Chapter 88: Golden Retriever Mode: OFF

"Of course you are, silly," Maria said, like it was obvious. "Tavian is with Derek right now. I’m supposed to bring you back to our chambers."

Nova opened her mouth to explain that the High Luna had asked "we?" in a tone that was very clearly the opposite of an invitation, and that a servant named Carmen had told her she was temporary and shouldn’t wait up for Derek, and that all available evidence suggested Nova’s attendance at dinner would be about as welcome as a cargo pod on a parade route.

Maria had already moved past the explanation window and was surveying the room with the critical eye of a woman conducting an inspection she had not been asked to conduct.

"Why are you living in a shoe box?" She turned a full three-sixty, taking in the ceiling height, the bed, the sitting area, the narrow window. Then she hugged herself. "And why is it so cold in here? What the actual fuck, Nova. It’s freezing. I am a wolf with a fire shift and I am saying it’s cold."

"Oh no, this room is lovely. I really don’t think it’s a shoe—"

Maria held up her hand, palm flat, fingers spread, the universal stop sign of a woman who had heard enough and disagreed with all of it.

She sniffed. Then sniffed again, sharper, her chin lifting as her nostrils flared. Her brows knit and she walked the perimeter of the room with her head tilted at an angle that looked like she was listening to something below the frequency of human hearing.

"I smell something that I don’t like." Her voice had changed. Lower. The golden retriever energy was gone. "My wolf doesn’t like it either."

She turned towards the closet, still sniffing, and Nova watched her face cycle through something that was there and then wasn’t, like a door opening onto a room she decided not to enter.

Nova blinked a few times. The sniffing had been something. Maria’s wolf identifying a smell she didn’t like in a locked guest room was something. Nova inhaled through her nose, trying to catch whatever Maria had caught. Nothing. Her sinuses had been unreliable since the silver poisoning and her sense of smell was operating at approximately forty percent, which meant Maria’s wolf was picking up something Nova’s human nose couldn’t reach.

She filed it. Later. Maybe Derek could help her.

"Anyways—" Maria resumed at full speed, the transition seamless. "—Tavian is drinking with Derek because those two coordinate like they share a brain cell—"

Maria had pulled a dress from the closet and was holding it against Nova’s frame with the evaluative intensity of a woman who took outfit selection as seriously as military strategy. Forest green. Long sleeves. The fabric was something Nova had never touched before, soft and structured at the same time, the kind of material that moved with you instead of against you.

"Maria, you are basically wearing the same thing," Nova pointed out, gesturing at the deep emerald dress Maria had on, identical in cut, except Maria’s was midnight blue.

"I have good taste." She shoved the dress into Nova’s arms along with stockings and a pair of shoes that had been pulled from the shelf with the decisiveness of a woman who had already made every decision in this closet and Nova’s participation was decorative. "Change. Now. I’ll do your hair."

Nova changed in the closet because that was where the changing happened and Maria was already waiting on the other side with a determined look and both hands out like a hairdresser whose client had shown up ten minutes late for the appointment.

She pulled Nova’s hair partly up.

Then her hands stopped.

Nova felt the stillness before she saw it. Maria’s fingers were frozen mid-section, hovering above a strand she had been about to tuck.

"Why do you look like you’ve been crying?"

Nova shook her head once. The motion was fast and unconvincing and she knew it was both of those things and she did it anyway because the alternative was opening the door on everything Carmen had said and everything the High Luna hadn’t said and the empty closet and the cold room and the word temporary which was still sitting in her chest like a stone she had swallowed and couldn’t cough up.

"Tell me right now."

Maria’s voice had changed again. The motormouth was off. What was left was the voice of a woman who was not going to accept a head shake as an answer. Her hands came off Nova’s hair and found her shoulders, turning her so they were face to face, and the look in Maria’s eyes was the look of a princess who had been raised in a house where women protected each other and the protection was not optional.

"Well."

The word was a dam breaking. Everything behind it came forward at once, stacked and stumbling and falling over each other like passengers exiting a burning building through the same door.

"Derek has been upset every two minutes since we docked and I feel like I’m the catalyst. I keep misstepping without meaning to. I thought I did fine with the High Luna, but based on Derek’s reaction, I apparently failed at that. And a woman named Carmen told me I was temporary. That sleeping with Derek would only get me so far and he would grow tired of me. And it hurt my feelings because I already don’t understand why he wanted to buy me and I know how pathetic that sounds. This is all so lovely. Everything Derek has done is so lovely. I don’t know how I can ever repay him." She inhaled sharply. "I’m just trying to find my way here."

She could feel the words pulling things out of her that she hadn’t known were sitting there, feelings that had been packed into corners and shoved behind furniture and told to stay quiet while she smiled and dipped and said my apologies and the words were ignoring the instructions and leaving anyway.