Page 36 of Gyft
I raise my eyebrow.
“Forgive me, sweet? I have to go talk to Minniel again. Will you go with Yvette to her quarters? Visit for a while? I’ll send guards for you both to come to dinner.”
“Of course.”
He kisses my forehead distractedly, his attention already zooming across the yard to where the focus is... his and Yvette’s. The tall male who dresses like him who they’ve both called Minniel.
“Huh,” I mutter.
“Hmm?” Yvette says distractedly, waving four fingers at this Minniel. Everyone seems enamored by this man.
My husband... and my best friend.
“I guess the honeymoon’s over,” I say. “Did you see how he just skirted off suddenly? Leaving me practically alone? We’re newlyweds and I’m on a distant planet.”
“He probably just knows you want time with me,” Yvette says.
I try to smile at her, but it feels false. “You’re right.”
“So when did you do this?” Yvette asks, twisting a lock of my white hair. “I like it. Did you do it to contrast with the goth look?”
“No, I crossed the boundaries of what they call the deadlands. I guess when you face death, your hair turns white. Or in the alien’s case, their freelig. See how Gyft’s is white? And Minniel? They’re on the team that keeps the deadlands closed off.”
“It’s permanent?” Yvette asks, properly horrified now that she realizes how close my brush with death was.
“It is. No more redhead for me.”
“I’m sorry,” Yvette says, and hugs me close again. My eyes flit behind her to see Gyft and Minniel disappear into a door of a nearby building adjacent to the castle.
Chapter Fifteen
GYFT:
“I THINK I got it.”
Minniel understands exactly what I mean when he hears the tone in my voice. His gaze sharpens and he motions for me to enter the command center where we can speak privately.
“The friend—”
“Yvette,” he says, and I’m a little puzzled that he’s got the strange-sounding name pronounced perfectly, as if he’s said it a million times before.
“Did you see all the gold jewelry she wore?”
He nods, puzzled. “Pull up the footage of when we woke her from the shuttle.”
I punch in my personal code, and a hologram image of a shuttle appears, identical to the one that brought Olivia. But instead of Yvette emerging, the way Olivia had, Minniel has to open the shuttle door. Inside, Yvette is laying prone on a flat table, still unconscious from the journey. While she’s not bedecked in the black bridal gown that Olivia wore, her sheath is much more simplistic in design. And while her face isn’t covered in the atrocious black makeup, she wears the exact jewelry Olivia has.
Exactly.
The medallion as large as the palm of my hand.
The chains around her neck.
The bracelets.
The dangling earrings.
The thin piece that snakes around her forehead.
