Page 34 of Faithless
“Probably when my little sister wanted to use my face as a finger painting canvas. She’s seventeen now.”
Gwen chuckled as she wiped my skin clean and began applying a primer. “Well, lucky you are about to get one every single day for a month.”
“That sounds kind of exhausting, actually.”
“I hear you. As soon as I’m off the clock, the first thing I do is wash my face.”
I let her work on me in silence for a few minutes before asking, “Do the makeup staff get paid over there? At the resort?”
There was a long pause before she answered. “I don’t know.”
My jaw went rigid. Blakeworth faced all kinds of backlash from other territories because of the supposed terrible working conditions for laughably little pay. Many even believed they used slave labor. But the territory was so secretive about their economy, always diverting attention with their flashy elite class to show how prosperous and well-off they were.
“I guess that’s something we’ll find out,” I mused.
My ass was numb and my limbs stiff by the time I was finally done. My eyelids felt heavy, and when Gwen let me turn to the mirror, I saw she’d glued in long, wispy feathers alongside my false lashes. She’d also put in bright, crystal blue contacts in, so my normally dark green eyes were straight up freaky-looking. Everything from my eyeshadow to my blush and highlighter shimmered with an almost blinding effect.
“Holy shit,” I muttered. “Feels like I’m about to go to a costume party.”
Gwen laughed. “Nope, this is an everyday look. You’ll get used to it, though.”
“I kind of hope not.”
We dragged Torr into the chair together. He thankfully didn’t put up a fight and was finished much quicker than I had been. He chose an emerald green for his eye color, and I popped the lenses in while Gwen worked on his face. When she was done, the difference was subtle but jarring.
She’d contoured his face, shaped and filled in his eyebrows, applied some neutral eyeshadow shades, and that was pretty much it. He still looked like himself but too…polished. Torr’s freckles were gone, as was the rough stubble on his jaw and the small scar through his eyebrow. He’d gotten it from a fight with a playground bully, and Daren and I had taken turns applying pressure to it while we waited for the school nurse to come.
He wasn’t that charmingly disheveled, rough-and-tumble guy I’d had a crush on since I was ten. Now he looked like he could put on a suit and recite the slimy words of a politician.
“That bad, huh?” He smirked, and I realized I must have been staring at him for a while.
“Uh, no, actually.” I tried to recover smoothly. “You make a very convincing rich asshole.”
“Great. You’re not a bad rich bitch yourself.”
“A match made in heaven,” Gwen laughed as she put away her supplies.
Oh shit, that was right. We were supposed to act like we were married.
“Hey, don’t I need a big, flashy rock or something?” I extended my fingers, trying to imagine some obnoxiously large ring on my finger.
“Oh, right! I almost forgot.” Gwen reached into her pocket and pulled out a small box. “Torr, do you want to do the honors?”
For some reason, my heart beat crazily against my ribs when he took the box and opened it. Torr let out a long whistle as he held it out to show me. “Damn. Now that’s a ring.”
My breath stuttered. I was not usually moved by jewelry, but this one was justpretty. It was a large, single black stone, cut and polished so that all its faces threw off glassy reflections like deep pools of water. It was held to the silver band with four large prongs.
“It’s a black diamond,” Gwen said. “They’re more rare, so the elites love them. The simple setting is also fashionable right now. Of course my employer bought like ten of them in one trip, so I just snatched one that looked like it would fit you.”
“Hang on. Let me do this right.” Torr dropped to one knee, his eyes locked to mine as he reached for my hand.
“What? Torr, no.” I pulled my hand back, my throat choking with emotion. Why? Why did he want to do this? It was just Gwen in the room. We didn’t have to play pretend rightnow.
“Come on, just let me.” His voice went low with that sultry, masculine growl that worked to charm all the women. Myself included, even though I knew all of this was fake.
“You don’t need to commit to your character this much,” I muttered, letting him take the hand I’d pulled away.
His eyes dropped to my outstretched hand, the ring finger extended like it couldn’t wait to receive that rare piece of jewelry from him. Fucking traitor, that little finger.
