Chapter 0115
Later, I had to attend another meeting with Linda, this time to coordinate our outfit choices with the
tailor.
Linda was so furious, she was practically on fire. Her entire face was a bright red. Her lips were twisted into a snarl. Her brow was lowered.
Nicholas and I had taken away all of her power with our press conference today, and she knew it.
The tailor politely cleared his throat. “Would you like some cold water, miss?”
Linda sharp gaze shifted onto him and he winced.
“It’s just that… well… your color is all wrong. It will be hard to match fabrics when you are not at your
usual tones.”
“Well, make it work anyway!” Linda snapped.
Inside, I felt victorious. I had silenced Linda, stopped her blackmail, and so far, the King has left me
alone.
Yet my good feelings shriveled, when I looked around the room at the other pairs of girls, most of whom were casting me sour looks.
“First, Prince Julian. Now, Prince Nicholas?” someone whispered. I looked in the direction of the voice,
but I couldn’t tell who had said it.
“Slut,” I heard someone else say.
“Whore
Text to go.
So many whispers, one after the next. But I could never catch anyone actually saying them.
“I will take a drink of water, if you must,” Linda grumbled, recovering her composure.
“Very good, miss.” The tailor scurried away from us toward the door.
“You think you’ve won something.” Linda said to me, once he had gone. “But I can tell you, all you have done is speed up your own demise. I was willing to work with you. Do you honestly believe that they…” She motioned around the room to where the other girls were watching.“..will respect you now?”
They’d only just barely tolerated me before. I could see their looks of hatred now. Their plotting. Their
Maybe having more wolfy protection wouldn’t be such a bad idea after all. Mark had promised we’d have an answer from them today. I truly hoped they agreed. I could already feel the knives at my back.
The tailor returned with water, which Linda drank down. Eventually, her complexion returned to normal and we could continue. The tailor made many suggestions, and I scribbled them down on the same pad of paper I had used to take note of Linda’s favorite appetizers for our table.
He gave me the specific names to write down, not just the basic shades. The names were complicated things, with a long sequence of numbers at the end.
“If you are to match exactly, you will need to order the fabric by name, not mere color,” the tailor said. “A
ton shade, even a half step apart will be instantly noticeable in the sunlight.
By the end of our hour–long consultation, I was tired from trying on fabrics and listening to Linda’s complaints. I was eager to go back to my room and rest.
So I wasn’t paying the best attention to the foot that had suddenly come into my path. Nor the tray of waters that the tailor had left sitting on a chair.
–
I tripped, falling into the chair, and spilling the water and myself – all over the floor. My notes sunk into
the worst of the mess.
The ink smeared into unreadable splotches.
I scrambled toward it, slipping on the tile, but by the time I reached it, the entire thing was soaked
through and ruined.
All of the fabric and color names I had written down were lost.
I
The girl who had tripped me smirked down at where I knelt in the water and glass and misery..
“Oops.
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