“Saints,no.” The thought of food was appalling. This really was exactly like a hangover.
I felt human enough to get to the privy, then went to the washroom. A little water splashed on my face revived me about as much as I was going to be revived. The face in the mirror looked better than it had the night I’d eaten the apple, but there were bodies pulled out of rivers that looked better than that, so that wasn’t saying much.
My braid was a dead loss. You could only call it a braid because there was no reason I’d have three angry snakes in a mating ball on the back of my head. I pulled out the ribbon and sat down on the bed, combing through it with my fingers.
“So what do we do now?” I asked.
Javier grimaced. “I was about to ask you that.”
“You’re the expert military person.”
“My military days are long behind me. Being a palace guard is just a lot of standing around.” He folded his arms, obviously deep in thought. I gazed out the balcony doors at the sky, pretending to also be thinking, but mostly just admiring the sunset. There’s a saying aboutred sky at night, shepherd’s delight,but it doesn’t really work here, since the sunsets are almost always red. I suppose if there were a storm, you wouldn’t see the red, though.
“Have you tried confronting Snow?” Javier asked.
“Kings’ daughters get the same sunsets as the rest of us,” I informed him.
“What in the name of Saint Sheep’s sullen eyeballs are you talking about?”
“I…” I put a hand to my forehead. “I think I’m more tired than I thought, actually. Never mind. Confront Snow how?”
“Tell her you know about the mirror and the apples,” Javier said. “If you’re interrogating someone, showing them that you already know something about it makes them more likely to let something drop. They don’t want to be caught in a lie.”
“Interrogating someone? I thought you said that your job was just standing around.”
“Sometimes I stood around interrogation rooms. The point still stands.”
“Right.” I went back to work re-braiding my hair. “So I tell Snow I know about the mirror and apples and hope she mentions the name of the person who’s doing this.” I grimaced. “I do not like plans that rely on my skill at verbal manipulation.”
“They’re not going to letmetalk to her,” Javier pointed out. “Being the healer’s bodyguard does not convey the same authority as being the healer.”
I groaned. He was right. I didn’t like that he was right, but the world had a bad habit of not taking my likes and dislikes into account. “Right. I’ll do that. Tomorrow.”
I realized at that point that my braid was badly off-center, muttered to myself, and unbraided it. I had only just started again when Javier sighed and said, “May I?”
“Sure,” I said, with absolutely no idea what he was talking about. He stood up and patted the seat of the chair. I sat down in it, still confused, and he picked up the mass of my hair and began to braid it.
Oh.
Oh, that wasnice.
I’d never had a man braid my hair before. He wasn’t running his fingers through it in an erotic fashion or anything—he was, if anything, ruthlessly competent as he scraped it back—but I could feel my scalp tingling in a way that made my toes curl.
Oh Saints, I do not need another fetish right now.I particularlydid not need one centered on a man who had looked at me like I was a piece of salmon left out in the sun for too long.
I was a little surprised he was even willing to touch me, given that, but it was possible that competence had overridden disgust.I should not be aroused by a man who is disgusted by me.I told my sanguine humors this. They laughed at me.
I tried to distract myself by talking. “Thirty-five years old, and I still haven’t mastered braiding my own hair.”
He grunted.
I carried on. “You’re good at this.”
“Two younger sisters.”
“Ah. I didn’t know that.”
“No reason you should.”
