Chapter Twenty

Cecily smiled sheepishly. “I usually walk,” she admitted. “I was worried about getting bored. I don’t sit well with nothing to do, but I want to be there as soon as they let you out. You should be under close observation for the first few hours after an inscription trial.”

“Fair enough,” Mira allowed. Not only were they facing a long ride, apparently, she would also be asked to wait while Mira was fitted with her temporary inscription. “Do you…”

“I have enough material for my hobby, Mira. Stop worrying,” Cecily chuckled. “Nanny took me with her to the textile wholesaler and we’re sharing a new pattern book. The nighties I found in the catalogs were all very high quality, but all their trim had net backing and I think it’s scratchy. So I thought I’d make my own trims and ask Ginger to sew them on for me. What do you think?”

She held up what, in another world, would pass for five inches of Guipure lace except Mira had just seen Cecily hand tatting it with her own eyes. The band she was working on looked like coiled leaves that interlocked with one another, end to end and tip to tip.

“It’s lovely,” she said with all honesty.

Fortunately, she already knew not to ask if Cecily had any pieces she was very proud of. She was a genius lacemaker, but Baron Rousseau confiscated all her work in the game. It wasn’t until she got invited to the Capitol’s big harvest ball in game two that she encountered someone that she didn’t know wearing one of her best laceworks; an exquisite point-de-gaze lace collar she’d made for her mother’s fortieth birthday, that her father took away when he was angry with her one day and later told her he’d burned it.

It turned out he hadn’t been destroying her work, he’d been using it as gifts and sometimes even bribes—leading to the heroine to lose the last clinging shreds of filial affection she had for her stepfather.

‘Not looking forward to that mess,’ Mira thought to herself as she took out her book. At the rate matters were going, she’d be right in the middle of it. Well, perhaps she’d have Cecily’s mother kidnapped and hidden somewhere safe. Cecily and Vesper were concerned by the legalities, but Mira was more worried about getting the woman to safety before he thought to have her lobotomized or something. Or maybe she should just make time to have him die in a tragic accident. If she did that, then she’d need to arrange accidents for his rotten crotchfruits as well, which tripled the work.

Things like this made her miss her third life, when she’d reincarnated as the oldest daughter of a family of assassins. She hadn’t been expected to practice the family trade herself, but she’d had a group of agents who reported directly to her and could dispatch them to deal with annoyances like this whenever she liked.

It was amazing what problems could be solved with a little strategic murder. Alas, that was hardly ever an option in any of Mira’s lives.

000

Eventually they did reach the Royal Hospital, so called because it existed half on the grounds of the royal compound. The hospital straddled the thick outer wall of the royal compound, which was like a small city district all to itself and housed all six of the royal residences that were located within Avenon. Hadleigh Palace was located in the center of the sprawling garden grounds of the royal complex and that was where the Prince Consort lived and where the crown’s official state affairs were held. Located behind Hadleigh Palace was Lyonhall, the official heir’s residence, and in the four corners, there were the four dowagers’ courtyards; Rosepark, Riverpark, Lindenpark, and Oakpark where the Royal Hospital was now located.

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Unlike the other dowager buildings, Oakpark had been built into and then past the golden stone wall that enclosed the royal compound. It was, in a way, a fifth gate into the Hadleigh Palace Complex. Mira hadn’t been invited into any of the areas that extended into the inner perimeter of the palace grounds, of course. Even if someone had invited her, she didn’t want to go. Her luck wasn’t that good. If she went, she’d surely run into Andrei or one of the other love interests.

Instead, she visited Doctors Padre and Desmona in a common-use evaluation room where they’d set up a table for her to lay down on.

The permanent procedure had been described to her as a tattoo, but the temporary inscription was applied with a paste not unlike henna, except it was black and left blue streaks on Doctor Desmona’s fingers so maybe there was an indigo component in the paste?

The doctors carefully shaved away sections of her hair that radiated up from her nape, then painted on a complex series of spellforms onto her spine, neck, and the shaved spots on her head. After that, Mira had to lay in place for several hours as the stain set so it really was like henna.

Funnily enough, she could feel the inscription working and it wasn’t pleasant.