Chapter 6
The sorceress’s piercing gaze bore into me, and I worried for a moment that somehow she’d known I’d been the one to break into her room. When Lena stepped forward, and her red eyes shifted away from me, I nearly deflated to the floor in utter relief.
“It’s good to see you as well,” Camilla replied. “I assume you are here for a request?”
Lena shook her head. “On the contrary, really. I came to offer you something.” Her hand moved to my shoulder, and I stood straighter. Why did I suddenly feel like a sacrificial offering? “Given recent incidents, I assumed you would be unlikely to want anyone in your room that might be potentially untrustworthy but could probably use someone to do some tidying. While you’ll have to take my word on it, this girl is a good friend of mine. I’d trust her with my life.”
I couldn’t help but flush slightly at the praise, despite this being all an act.
Camilla stared at Lena for a long moment. As the silence continued, a bead of sweat dripped down my neck. This was a terrible idea! There was no way this was going to work, I thought. The sorceress was going to see right through us! Worst of all, it was obvious she had no plans to actually leave. She was probably about to go right back into her room, ruining this whole thing. Clearly, my original plan was much better. We should have just hidden somewhere and snuck in whenever she left. It was foolproof and involved no interaction, and most importantly, no maid outfits.
Camilla gave us both a kind smile. “That’s quite generous of you. Perhaps I’ll take you up on that offer. However,” she paused, and I held my breath, nervously gripping the frills of my apron. Had she seen through us? “It may not be necessary. I’m looking to get a new attendant, and several girls have just arrived for the position. With any luck, I’ll have someone to do my cleaning for me in a few moments.”
That didn’t sound promising, I thought. Though I couldn’t lose hope yet. There was still a chance this might work out. Plus if this failed, I’d simply have to find some other way to get in. I looked over to Lena, wondering if she had another idea to make this work. Perhaps she’d have some way to convince her, while conveniently diverting her away from the room?
“Oh, well that’s even better. I suppose you won’t be needing us after all,” Lena replied.
I nearly winced.
“Why don’t you wait with me here in the sitting room, and we’ll see the look of these girls.”
We made our way into the room and began our wait. My mind zoned off as the two of them began to discuss the steady profitability of the town’s lesei mine. The dark sorceress would occasionally glance my way, sending hopefully imperceptible shivers down my back each time. Something about the way she looked at me seemed… hungry.
Another knock came to the door, and I looked over as the sentinel came through, glad for a distraction. Behind him, four girls came in, most of them already plainly pale in terror. I recognized all four, though I’d never really spent time with any of them. They were all girls who for one reason or another, had no career prospects and were not yet engaged or married, which explained why they were here. Gilliene was the youngest girl, around the age of fourteen. Her father was one of the workers at the mine. A year older than her was Penelope, a taller girl who looked like she was about to fall over in fright. Ginger was the daughter of the local blacksmith and seemed to be trying to put on a brave face but failing. The last girl’s name was Danella, who I knew mostly for the fact that she had four older brothers and was the oldest of the group of girls at twenty. She eyed the sorceress dead-on as though daring her to pick her as her lady's maid.
Camilla looked each of them over carefully, her expression staying completely neutral, before moving in front of Ginger.
“Name and age?” she asked, much more straightforward and direct than I'd expected.
“Ginger. I’m seventeen,” she said promptly and impressively without stuttering through it.
The sorceress nodded. “You don’t have a fiance?”
The girl shook her head. “I — I have a beau, but my parents haven’t agreed for us to marry.” She stared down at the ground.
Camilla simply nodded and moved to Danella, whose glare intensified.
With a slight raise of her eyebrow and a smile, the sorceress repeated, “Name and age?”
“I’m Danella and twenty-one.”
Camilla grabbed her hand, raising it to her lips and giving it a small kiss as she bent forward. “Charmed,” she said with a distinctly predatory smile. I couldn’t help but admit, it was a very beautiful smile. A strange swirl of feelings twirled in my belly, mixing in with my nervousness. How could someone so dangerous look so alluring?
