Keep it down! I’m trying to work!” The chef grumbled at the stove.
Rhys just smirked, so Rhiannon cast a warning glare at him.
“Anyway, Wendy, this is Rhiannon, the girl next door,” Rhys gestured between the two of us. “Rhiannon, this is Wendy, future ruler of everything around you.”
“Wendy would be just fine,” I corrected him.
“Hi, nice to meet you.” She set down her pop and came over to me so she could shake my hand. “I’ve heard so much about you.”
“Oh yeah? Like what?” I was curious to see what people were saying about me. So far, I couldn’t imagine that much of it had been good. Rhiannon floundered helplessly for a minute, looking to Rhys for help, but he just laughed. “It’s okay. I was just kidding.”
“Oh. Sorry.” She flashed an embarrassed smile, and Rhys pushed out a stool next to him, patting the seat.
“Why don’t you come have a seat, Rhiannon, and chillax for a bit?”
Rhys offered, trying to settle her discomfort. She felt awkward and embarrassed because of me, and I could not wrap my head around that concept.
“Are you hungry?” Finn asked. He had gone over to a cupboard to start getting out plates, and he looked back at me.
“Uh, yeah,” I nodded. “Famished, actually.”
Finn got plates for everyone, then got water for the two of us and pop for Rhys and Rhiannon. Rhys continued to tease Rhiannon about everything, and she kept blushing and making apologies for him. I suspected that their relationship modeled something that resembled a normal healthy sibling relationship, and I had to push that thought away before I had a chance to think of Matt. The chef complained the entire time of all the noise we were making, but that only encouraged Rhys to get louder.
Finn pulled up a stool next to mine, and he spoke very little while we ate. Rhys tended to dominate the conversation, with Rhiannon interjecting when he said things that were categorically untrue or apologizing when she thought he was being rude. He never really was, though. For the most part, he was funny and lively and kept things from ever feeling awkward.
Occasionally, Finn would look over at me and make quiet comments when Rhys and Rhiannon were otherwise engaged in some kind of debate.
Hidden underneath the lip of the island, I felt his knee brush against mine. At first, I assumed it was a simple accident because of our close proximity, but as I finished my meal, I noticed that he had actually tilted himself towards me, leaning in closer. It was a subtle move, one that Rhys and Rhiannon probably wouldn’t catch, but I definitely had.
“You are such a pest!” Rhiannon grumbled playfully after Rhys had flicked an unwanted tomato on to her plate. She tried to put it back on his plate, but he lightly slapped at her hand and pushed her away. “Rhys! You’re like a five-year-old sometimes!”
“Dinner’s not always this exciting,” Finn assured me, his voice low. I leaned towards him so I could hear him better, and his dark eyes met mine.
“Sometimes Rhys is gone.” A small smile played on his lips. “Although, with you around, things are bound to get more exciting.”
“You think so?” I asked, trying to make my voice sound sexier somehow, but I completely failed. Finn smiled wider, and my heart nearly hammered out of my chest.
“Sorry for interrupting your play time,” Elora spoke from behind us.
Her voice wasn’t that loud, but somehow it seemed to echo through everything.
Rhys and Rhiannon immediately stopped their fighting, both of them sitting rigidly and staring down at their plates. Finn moved away from me, but he turned around to face Elora, making that look like it had been his intention all along. I glanced back over my shoulder at her, and the way she looked at me made me feel guilty, even though I was pretty sure I hadn’t done anything wrong.
“You weren’t interrupting anything,” Finn assured her, but I sensed a nervousness below his calm words. “Were you planning to join us?”
“No, that’ll be quite all right.” Elora surveyed the kitchen and the small mess we had created on the island with heavy distaste. “I needed to speak with you.”
“Would you like us to be excused?” Rhys offered, and Rhiannon already started sliding off her seat.
