A Mischief in the Woodwork - By Harper Alexander Page 0,81

for Victoria was inconvenient and, after seeing her tonight, seemingly somewhat ill-placed – she was a shell of a creature to earn any great sentiments from anyone – but I could not deny its empowering tickle. Something in the past had sparked it, and I felt for her.

And so the downstairs brood expanded a member, and Felicity's reign grew darker and heavier over our heads. But it was home, dark or otherwise, and great sentiments, however misplaced, still lived under its roof.

T w e n t y - F I v e –

True Colors

Because of our newly threadbare closets, and Ombri's apparent skill with a needle, we soon found ourselves employing an adept, eager little seamstress. I worried, at first, over being able to provide her even the bare essentials to make what we lacked, but “bring me scraps,” she said. “I don't need bolts.” And so we found ourselves being fashioned with the most glorious patchwork attire I had surely ever imagined.

In those early days after Victoria's deliverance, I watched my former mistress closely. There was no telling how a Master would respond to a halfbreed in her house. But she was careful to conform to an un-assuming attitude in our midst. She did not ask questions. She made no commands. I was glad that she could recognize she was out of her element.

More inconvenient than stretching our closets thin, it turned out, was determining bed protocol with so many people. We had a distinct shortage of pallets, now, and they were not big enough to share. Not unless, perhaps, you were lovers. We had no two people who fit that description.

In the end Dashsund offered up his pallet to Victoria and took a place on the floor. I wondered how long that would be bearable – and if he would ever complain if it reached the point where it wasn't – and hoped we did not pick up any more strays in the near future. And, pallets designated or not, we still had to cram in, now. I made sure to manipulate the rearrangement, when it happened, so that I did not land directly beside Tanen. I could not tolerate the thought of sleeping next to him. Too, that meant he could do naught but humble himself and sleep next to one of his titled Baedra, and that was a step I felt I needed to see him take. A step that he owed us.

I was somehow still astonished when he dared show his own distaste for the arrangement. I do not know if anyone else noticed it, but I saw the shift that was his discomfort, the brief stall for time as his scheming prejudice demanded he think of some way to get out of the scenario laid out before him.

“Bring the girl in here,” he ended up saying. “I'll take the other room.”

To me, it sounded just like the driven quest for separation that it was, but it was just his luck that to everyone else it appeared as some noble gesture. Him, taking the room of isolation so that 'the girl' could be warm and safe among the rest of us. Ombri, I insisted in my mind to his choice of words, and felt the boiling need to correct him start to bubble in my gut. But he got his way, unchallenged. I could have stomped from the room in a fury, and left them all to die of their blind stupidity if the reason I was angry did not involve loving the rest of them.

But it did not mean he had to remain unchallenged. This had gone on too long, I realized. I did not have to allow it.

As the transfer was made and Ombri adopted his pallet in the bedroom, I followed Tanen to his new quarters, and swept in the room after him. He dropped his blanket on the cot and looked up.

And I did it; I finally opened my mouth and let it out, something I had wondered myself if I could ever actually do. “The others may not see it – or maybe they don't care – but I do,” I came right out and put it to him. “I see the way you treat them, like they're less than you. Like you can't be contaminated by them. The Baedra.”

“I don't treat them like anything.”

“Because the 'treatment' is an avoidance. Please, Tanen. There's no way to make it smooth. It is precisely what it is, and well on display, and