I completely missed Danella’s reaction and response as my eyes trailed down from the sorceress’s face, noticing the quite low-cut curve of the shadowy fabric around her breasts as well as her smooth bare shoulders sprinkled with white scales. I stared before blinking my eyes away when she stood back up. When I looked back up to her face, she shot a knowing glance my way, letting me know I’d been caught. In a panic, I took a step behind Lena in a futile effort to hide behind her.
It was difficult to tell, but I was certain that the sorceress had fractionally raised her eyebrow toward me. She quickly turned back toward the four girls, making me uncertain. “I thank you all for your time. Unfortunately, none of you had the specific qualities I was looking for, through no faults of your own.”
The girls took a moment to glance toward each other, uncertain as to whether that was their permission to leave.
“You may go.” The sorceress gave them a nod, reading their minds as clearly as I had.
Though they tried to hide it, there was a nearly audible collective sigh, each distinctly relieved they hadn’t been picked. The two youngest immediately scurried out through the door and down the hall, with the others quickly following behind. With all four gone, Camilla turned back to me, and I shuffled further behind Lena.
Undeterred, the cursed sorceress made her way toward me, a neutral look on her face. Internally, I prayed she wasn’t furious that I’d been eyeing her chest. There was little Lena or I could do to stop her. I did not doubt that she was powerful.
“And what is your name?” Her voice was neutral, seemingly curious more than anything.
“I — um,” My brain panicked. We hadn’t thought up a name for me to use. I almost said ‘Feli’ out of habit, but thought it’d be a bad idea. Instead, I muttered out the first name that came to mind. “Pearl.” I regretted it the moment it left my lips. It was the name I always dreamed of having. The one I imagined I’d go by if I could have been a girl. The one that occasionally circled my mind in the late hours of the night.
Her hand lightly clasped my fingers, creating a familiar warm and sensitive tingling along my skin. She brought my hand up to her lips, giving it a gentle kiss, and my legs wobbled as the world tilted slightly. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Pearl,” she purred.
The room suddenly felt like a furnace as my mind stopped functioning, a broken empty lump. Her fingers let go of my hand, and all I could do for several seconds was stare at it, still feeling the warm tickling feeling. The curse was affecting me once more, I realized. Though its effects were still too bizarre for me to piece together just in what way I’d been cursed. I needed to puzzle it out before it got worse and began to cause me real trouble.
To my side, Lena cleared her throat, and the seductive sorceress turned toward her, interrupting whatever Lena had been about to say. “It seems I’ll be needing Pearl's services after all.” With my thoughts beginning to reorganize themselves, I was beginning to worry about what I’d gotten myself into.
“I — yes, so it would seem.” I looked over to Lena as my mind finished restarting. Strangely, she seemed flustered as well for some unknown reason.
“You may go as well, Miss,” she continued. “Unless there was something else?” Lena held a conflicted look across her face, and Camilla gave her a reassuring smile. “Don’t fret, I’ll take perfectly good care of your friend here.” I gasped as her hand brushed my back. What was going on with me?
Lena glanced over to me, the debate clear on her face. Things hadn’t gone to plan, not in the slightest. The sorceress was supposed to have been leaving her room, not tagging along with me as I ‘tidied’ it. But what could we even do at this point, back out? A spark of hope rose inside of me that Lena might have an idea of how to get out of this.
“Right -- no, nothing else. It was good to see you again.” Lena gave a small bow, and my hopes were crushed.
“You as well.” The sorceress nodded back. My friend gave one last glance between us, and the sorceress continued, “Don’t worry dear, if you really want, we can… discuss local politics further in the future.” Lena visibly shivered, and her faced reddened. I looked between the two of them in confusion as Camilla smirked. Had the sorceress said something to anger her?
As Lena stuttered out a response and left through the door, I tried to work out exactly what had just happened between them. Perhaps it was something to investigate later. For now—I glanced back to the sorceress—I still had to get through the upcoming trials. With a deep breath, I tried to boost back up my confidence. Things had gone wrong, but not entirely. I was still getting back into her room. With any luck, even if I was unable to do a proper search for information, I could get an idea of where I might find it for the next time I could sneak in. It was still a win, despite my poor luck.
An arm circled my own, and I nearly jumped out of my skin.
“Let’s get you to cleaning, shall we?” She looked over to me, a teasing serpentine smile on her dark scaly face.
