The Rejected True Heiress (Liora and Callum) novel Chapter 529

Liora’s POV

The door swung open a little after midday and three women I’d never seen before came in carrying buckets, combs, and a folding screen, like I was livestock being readied for auction. Two guards stayed in the doorway the whole time, watching.

I didn’t bother asking for privacy. I’d learned by now that asking only made Bianca’s people enjoy themselves more.

They scrubbed me down in a tub of lukewarm water until my skin was pink, then sat me in front of a cracked mirror and went to work on my hair, my face, the nail beds one of them called “an embarrassment for a princess.” Nobody used my name. One of them tugged my chin sideways to check the fading bruise along my jaw, made a small sound of disapproval, and reached for a pot of powder to cover it.

I watched my own face disappear under their hands and thought about Marcus somewhere in the barracks, about the guard who’d walked me to my mother’s room last night, about how many people in this palace would be marked as traitors once my wolf came back. I was already making a list. A long one.

The door opened again sometime around three, and Bianca walked in without greeting anyone, trailed by a maid carrying a garment bag.

“Leave us,” Bianca said, and the women were gone before she’d finished the sentence.

She unzipped the bag herself, which told me she’d been looking forward to this part.

I recognized the dress before it was even all the way out of the bag. The ivory silk. The sweetheart neckline. The same dress they’d zipped me into for that walk through the courtyard, the one where half the school had taken turns writing on it while I stood there and let them, because fighting back would had made things worse, and I thought I was alone.

The marker hadn’t washed out. WOLFLESS BITCH was still scrawled across the bodice in heavy black letters, a crown drawn over the W and crossed out. DEAD GIRL WALKING ran down one side of the skirt in a different hand.

“I had the seamstress steam out the wrinkles,” Bianca said, holding it up against herself in the mirror like it was something beautiful and not a travesty. “Wasn’t that thoughtful of me? You should be grateful. Most girls don’t get to wear the same dress twice.”

I didn’t answer, as much as I wanted to say something snarky. Because right now, I needed to keep my head down, play the terrified, contrite little girl, and avoid detection until the right moment.

Bianca leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, looking pleased with herself.

“Doesn’t it look dreadful on her?” she said. “All that fabric. She looks like she’s wearing a tent.”

“It does seem like a waste,” Ambrose agreed, circling me slowly. “All that silk, and nothing to show for it.”

He held his hand out without looking away from me. Bianca crossed the room, dug a pair of sewing shears out of the garment bag’s side pocket, and laid them across his palm like she’d planned this from the start. Maybe she had.

“Hold still,” Ambrose said, snipping the scissors in the air with a little sneer. “I’d hate to slip.”

He caught the neckline between two fingers and cut. The shears went in clean, slicing a long diagonal line from my collarbone down toward my ribs, opening the fabric wider than it had ever been meant to go. Cold air hit my skin and I made myself not flinch, refusing to give either of them the satisfaction. He cut again at the hem, slitting the skirt up past my knee, then stepped back to look at what he’d done.