Fate and Destiny (The Fated Series, #2)

Chapter 66 - Katarina - Scars

My eyebrows are beginning to hurt from furrowing them so much for so long, but I can't help it. Marrieta has been acting differently, in an all too kind of a good way to be the daughter of Julyanus. She hasn't said much about her parents since they left, and Helena hasn't seemed to be affected by their absence, which is why I always question every decent comment Marrieta makes. I don't know where the cast-out prior Lord and Lady of Novak currently are, but I'm sure that if they were close they'd find themselves on a stake awaiting their death sentence.

I wasn't aware of the atrocities the so-called lady had committed, nor of Fauna's mark left on the woman's stomach, but in that moment that Darius spoke of it...I didn't think one could hate another being so much. Of course, at the moment, it's a battle between her and Willdred Maron for getting Clarice pregnant with a demon baby.

It's hard to look at her without the temptation to peek at her belly and find some sort of baby bump or physical sign that all the magically gifted people now occupying this castle are actually right. I won't - and refuse to - believe it until I see it. She's eighteen, the same age as I, and I'm nowhere near ready for a child. I do want a child, someday, but not when the world is currently in the mists of a demonic war.

Gods the last three days have just been a lifetime in itself. I wake up to Lance already gone, the sheets long since cold. Mind you I woke an hour before dawn, but in servant's time, that's considered sleeping in. I have no idea why, but all Lords and Ladies alike wake up early rather than enjoy the comfort of their expensive beds.

After waking I make quick work of my clothing and hair and then go to the kitchens where the staff there has been awake for hours preparing whatever food that has managed to find its way to the castle. It's more than expected, but still little compared to what it used to hold in its pantries, and generously rationed to smaller meals, especially now that most of the rooms in the castle will soon be filled come dawn.

Then it's off to Marrieta's quarters now in the Canary Wing to set down her and Helena's breakfast, dress the new Lady, do her hair, line her eyes and paint her lips, and then complete every task given either with words or a wave of her hand. Every time I do this, I get a deep ache in my chest and memories full of every day that I had done this to Fauna. None of the simple yet intricate designs I twisted her hair into have I done with Marrieta. No, with her I keep it tight and tucked, no jewels or pins for decoration, just ties and knots and maybe a few curls.

Every thought goes back to Clarice. To who she was. To who she is now and why out of all things that are different about her. Nothing bothers me as much as it does to see her wearing anything but revealing dresses. Even sickly looking, her body is annoyingly wonderous. Saints, if I weren't currently bedding her brother, I'd be bedding her. Or, you know, if she weren't fated to the only person in the world who could make her smile as she once did.

She's still wary of Lance and the others, you can see it in her eyes when they're near.

Gods, it's so weird to now see every emotion written on her face. It used to be that you couldn't do more than see her jaw clench or eyes shutter or the slightest of flinches or twitch of her fingers give away a hint of emotion. Now it's like everything's written in big bold letters for everyone to see.

Everyone knows my patience is thin, but right now with her, it's as if I have all the damn patience in the world. I just...I don't want to scare her off. I want to go back to the easy sway of things, but that sway has turned into spinning and falling and being shoved back and forth between two things so hard that you trip over your own feet every few seconds after you stand back up.

Even now I feel like I'm being pelted in the head with a wooden stick.

Helena's off playing with Grace and Lecia in the sitting room, high-pitched giggles sounding every now and then as Marrieta reads a book on the foyer's sofa, a cup of cinnamon tea in the hand not keeping the book open for her eyes to devour. It's been a good hour or so of me fixing up her bed and setting everything up for her bath. I don't know how one person could use so many cinnamon scented things, yet only have the barest of whiffs of it when she walks past you. Her soap is cinnamon as well as the creams for her hair and the liquid in a small bottle she uses to dab on herself. Her bathroom and bedroom definitely smell strongly of it, but it's as if she repels the scent to only its faintest of mist.