The Tangled Tree

by S. K Munt

  So into the tub I went, still dragging along my drip, and once I’d settled into the warm, oily water, Dulcie presented me with a glass of chilled ice-water and told me that it was imperative that I drink the whole thing. Not just because I needed the fluids (especially after the massage and mask) but because it would keep me cool in the hot bath and after what she’d seen the night before, she wasn’t risking a fever spike on such an important night. I sipped at the water, hating every mouthful but craving more the moment I’d swallowed the last, and watched the water turn as milky as the bubbles upon it in the dim candlelight as the bath absorbed my mud, and frowned as the hand on the clock struck five. What was Kohén doing? Didn’t he understand how nervous I would be until he came to assure me that all was going to plan? And that he wasn’t being whipped or worse?

  The ball starts at eight! What if he doesn’t get the chance to check in on me beforehand? Oh, I’ll be a nervous wreck until he does!

  Dulcie returned twenty minutes into that process and when the door opened, I heard a lot of voices follow her through before it was shut. I inquired as to who was in there and she informed me that the other three technicians had arrived and now Resonah and Rosina were out there getting their hair and make up done. They would be attending the ball that night but in their golden togas. Elijah was escorting the duchess, yes, and would be unable to dance with them, but they were still prohibited from dancing with anyone else. I remarked that that seemed sad, but Dulcie shrugged.

  ‘They’ve been in here for a very long time, Larkin. I suppose by the time you reach sixty, you will not mind having to refrain from couple dancing at one party.’ Then she took in the way I’d pursed my lips (trying not to cry as I imagined sitting on the sidelines and watching Kohén dance with his legal spouse) and she sighed again. ‘Look… maybe I’m wrong, okay? There has been one prince that didn’t take a spouse because he’d given away his heart to one in the harem before… perhaps that will be Kohén someday. Only unlike Raoul, the object of Kohén’s affection may love him back still.’

  ‘Do you really believe that?’ I asked in a choked voice.

  ‘No,’ she said, and despite myself I laughed. ‘But I suppose it’s on you two to convince me otherwise. And don’t think that I don’t want to be convinced, Larkin.’ She lifted my foot from the water and began sponging the clay residue off my ankle and calf, warming it as she did with her Nephilim touch and making me reach for the water again. ‘I’ve been doing this job for thirty years now, and all I’ve been able to think after I’ve performed every girl’s initiation ritual is: I hope this is the one that breaks through the glass ceiling.’

  I smiled at her wanly. ‘I wonder how many of them have thought the same…’

  ‘Most, I suppose.’ She smiled at me tightly. ‘But you’re the only one that has ever come close to making any of us believe that someone might.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Then I thought of something else and sat up. ‘Dulcie… is it true that I have a tracking device on me somewhere?’

  Dulcie drooped my ankle and cursed, then went reaching for the other, keeping her eyes off me the whole time. After an uncomfortable amount of silence had passed, she looked up, saw that I was still waiting for her answer and blew out a breath, shaking her head. ‘Wherever did you get that idea from?’

  ‘Cherry mentioned it this morning- wait, I suppose that was yesterday morning, wasn’t it?’ I made a face, then resumed: ‘During her tirade against the duchess… whenever that was.’ My stomach rolled when Dulcie blanched. ‘So… it’s true then?’ I asked in a small voice. ‘Even if I had taken the opportunity to run yesterday morning or a week ago… they would have found me, wouldn’t they?’

  ‘I’m not allowed to speak on the subject,’ Dulcie said, taking a small brush and scrubbing at the underside of my feet. ‘But I can tell you this: if you do have a tracking device on you, I do not know where it is, how it works or who put it there...’ she wet her lips and said quietly to my toes: ‘Only that you would need to be over two kilometres away from this castle before it would cease to work.’ She looked up at me and smiled sadly. ‘But you won’t be going anywhere, will you Larkin? You’re much too…. good.’ My mouth popped open as she pulled her hands out of the water. ‘I need to get a few more things- you’ve got shards of glass in your feet for some strange reason.’ Dulcie rose quickly. ‘Soak them and I’ll be back in a moment, okay?’