“That won’t be necessary.” Elora held up her hand, and Rhiannon blushed as she climbed back on the stool. “The Strom’s will be coming for dinner tomorrow.” Her eyes went back to Rhys and Rhiannon, and she seemed to cower under Elora’s gaze. “I trust that you two will find a way to make yourselves useful.”
“When they come over here, I’ll go over there,” Rhys suggested cheerily. She nodded at him, showing that his response was sufficient enough.
“As for you, you will be joining us.” Elora smiled at me, but there was something uneasy masked behind it. “The Strom’s are very good friends of our family, and I expect you to make a good impression with them.” She gave Finn that intense look, meaning she was saying things I wasn’t meant to hear, and he nodded understanding. “Finn will be in charge of preparing you for the dinner, making sure you are on your best behavior and know everything you need for tomorrow evening.”
“Okay,” I nodded, figuring that I had better say something.
“That is all. Carry on.” Elora turned and walked out of the room, her skirt flowing behind her, but nobody said anything until she was long gone.
Finn stood up and started clearing away his dishes, and Rhiannon almost shivered with relief. She was more terrified of Elora than even I was, and I wondered what Elora had done to make her so deserving of that fear.
Only Rhys seemed to shake it off as soon as she had gone.
“I don’t know how you can stand that creepy mind speak thing she does with you, Finn.” Rhys shook his head and took another bite of his food. “I would freak out if she were in my head.”
“Why? There’s nothing in your head for her to get to,” Finn commented dryly, and Rhiannon giggled nervously.
“What did she say to you, anyway?” Rhys pressed, looking up at him.
Finn continued cleaning up the island but didn’t respond. “Finn? What’d she say?”
“It’s nothing to concern yourself with,” Finn admonished him quietly.
He finished wiping down the counter, then turned to me. “Are you ready?”
“For what?” I asked dumbly.
“We have a lot to go over before tomorrow night.” He glanced warily at the clock, then back at me. “Come on. We better get started.”
15
As it turned out, I wasn’t completely stunted socially and had a basic understanding of manners, so there wasn’t all that much that Finn needed to tutor me on. What he had said had been common sense things, like always say please and thank you, but in the end, he encouraged me to keep my mouth shut whenever possible. I think his task had been less about preparing me for the dinner and more about keeping me in line. I suspected that the secret things Elora had been telling him had just been warning him to baby-sit me, or else.
Dinner was at eight, and company was arriving at seven. Rhys had popped in to wish me good luck and let me know he was heading over to Rhiannon’s, in case anybody cared. Finn came in shortly after I had gotten over the shower, looking even sharper than usual. He was clean shaven for the first time since he’d stopped going to school, and he wore a black button-up shirt with a narrow white tie and black pants with a black blazer over it. It should’ve been little much with so much black, but he managed to pull it off, all the while looking incredibly sexy.
“Well don’t you look dapper?” I commented.
Once again, I was wearing only my bathrobe, and I wondered why nobody thought it was inappropriate for boys to barge in when I wasn’t dressed. At least this time I was doing something semi-sexy; sitting on the edge of my bed putting lotion on my legs. It was my usual routine
that I did every time I showered, but since Finn was in the room, I tried to play it off as being sensual when it really wasn’t.
Not that Finn had even noticed. He knocked once, opened my bedroom door, and only gave me a fleeting glance as he headed straight to my closet. I sighed in frustration and hurriedly rubbed the lotion in while Finn busied himself. He had flicked on the light and was apparently rummaging through my clothes.
“I don’t think I have anything in your size!” I said and leaned farther on my bed, trying see what he was doing in there.
“Funny,” he muttered absently.
“What’s so hard about dressing me? And what’s wrong with how I dress myself?” I countered, watching him, but he didn’t even look at me. He was far too focused on the task at hand.
“You are a Princess, and you need to dress like one.” He gave a resigned sigh, and he started leafing through my dresses and pulled out a long, white sleeveless dress. It was actually a very pretty, looking much too fancy for me, and when he came out of the closet, he handed it to me. “I think this might work. Try it on.”
