Raising the Griffin by Melissa Wyatt

Author:Melissa Wyatt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780307433664
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2009-04-25T00:00:00+00:00

22

I Want to go to bed. I’m exhausted, and I’m glad. I want to fall asleep without thinking about the coronation or anything else. But I’ve got to stand here at this bloody ball and bow when someone smiles at me and pretend my feet aren’t hurting and my collar isn’t scratching my neck.

The monotonous swirling of the ladies’ gowns is hypnotic. I wish Sophy were here, though she said she doesn’t like glitz and glamour. I haven’t seen her once in this long, extraordinary day and I feel a need for her, as though she’s an anchor or my last link with normality. But she’s up in the castle and the ball is being held in the Winter Palace in Brabinsk, a municipal museum, open on the weekends for four dashkas .

On the edge of my vision, I sense someone watching me. Not one of the photographers that have been nearby all day, but a girl, frankly staring, quite close by. My first impulse is to run. Not that she isn’t attractive. She’s actually fairly hot. And that terrifies me down to my boots.

But it would be rude to run. It would be a headline. So I turn and look at her and know in a split second I’m not going anywhere. She’s gorgeous, outrageously gorgeous, like a magazine cover girl, like a rock star, like a fairy. It sounds ridiculous, but if there were rock star fairies, they’d look like her. She’s packed into a bright pink dress so tight it squashes her breasts up almost under her chin.

She catches me staring and smiles, a deep dimple forming in one cheek.

“It’s a rag, I know,” she says in accented English. “But Claude Rouen is going to give me an entire spring wardrobe for wearing it here.”

I don’t have a clue what she’s talking about or who Claude Rouen is. But I want to say something to her, something brilliantly observant, to make her think I’m clever, worthy of her notice.

“Oh?”

“Umm.” She nods, sips champagne from her glass. “I get an extra pair of shoes if I’m photographed with you.”

When she says “you,” she does something interesting with her eyebrows. I’m melting in my boots.

“Well, if you really need the shoes . . .”

She rewards me with a dazzling smile, waves to a photographer a few feet away, sets her champagne glass on a nearby table and slips her arm round my waist.

I barely notice the camera flashes about us, I’m so keenly aware of the curve of her body pressed against me, warm and pliable, hot-pink folds of her skirt crushed about my legs. I think I smile but can’t be sure. Finally, she steps back, waving at the photographers again. I stand dumb, short-circuited by her scent.

“That’s all you get,” she says to the photographers, and amazingly, they obey her and disappear into the crowd. She takes me by the arm and draws me back into the curtained alcove of the window.

“Thank you,” she says. “That should be worth a pair of shoes and”—she pokes me in the chest—“a matching bag.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.