Five: The Letter

I hadn’t even managed to fully wash off my makeup before a letter from the princess arrived. Isabel, who had gone downstairs to find something to eat, rushed back into my room and slammed the door closed behind her, a scowl twisting her lips.

Isabel was a good friend, a former client who had offered her extensive makeup skills after seeing my work. She initially got thirty percent of all profits, which certainly slowed down how fast I was able to save up, but her skill with makeup and disguises had proved so invaluable that I eventually upped her fee to fifty percent, accepting the loss in profit in return for the improvement in my performance – and subsequently, my ability to take on higher profile clients.

Standing only a few inches shorter than me, Isabel was an incredibly beautiful woman with long chestnut brown hair, golden brown skin, and amber eyes. She was a popular choice among the young men in her neighborhood, leading to her unwanted engagement that I then broke. This event deterred most other men from trying to propose, and her fiery temper deterred the rest.

If I were the type to be interested in romance, Isabel would have been my first choice. Although, given that I was overly carefree and she was a chronic worrier, any relationship between the two of us would probably go up in flames. Thankfully for both of us, I had no desire, and she didn’t like men.

I looked up with water dripping down my face to see her frantically waving an envelope sealed with red wax.

“I hope for your sake this is instructions on how to receive your payment and not a notice that you’re about to be arrested,” Isabel quipped, flinging the letter at me. I made no attempt to catch it, letting it flutter to the ground between her and where I sat at the vanity.

“Don’t be silly. They wouldn’t notify me beforehand,” I said, rubbing a cloth roughly over my eyebrows and squinting at myself in the mirror. Damn, what sort of dye did she use on me this time? It wasn’t coming off with just soap and water, and I was frustrated, so I dropped the cloth back in the bowl and bent to grab the letter. “My performance was flawless. There’s no way her parents are going to let her marry him. Not if they care about her at all – or more accurately, about their own reputation.”

Isabel rolled her eyes, rummaged in the nightstand for a jar of some sort of cream, and came over to grab my chin, holding my head still so she could smear it over my eyebrows. I closed my eyes briefly, enjoying the gentle touch. She stepped back when she was done and flicked me in the nose so hard my eyes watered.

“Hey,” I complained, but she was apathetic, sitting back on the bed with her arms crossed.

“Leave that on for a few minutes.” She nodded toward the letter in my hands. “Read it, or I will. The curiosity is killing me.”

I stuck my tongue out at her, prompting her to return the gesture, but opened the envelope regardless, scanning it quickly.

I was quiet for several minutes, staring at the letter. Isabel quickly became impatient.

“Well? What does it say?”

I set the letter aside, blank faced, and rubbed at my eyebrows again, pleasantly surprised when the black dye really did come off in one swipe. I paused to examine myself, one eyebrow brown, the other black and covered in gel. I looked back at Isabel.

“Bad news,” I sighed. “You’re going to have to redo this.”

Her face dropped. “You have to go back? I thought you said you disparaged his reputation so thoroughly he won’t be showing his face in public for years to come. What went wrong?”

She shot up from the bed to grab the letter and read it herself. When she was done, she cursed and crumpled it.

“They don’t believe it? What? Aren’t they going to investigate the rumors? They’re not even rumors – he really is a womanizing sack of horse manure.”

“It didn’t say they didn’t believe it,” I said, carefully removing the dye from the other brow. “It just said they’re sending the princess, Ewan, and another chaperone out to ‘talk about it,’ and they want me there. That doesn’t mean they don’t believe the rumor, that just means they’re suspicious of me coming out of nowhere the way I did. If the princess has even some semblance of a brain, she’ll be frantically forging letters from ‘Darren Faraman’ to prove that we’d been talking long before this. Or at least, she’ll say she burned them after receiving them.”

“Ok, they’re suspicious of you – why would they want Ewan there? And wouldn’t they summon you to the palace directly? You are pretending to be a noble after all.”

I rubbed my chin thoughtfully. “Knowing Ewan’s character, he probably made some sort of plea. They’re humoring him for now, probably just long enough to verify the truth without a doubt. He’s such a weasel, he’s probably already sent his mistresses and bastards to some other country to hide them. As for why they’re not bringing us all directly to the palace, I’m guessing that’s the princess’s plea. She promised not to put me in real danger of getting captured, so she must have worked it out so that we could meet outside, giving me a greater chance of escape if things go sideways.”

“Then don’t go,” Isabel urged. Her hands clenched nervously in the bedspread. “If she knows there’s a chance you’ll need to escape quickly, it means she can’t guarantee anything. It’s not worth it, Carmen.”

I considered that seriously, because she had a point. It was too suspicious, and there were too many unknown factors. We didn’t know if Ewan had something else up his sleeve, what the palace was thinking about all this, or who they would send as a chaperone this time. The risk was incredibly high.

But was the risk worth the reward?

I thought about the wave-carved dagger I’d seen earlier, meeting Garrick, the bodies in the alley.

Was it worth it?

75,000…

If the princess really followed through and paid me that much, I could leave as early as the day after tomorrow.

But if I was unsuccessful, I wouldn’t be going anywhere except on a pike outside the palace gate.

My life or my freedom.

Freedom would come either way, but if I died now, it was all over. So really, the question wasn’t which one I valued more, but whether I was willing to wait for what I wanted.

And after today, the answer to that was a resounding no. I had to leave, the sooner the better, because Garrick wasn’t just going to give up. I’d managed to hide from him for the past three years, but now that he’d found me, he wasn’t going to let me slip away so easily. He was going to find a way out too, and he was going to take me with him, whether I liked it or not.

And I would rather find myself on a pike than go back where I came from.

“Sorry Izz,” I mumbled absentmindedly. “But it is worth it to me. I have to at least give it another shot.”

She shot to her feet, fists clenched, teeth bared like a wild cat.

“Why? What is so important that you need all that money? I always knew you were saving up for something, but you’ve never deigned to tell me what. I know you have enough money to buy yourself a house in the countryside and settle down, but you won’t. Why, Carmen? What more could you possibly want?”

I smiled weakly, unable to muster answering anger, because honestly, she was completely justified.

“I want to be someone else.”

Isabel looked up to the heavens, exasperated and clearly restraining herself from strangling me.

“You’re someone else every day, Darren. And you can be whoever the hell you want in the countryside. What’s stopping you?”

Garrick. The old man in the jewelry shop and the countless others crawling around Pansolum looking for me.

And myself. Pansolum had its flaws and its strengths, its beautiful parts, and its ugly parts. But Garrick was right, my identity was always going to find me, and Pansolum was not going to be friendly to me if anyone other than Garrick and his network of cronies figured it out.

I couldn’t stay here.

Seeing that I didn’t respond, Isabel made a noise of supreme frustration and stomped out, not quite hiding the glint of hurt in her eyes at my refusal to open up to her.

I felt bad, but it was better if she didn’t know. With a sigh, I picked up the crumpled letter she’d tossed aside and smoothed it out.

This was my best shot. I couldn’t give up now.

Let’s see how far your protection really goes, princess.