  ‘But-’

  ‘That’s all I have to say on the matter Lark,’ she opened the door and held her finger to her lips. ‘You have your secrets, and we Nephilim… we have our own. And because we’re all equal, why don’t you respect my wish to protect myself, as I respect yours to protect…’ she smiled ruefully, ‘well, that’s the eleven-million dollar isn’t it?’ And then she walked out, leaving me to literally soak in my own toxins and shock.

  Seems like I wasn’t the only one in Eden who was too smart for her own good, and that Heath wasn’t the only Nephilim as cryptic as Satan!

  18.

  Once I’d been scrubbed down to what I was sure was my new-born skin I was allowed to get into the shower to wash my own hair and rinse the residue of my soak in the bath off me while the other beauticians finished off the older Companions. I was quick in the shower because I had my heart set on seeing Resonah and Rosina before they left, but by the time I walked out into the main room again, wrapping my hair in a towel turban-style and feeling almost human again, I was dismayed to see just the beauticians left waiting for me. Even Heath had left! And to my horror, the moment they saw me they motioned for me to undress so that they could fit me into a corset and pair of matching underwear that weren’t just scandalous- but humiliating.

  The corset was golden made of a leaf design that showed lace and skin between each individual leaf, but it was fitted so tight that by the time they’d laced me up, I almost had more breasts than I did bottom! And though the same golden leaves covered my intimate flesh on the bikini briefs, they grew sparser and sparser as the lacy fabric reached stretched to my hips and blended in so perfectly with my skin colour that it looked like I was only wearing a few strategically placed leaves when the light shimmered off them.

  ‘Oh god…’ I whispered, covering my face so I wouldn’t have to look for my shoes but see only breasts. ‘Oh god…’

  I knew Kohén was going to lose his fool mind when he saw me in this get-up and I had to admit that I sort of looked forward to seeing his face when he undressed me later (which was bound to happen- I wasn’t THAT naïve yet!) but that would be a private moment and this was anything but. And when they added lace-topped stockings with a garter belt and delicate, glittering golden heels, my face flamed to the point where Dulcie ordered the pedicurist/manicurist to go get me a glass of water while she pressed her hands to my face and ordered me to breathe and sit and not die again.

  I did as I was told, but it took five minutes before I was able to slow my racing heart and lose the flush and even after those symptoms had faded, my mortification remained the same: I wasn’t being dressed to be dressed, but stripped and ravaged and they all knew it. I was a whore and I could not deny that, for who else but a whore would put more time and effort to how they looked without their clothes on than with? And why was this so much more embarrassing now then when they’d prepped me for that awful ritual?

  Um, because you were a virgin then but you’re a confirmed sex worker now, maybe?

  Oh, how I wished Resonah and Rosina had stayed there, because I knew they would have had some words of encouragement or guidance for me that would have a better chance of working than Dulcie’s cries of: ‘Well, the prince will forgive me for giving him grief after he sees this gift-wrapped apology, yes?’ (Not helpful!) but I suspected that they were trying to keep us apart purposefully, and all I could do was wait for the end of my isolation to come.

  So wait I did, frozen into a statue of embarrassment and shifting to try and dislodge the irritating way that my belly-button ring was biting into my wais
t thanks to the corset, while one rubbed stuff into my face, another tended to my nails and Dulcie dried my hair. They’d sat me in front of a mirror but luckily I was angled away from it and I got to keep my eyes closed most of the time while the youngest one, Arial, applied my make-up. I felt incredibly self-conscious to have so many people staring at me up close again, and I was terrified about what they were thinking about me as they worked, so I tried to fill that uncomfortable silence with questions.

  Most of them they answered easily enough: How was the weather? Unseasonably cold still and dropping fast. How were the Banished? Quieter than usual but in a way that was unsettling... What exactly did they want? They didn’t know- it almost seemed as though they’d broken up into two camps: One that wanted help, and one that wanted to incite mayhem.