“Isn’t everything in my closet suitable?” I tossed the dress on the bed next to me and turned to look at him. “Wasn’t everything picked out for these occasions?”
“Yes, but different things are better for different occasions.” Finn came over to the bed to smooth out the dress, making sure it didn’t have any wrinkles or creases. “This is a very important dinner, Wendy.”
“Why? What makes this one so important?” I demanded.
“The Strom’s are very good friends of your mother’s and the Kroner’s are very important people. They affect the future,” Finn finished smoothing the dress and turned to me. “Why don’t you continue getting ready?”
“How do they affect the future? What does that mean?” I pressed.
“That’s a conversation for another day,” Finn nodded towards the bathroom. “You need to hurry if you’re going to be ready in time for dinner.”
“Fine,” I sighed, getting up off the bed.
“Wear your hair down,” Finn commanded. My hair was wet so it was lying nicely down, but I knew that as soon as it dried, it would turn into a wild thicket of curls.
“I can’t. My hair is impossible.” I ran my fingers through my dark hair.
“We all have difficult hair. It’s the curse of being Trylle,” Finn said.
“Even Elora and I. It’s something you must learn to manage.”
“Your hair is nothing like mine,” I insisted dourly. His hair was short and obviously had some product in it, but it looked smooth, straight, and obedient.
“It most certainly is,” Finn replied shortly.
I meant to prove him wrong, so instinctively, I reached out and touched his hair, running my fingers shallowly through the hair past his temples.
Other than being stiff with product, it felt like my hair. It wasn’t until I had done it that I realized that there was something inherently intimate about running my fingers through another person’s hair. I had been looking at his hair, but then I met his dark eyes and realized exactly how close I was to him.
Since I was short, I had stood on my tiptoes a bit, leaning up to him like I was about to kiss him, and somewhere in the back of my mind, I thought that would be a very good course of action right about now.
“Satisfied?” Finn asked, and I retracted my hand and took a step back.
“There should be hair products in your bathroom. Experiment.”
I nodded my compliance, still feeling too flustered to really speak. Finn was unnaturally calm, and at times like that, I really hated it. I barely even remembered to breathe until I was in my bathroom. Being that near to him made me forget everything but his dark eyes, the heat from his skin, his wonderful scent, the feel of his hair beneath my fingers, the smooth curve of his lips…
That had to be the end of that. I had a dinner tonight to worry about, and somehow, I had to do something with my hair. I tried to remember what Maggie had used in my hair before I went to the dance with Patrick, but that felt like a lifetime ago. Thankfully, my dark hair had magically decided to behave itself tonight, making the whole process go easier. Finn seemed to think my hair looked better down, so I left the length of it hanging in the back and pulled the sides back with clips. The bruise was fading on my temple, and I covered it up easily with concealer. I also had a fully stocked jewelry box, and I went with a diamond necklace.
The dress was much trickier to get on. It had one of those stupid zippers that refused to move higher than my lower back, and I couldn’t win.
Tentatively, I pushed open the bathroom door.
“I need help with the zipper,” I said meekly, gesturing to the open slit down my back.
Finn had been looking out the window, at the sun setting on the bluffs, and when he turned, his eyes rested on me for almost a minute before he nodded and walked over. One of his hands pressed warmly on my bare shoulder to steady the fabric as he zipped me up, and my skin shivered involuntarily.
“So what do you think?” I smiled at him when he had finished.
“You look like a Princess,” Finn smiled crookedly at me.
I walked over to the full length to investigate for myself. Even I had to admit that I looked lovely. With the white dress and the diamonds, I almost looked too lavish. Maybe it was too much for just a dinner.
“I look like I’m getting married,” I commented and glanced back at Finn. “Do you think I should change?”
“No, it’s perfect.” He looked pensively at me. The doorbell chimed loudly, and Finn nodded. “The guests have arrived. We should greet them.”
