Page 61 of Taken By the Alien Killer
If he won’t let himself fight for us under their cameras, then I will choose the one battlefield where the cameras can’t go. If this house insists on turning me into a sainted statue, then I’ll walkout before the gilding sets. If Sneed wants to keep watch, let him watch vacuum.
I don’t slam the slate back into life; I don’t draft a speech; I don’t practice a monologue for my parents. I tuck the notice into my belt like a stolen letter and stand up straighter than the dressmakers have ever managed to force me. My hands stop shaking.
I don’t cry.
I make a decision.
CHAPTER 13
STAR
The morning starts with pins and ends with thorns.
“Shoulders back, sweet pea,” Mama says, her drawl sugar-thick as two seamstresses attack the bodice like it owes them money. “Breathe. But not too much. The line on this corset is just divine when you don’t.”
“That’s not how lungs work,” I say through my teeth while one of the women—Elise, pins between lips like silver thorns—tugs the stays tighter. Silk hisses. My ribs argue. Lemon polish and steam from the iron mix in the air, bright and cloying, and I can almost taste my own patience caramelizing.
“You want the Feldspar matriarch to cry?” Mama goes on, only half joking. “Because I wouldn’t hate that, but it should be for the right reasons.”
“The right reason would be me setting her veil on fire,” I mutter.
“Tempt me,” CynJyn says from the chaise, swinging her legs, flipping through a florals catalogue like it’s a scandal sheet. She’s wearing a robe she stole from somewhere important, horns tipped gold for mischief, a grape between finger and thumb. “Chapter title: ‘Blazing Mother-in-Law.’”
Elise clucks. “Hold still, Lady Star.”
“I am still.” I fix on the far wall and pretend the mirror isn’t a person staring back. The girl in it looks like a painting someone’s overcleaned—edges too sharp, color leeched, eyes polished down to something that reflects anything but her own light.
The door blooms open and an entire garden enters. “Oh! Blossom, breathe in this palette,” coos the head florist, a severe woman whose hands smell like peonies and power. Assistants fan out behind her, juggling vases, swatches, sprayed samples of scent. “We’ve narrowed it to three moods: ‘Moon in Milk,’ ‘Imperial Meadow,’ and ‘Legacy of Light.’”
CynJyn snorts. “What about ‘Please Don’t Sneeze’?”
“Moon,” Mama decides, tapping a swatch of pale petals. “Legacy sounds like a funeral.”
“Maybe appropriate,” I say.
“Hush,” she replies, light as a flick of a fan.
The florist arranges a small constellation of white blooms against my bodice, the scent clean and cold, a hymnal written in pollen. “You’ll be an apparition,” she says reverently. “A vision.”
“I’d rather be a person,” I say, and she blinks like I’ve broken the rules of the room.
By midmorning, I’ve been fitted, fluffed, assessed, and anointed with three different perfumes I do not want to live in. Lunch is a parade of nobles I barely remember, each offering a compliment like a coin tossed into a fountain and expecting a wish to come true. “Radiant,” one says. “So poised,” says another. “A true Chamber,” says a third, and I smile my best museum smile while something in me pulls up a chair and refuses to applaud.
Daddy appears at my elbow with a plate I didn’t ask for and warmth I didn’t earn today. “Starling,” he murmurs, his eyes crinkled with relief, belly in rebellion under his formal vest. “You are… how do the kids say… a showstopper.”
“Only if I trip,” I say, mouth dry.
He sobers, thumb brushing a bruise the dress doesn’t quite bury. “We’ll make this gentle,” he says. “You hear me?”
“Gentle is for lambs,” Mama says, sliding in, her smile sharp enough to peel fruit. “We’re going to make this legendary.”
Legend tastes like sawdust. Kaspian arrives in the afternoon for the dance rehearsal with our very tolerant instructor. He’s pressed and perfect, tie obedient, hair combed into a position soldiers envy, and he will not meet my eyes for more than three seconds at a stretch.
“Lady Star,” he says, offering his hand, voice pitched for company. “Shall we?”
“Let’s,” I say.
We do not step on each other. We do not laugh. His palm is cool where it rests at my waist. The musician counts time like a metronome with a grudge. “Left,” he murmurs just before I go right, and I let him lead because that’s what’s scripted. When we turn, his gaze slides somewhere over my shoulder. The last time we were alone, he said he didn’t like faking. Today he’s faking so hard the truth can’t get a word in.
