Serendipity at the End of the World by Karissa Laurel

Author:Karissa Laurel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: romance, fantasy, zombies, apocalypse, dystopian
Publisher: Red Adept Publishing
Published: 2023-11-14T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 28: A Storybook Prince

When I naively let Parvati into my apartment, her two cousins were trailing behind her, arms loaded with stacks of fabric, yard upon yard of brilliantly colored silk. For the next several hours, the three harbingers of feminine torment subjected me to the horrors of their regular beauty regimens, packed into one long, painful afternoon. At the end of their ministrations, I was relieved that they hadn’t forced me into a corset. It was the only nice thing I could say about the hairpulling, tweezing, curling, scrubbing, creaming, and painting.

I was ready to curse Parvati and her harpies to hell, but before I could open my mouth to say the words, they brought me to stand before the image of a remarkable stranger. Not Freya or Aphrodite but maybe some other, lesser spirit I’d never read about.

I stood before the mirror so long in stunned silence that eventually, one of Parvati’s cousins giggled. “She doesn’t recognize herself,” she said, and all three girls fell into fits of hilarity.

The face in the reflecting glass changed to pink, then red. Turning away, I searched for my pants and boots. Forget Dr. Dwivedi’s stupid dinner. I’ll have to try talking to him afterward. It’s not worth the ridicule.

Parvati grabbed my arm and yanked me into place before the mirror again, though she never stopped laughing. “Sera, look at yourself.” She heaved a few breaths, trying to reestablish her composure. “I mean, really look at yourself. Don’t you recognize that girl?”

Truth be known, I avoided mirrors. Vanity was a luxury, a waste of time, and that whole afternoon had only gone to reinforce my belief. Did a shambling corpse care if I put on lipstick or brushed my hair before it tried to eat me? Would the undead have felt better if I put on a dress before I went out to shoot them?

Any remaining levity drained from Parvati, and she looked at me with something akin to disbelief. “You truly do not know how lovely you are, do you?”

I sniffed and rolled my eyes. “Maybe she is.” I pointed at the reflection. “But she isn’t me. Not the real me.” The real me had no trouble blowing apart a Rotter’s skull or skewering a rat and roasting it over a flame. The real me rejoiced in violence and thrived on subsistence living. The real me often went days without a bath or brushing my hair. But none of what had happened since arriving at Dwivedi’s college had seemed very real.

“There is no illusion here.” Parvati gestured at the mirror. “It is merely a few cosmetics and a curling iron.”

“And a gorgeous sari,” said one of the cousins. Sweetie, if I remembered correctly.

The sari was gorgeous, the shade of a deep-pink rose. Somehow, it brought out the red in my hair and the green in my eyes. Maybe Parvati’s talents wouldn’t help her in an attack of the Living Dead, but she was very good at what she did with fabrics and face paints.

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