We walked down the hall together, but at the top of the steps, Finn purposefully fell a few steps behind me. Elora and the Kroner’s were standing in the alcove as I descended the steps, and they all turned to look up at me. It was the first grand entrance I had ever made in my life, and there was something wonderful about it.
The Kroner’s consisted of a stunningly beautiful woman in a floorlength dark green dress, an attractive man in a dark suit, and a rather foxy boy about my age. I could feel them appraising me as I walked towards them, so I was careful to keep my steps as smooth and elegant as possible.
“This is my daughter, the Princess.” Elora smiled in away that almost looked loving and held her hand out to me. Even she looked more extravagant than usual. Her dress was had more detailing and her jewelry was more pronounced. I smiled politely and did a small curtsy. Immediately after, I realized that they were probably the ones that should be curtsying to me, but they all smiled pleasantly at me. “Princess, these are the Kroner’s. Aurora, Noah, and Tove.”
“It’s such a pleasure to meet you,” Aurora had a syrupy tone to her words that I wasn’t sure if I trusted or not. Her dark hair was up, with a few perfectly placed curls falling from it. Her dark eyes were large and stunning.
Her husband, Noah, did a very small bow towards me, as did her son, Tove. Both Noah and Aurora looked appropriately respectful towards Elora and me, but Tove looked vaguely bored. His mossy green eyes met mine very briefly, then looked away, as if he were uncomfortable looking at me.
Elora ushered us into the sitting parlor to wait until supper was served.
The conversation was overly polite and banal, but I suspected there were undercurrents that I wasn’t really picking up. Elora and Aurora did most of the talking, with Noah adding very little. Tove said nothing at all, preferring to look anywhere but directly at anyone. Finn was more in the background. He was very poised and polite, but I was under the impression that Aurora didn’t entirely approve of his presence.
The Strom’s were fashionably late, as Finn had predicted they would be. Finn had been a tracker for Willa, so he knew her and her father, Garrett, quite well. His wife (Willa’s mother) had died some years earlier. Finn claimed that Garrett was easy-going, but that Willa was a tad high-strung. She was twenty-one, and prior to living in Förening, she’d been privileged to the point of
excess.
When the doorbell rang, interrupting the irritatingly dull conversation between Aurora and my mother, Finn immediately excused himself to answer the door and returned with Garrett and Willa in tow. Garrett was a rather handsome man his mid-forties. His hair was dark and disheveled, making me feel better about my own imperfect hair. When he shook my hand with a warm smile, he immediately put me at ease.
Willa, on the other hand, had that snobby look that was always simultaneously bored and pissed off. She was a waif of a girl with light-brown waves that fell neatly on her back. Her outfit had come straight from the runway, right down her anklet covered in diamonds. She shook my hand, and I could tell that her smile was an attempt at sincere, making me hate her a little less.
Once they arrived, we adjourned to the dining room for supper. Finn pulled my chair out for me before I sat down, and I enjoyed it since I couldn’t remember a single time that anyone had done that for me before. Willa seemed to try and engage Tove in conversation as we walked into the other room, but he remained completely silent.
Garrett sat in the chair nearest to Elora, and Willa took a seat next to him, and I sat at the other head of the table, with Finn and Tove flanking me on either side. Finn waited until everyone was sitting to take a seat himself, and this would be the standard for the evening. As long as at least one person was standing, so would Finn. He was always the first to his feet, and even though the chef and a butler-esque fellow were on staff tonight, Finn would offer to get anyone anything they needed.
The dinner dragged on much more sorely than I had imagined it could.
I was wearing white, so I was terrified of spilling any drop of food on my dress.
Not only that, but I had never felt so judged in my entire life. It felt as if both Aurora and Elora were just waiting for me to screw up so they could pounce, but I wasn’t sure why either of them would want me to. I could tell that on several occasions Garrett tried to lighten the mood, but nobody allowed it.
Aurora and Elora dominated the conversation, and everyone else rarely said anything.
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