  But other questions they evaded- especially when I asked if they knew how Kohén was faring, and if they’d heard any news about Cherry? I got a vague answer about Kohén having his own dressing staff so how the hell should they know what he was up to? But they didn’t answer the question about Cherry at all, and I noticed a distinctive dip in the mood in the room after I had.

  Trying to get back to how carefree things had been a few moments before, I asked Dulcie why she was a beautician when she had such a power… and that answer was an interesting one. Instead of saying why, she demonstrated by winding her fingers up in my hair- and then releasing it in a steaming curl. My jaw dropped at that and she’d laughed saying that she’d followed in her mother’s footsteps, and her mother’s before her. There were other things that she could do, but none that allowed her to leave work for the day knowing that she’d created something beautiful. In addition to that, she only had to work for a few hours a week and then got to live in luxury the rest of the time, unlike her cousin who could do the same thing, but worked long hours as personal assistant to the king of Tariel.

  That was an odd story: it seemed like the king of Tariel had allowed himself to become a lot more spoiled than Elijah had, and used his hot/cold blowing Nephilim around the clock for everything from rubbing feet, treating headaches, warming bed sheets and strangest of all- keeping the duchess’s complexion perfect and her wine cold. I responded that I hoped he washed his hands often for the sake of the king- but kind of didn’t for a laugh of his own, and the ladies beautifying me burst into giggles.

  Honestly I actually thought that both vocations seemed like a waste of power, but Dulcie confessed that as far as powers went, theirs were rather limited. It would be different if she were strong enough to generate fire or snow or manipulate the atmosphere of a space as large as a room, but heat and frost via direct contact was all that she or her cousin could manage, and even then, they drained quickly.

  ‘Besides… have you seen my room? It’s nicer than Elijah’s so it’s well worth it.’

  ‘That’s not a room- that’s a suite,’ one of the other girls joked. ‘I wish I had your earning power, even if your actual power creeps me out sometimes. Speaking of which- can you not steam so close to her forehead? You’re melting her make up.’

  I smiled, but started thinking about what Martya and Kohén had said about the diminishing powers of the Nephilim and asked out loud why they didn’t go out of their way to breed more amongst themselves, but I’d been surprised to see Dulcie’s face become grave again.

  ‘Mixing Nephilim is sort of like mixing spirits… you just don’t know what you’re going to end up with after- a lovely drink, or poison. That’s why the king watches us so closely- it really is better for everyone that our lines remain as pure as possible.’

  ‘Because you’re afraid the powers won’t go together?’ I’d asked, tilting my hair so that Dulcie could access it more easily. ‘Or because the monarchy is afraid that they wouldn’t be able to control so many?’

  ‘Possibly both. But we don’t really want to do it either, and would be wary of Nephilim that would.’ She looked around and then shook her head sadly. ‘All you need is that one dark power to sneak its way into a pure, very powerful bloodline like the Barachiel one, and the next thing you know…’ she shook her head again and unwound another curl that actually burned my forearm when it fell. ‘No, we need to be contained, not copulating willy nilly.’

  I looked at her out of one eye until the beautician doing my eyebrows whispered at me to close both lest I end up with a monobrow. ‘So you believe the dark Nephilim still exist too?’

  ‘I don’t know...’ Dulcie said, touching a now ice-cold hand to where she’d burned me without me having to ask, before going back to my hair. ‘But I do know that we can’t risk accidentally reviving a line of them should one remain, yes? Especially not now when all of the feathers are gone and the ability to detect a dark Nephilim is limited to testing blood.’

  ‘Kohén wants the blood tested and then breeding controlled after,’ I said, thinking that I didn’t think it sounded like a horrible idea. No one knew it, but all of the three Barachiel princes were the product of two Nephilim, and their powers were astonishing. Okay they both came from pure bloodlines but if they were tested first, what was the harm?

