Series: Charmaine Pauls
Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 70056 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 234(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70056 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 234(@300wpm)
I hang back. I’ve just eaten enough food to last a whole winter’s hibernation, and I want to go home, not to a banquet where more food will no doubt be served.
“What banquet?” I ask.
A smile lights up her face. “The one where Aruan will present you to the court before you take your vows.”
“Vows?” I stammer. I’m wide awake now. “What vows?”
Continuing as if it’s the most natural thing in the world, she says, “The vows you say before Aruan consummates the mating, of course.”
Chapter 9
Elsie
Despite my numerous protests, I’m massaged with nice-smelling oils and lathered with creams. Gaia shows me a primitive kind of toilet in the corner of the room with the pool, which she calls the cleansing room. The toilet is basically just a hole in a stone seat, but she explains that it magically empties itself once it’s been used. When I ask her how that works, she tells me it’s due to the properties of the stones.
The vague explanation only makes me more curious. Do the stones absorb the waste? Are there some microorganisms living in that hole that feed on the waste and thus dissolve it? When I ask, Gaia doesn’t seem to know. Instead, she shows me how to clean up afterward using a small water fountain that seems to be perpetually running inside another stone seat—a bidet of sorts that they apparently use in lieu of toilet paper.
After the tour, she gives me privacy. Once I’ve taken care of my needs, I wash my hands in a bowl filled with water from a jug. The soap is a gel capsule that dissolves on my palm and smells like heaven. The minute I’ve dried my hands on a cloth from a stack on the shelf, two women enter with brushes and start to scrub everything clean. Then the pampering continues.
With so many women buzzing around me, I’m dressed in a long, flowing gown with my hair and make-up done in no time at all.
Gaia positions me in front of the mirror.
“You look beautiful,” she exclaims in a breathless whisper, clasping her hands together.
The woman staring back at me in the shadowy reflection of the mirror is a far cry from the old me back on Earth. The permanent dark circles around my eyes are gone. My skin has a healthy glow, and my short hair shines with a brilliance that accentuates the natural platinum highlights in my strawberry-blond strands. Even my eyes, which I’ve always considered to be a dull blue-green, sparkle with a new luminosity.
It’s so bizarre. I don’t understand why I look so healthy and why my heart is beating so strongly. Did Vitai heal all my autoimmune issues? But no. Even back in the jungle with the Phaelix, I looked and felt different.
Not sick.
Not weak.
Not dying for once in my life.
What is this place? How do these people have these powers?
And why the fuck did they decide I’m Aruan’s mate?
“What do you think?” Gaia asks, sounding pleased with herself.
I push aside my speculations for now and refocus on my appearance. The dress is made of a soft material with a pearly glimmer. It fastens at my nape and drapes with soft folds over my breasts and hips before flaring out from my thighs. The hem stops just above my ankles. The back is open, not allowing for any sort of bra—if they even wear them here. Fortunately, with my small breasts, I don’t need one. The skirt is embroidered with shiny white stones, which may or may not be diamonds. Begrudgingly, I have to admit that the gown is gorgeous. I’ve never looked prettier.
“Shoes,” Gaia announces with a clap of her hands.
One of the women rushes forward with a pair of satiny slippers. The crystal beads decorating them match the stones on the dress. She kneels in front of me while another woman takes my arm to steady me and a third carefully lifts my skirt.
I shove my feet into the flat-heeled, pointy shoes. To my surprise, they’re very comfortable, not pinching my toes as I expected.
Gaia takes a small flacon from the dresser and sprays a fine mist of perfume over my hair. It smells powdery soft, almost like roses, with something exotic like ylang-ylang in the mix.
“It’s a very precious and rare perfume made from the petals of dragon flower blossoms,” Gaia says as she points the atomizer at my barely-there cleavage. “They only bloom once a century under a full moon.”
Puff.
“A drop is worth a hundred opal stones.”
Puff, puff.
She winks before giving my neck the same treatment. “Aruan loves the smell.”
I suppress a protest. Objecting to the dollying-up isn’t going to help. I argued until my throat was hoarse, and it got me nowhere.
To them, it may seem as if I’ve accepted my fate, which is to take vows I don’t mean and consummate some bizarre mating.