“Oh, yes.” I nodded stiltedly.
As we left the sitting room and entered her own, I knew the hardest part of this quest had just arrived. I had to convincingly clean up her room.
How did maids normally go about cleaning? Wasn't there a certain order of things?
As she let go of my arm, I scanned around, biting my lip in a somewhat nervous terror. I had to pull this off, and it had to be convincing. Otherwise, questions would be asked, questions I wouldn’t have good answers to, no doubt. My hands squeezed tightly around the duster, and my brain finally recalled still having it. Was dusting what I was supposed to start with? I hadn’t a clue, but it seemed as good a place to start as any. Perhaps cleaning didn’t even have any set order to it, or maybe it varied.
Camilla sat down in the chair at her desk, a smile across her face as she watched me from the corner of her eye. With hesitant steps, I made my way to the nightstand. Peeling the duster from the tight grip of my pale palms, I began my attempt at dusting once more. When I looked to the dark sorceress again, she had turned back to her desk, appearing to read through a book. The feeling of being watched didn’t pass, however.
“So you are a friend of hers?”
I jumped at the voice, stopping my dusting attempts to look toward the sorceress. She continued with her reading.
“Lena’s? Yes?”
She made a noise of acknowledgment. When she said nothing else, I continued my attempts at cleaning, moving over toward the window, and hoping my dusting efforts were doing something. This whole spying thing was becoming much more difficult than I’d been expecting. How was I supposed to find anything like this?
“Oh, Pearl.” Her voice was lined with what sounded like disappointment. I froze from my attempt at ‘feathering’ the bedposts. “You don’t need to clean that.” I looked over to her to find her eyeing me. A moment later, she spoke again. “You’re not a maid here are you?”
My mouth opened and closed several times as I tried to think up something to say. “I’m—“ I paused and she motioned for me to continue. Words flew from my mouth. “I’m a friend of Lena’s.” That wasn’t an argument, my brain shouted! We’d literally just gone over that, think of something else! I wanted to bash my head in the hopes of thinking of something convincing. “I— I wanted to be a maid here, and she was going to give me a, umm, trial run.”
Camilla stared at me for a long moment. I fidgeted and was nearly about to blurt something else out when she finally replied. “I see.”
I wanted to fall over in relief but tried to keep my face passive. Had she truly bought the lie? It seemed a little flimsy, but perhaps it was just credible enough.
A smile crossed her face once more. “Well, we can’t have a future maid not knowing how to clean.” She stood with a flourish, sauntering over toward me. My fingers gripped tightly around the duster once more. As she approached, her hands wrapped around my own, and I felt more tingles shoot up from my skin. It was similar to the sensitivity one had from a burn, except significantly more pleasurable. As she held my hands, my cheeks warmed, and I just knew she could see my blush, to my embarrassment. If it weren’t for the fact that my skin had felt similar when Lena had touched me, I’d be certain she was casting some sort of spell on me. This curse was going to get the better of me.
“I don’t believe you need the feather duster just now.” Delicately, she peeled the duster from my fingers. Without it, I suddenly felt strangely vulnerable, as though she’d just stripped off piece of clothing.
“I don’t?” I mumbled.
“You don’t. They did a rather thorough clean of the room just before I arrived. I doubt much dust has gathered since. Perhaps you can do something else for me?” Her fingers trailed up my arm, sending sparks straight to my brain. Dazedly, I nodded. She smiled encouragingly as her hands released my own, only for one to gather around my back. “I don’t believe I asked how old you are.”
I looked at her. “How old I am?” I mumbled back.
“Yes, your age,” she said as though I were unfamiliar with the concept. “I’m twenty-two, for example.”
“Oh, umm, I’ll be twenty soon.”
She smiled at me again, and I couldn’t help but acknowledge the definite flutter in my heart. “Good,” she purred, somehow making me squirm with a single word. Only when we stopped did I realize she’d been slowly leading me somewhere. We stood in front of her bed as her hand brushed across the smooth fabric on top.
“You can start by cleaning the bed,” she said.
I turned toward her, bewilderment slowly overcoming me.
Why did I feel disappointed?