  Dulcie snorted. ‘Yes well that’s why the kingdom is never placed in the hands of an optimistic, short-sighted, over-excited seventeen year-old boy, isn’t it?’ She began pulling sections of my hair up and weaving them together and snickered. ‘What always seems like a good idea at the time to them can end up being a disaster for the person they made the spontaneous and exciting decision for, can’t it?’

  I blushed and was grateful that I had my eyes closed. ‘No comment.’

  The girls starting debating whether Elijah was a grand ruler or a mediocre one compared to some of the most recent, and I was rather surprised to understand that the humans thought the world of him, whereas Dulcie thought that his father had been superior. It was strange to hear the girls speak of how handsome and charming and kind and fair Elijah was and I longed to pipe up with: ‘Pregnant spouse-beating, BDSM and twin-discarding traits aside, you mean…?’ But even if I hadn’t been able to keep my own lips shut, the girl doing my lipstick was doing that for me. Once my mouth was free I told them that they didn’t have to rush doing me so and that they could even take a break because my entrance to the ball was going to be a very delayed one, (really I was worried that they’d message Elijah to let him know that I was ready to go much too quickly when it was Kohén that I needed to come for me) but the third beautician shook her head as she blew on my nails.

  ‘You’re the last girl we have to do in here, and once we’re finished, we’ve been commissioned to help Ora Camden in the guest wing so we really do have to hurry.’

  ‘Yes the ball starts in less than an hour and she’s probably growing impatient.’ Dulcie began jabbing pins into my scalp. ‘Speaking of which, you’ll be all right to dress yourself if your toga arrives after we leave, won’t you? Just mind that you don’t let it pull on your curls.’

  But my toga was the last thing on my mind. ‘You’re going to see Ora?’ I asked, excited to realise that in a few hours, I’d be getting to see Ora too. ‘Oh my goodness! Oh... I wish I could go with you!’ I tapped my feet together, getting swatted now by my manicurist, Elena, who was in the process of applying a clear gloss to my toenails to seal the golden artwork she’d already decorated them with. I hoped that Ora had taken my costume suggestions- I hoped she looked so gorgeous that Karol would forget my name the moment he laid eyes on her! How lovely would it be if Karol was so stunned by her entrance that he proposed on the spot? I could join the party straight away then!

  Dulcie exchanged a surprised look with Arial. ‘Wait… I was under the impression that you don’t like Prince Karol. Why all the enthusiasm for his date?’

  ‘Because I believe that she’ll make him more likeable,’ I answered honestly, too happy now to even wince at Karol’s name. ‘And even if she doesn’t, he’s likely going to marry her and make her a queen anyway and finally this kingdom will have a female monarch! A sweet, smart, down-to-earth
one as well. And after meeting Amelia-Rose…’

  ‘What?’ Elena sat up, regarding me with wide brown eyes. ‘Amelia-Rose is lovely! I feel awful that Karol didn’t give her a second look this time around… and I hope he doesn’t marry a republican, ugh! How unimpressive my job would be if I didn’t get to tell people that I worked for the royal consorts at the palace?’

  Arial giggled. ‘If we become a monarchy, you’d have to say you do nails at the Presidents’ place,’ and the other girl shuddered. I laughed at their antics, but I was a bit confounded by the manicurists’ attitude towards Amelia-Rose.

  ‘You like Shepherd Choir’s daughter?’ I wrinkled my nose. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because she’s sweet and kind and thinks of the less fortunate and…’ the girl shrugged then bent back down to do my nails again. ‘I don’t know, a thousand reasons, I guess, but she’s a lot like Prince Kohl too, who I think is an absolute doll. And she’s so pretty… never tries too hard to look it either, it’s refreshing.’

  ‘I think she dresses like that on purpose- to mislead people into believing that she doesn’t have a sense of vanity when really, hers is rampant,’ Arial said as she dusted my shoulders with a glittering powder. ‘I mean come on… her hair and make up is always flawless and her jewellery is expensive and one of a kind so a lot of thought has gone into that whole package, trust me. She knows exactly how pretty she is, and more importantly, she knows how to make it look like she doesn’t.’