Switched (14 page)

“I don’t know.” I shrugged, thinking of what Rhys had said after she left. “It just seems like she looks at you intently a lot, and like you understand exactly what she means.” As soon as it came out of my mouth, it dawned on me. “That’s one of her abilities, isn’t it? Talking inside your head? Kind of like what I can do, but less manipulative. Cause she’s just telling you what to do.”

“Not even telling me what to do. She’s just talking,” Finn corrected me.

“Why doesn’t she talk to me like that?” I asked.

“She wasn’t sure if you’d be receptive. If you’re not accustomed to it, hearing another person’s voice in your head can be unsettling,” Finn explained. “And she didn’t really need to.”

“But she needed to with you?” I slowed down, and he matched my pace. “She was talking to you privately about me, wasn’t she?” Finn paused, and I could see that he was considering lying to me.

“Some of it, yes,” Finn admitted.

“Can she read minds?” I felt slightly horrified at that thought.

“No. Very few can.” When he looked over at me, he smiled crookedly. “Your secrets are safe, Wendy.”

We went into the dining room, and Finn set about preparing me for dinner. As it turned out, I wasn’t completely stunted socially and had a basic understanding of manners. What Finn said amounted to common sense things, like always say please and thank you, but he encouraged me to keep my mouth shut whenever possible.

 I think his task had been less about preparing me for the dinner and more about keeping me in line. The secret things Elora had been telling him had just been warning him to baby-sit me, or else.

Dinner was at eight, and company was arriving at seven. About an hour or so before, Rhys had popped in to wish me good luck and let me know he was heading over to Rhiannon’s, in case anybody cared. Finn came in shortly after I had gotten out of the shower, looking even sharper than usual.

He was clean shaven for the first time since he’d stopped going to school, and he wore a black button-up shirt with a narrow white tie and black pants with a black blazer over it. It should’ve been too much with all that black, but he managed to pull it off, all the while looking incredibly sexy.

I had on only my bathrobe, and I wondered why nobody thought it was inappropriate for boys to barge in when I wasn’t dressed. At least I was doing something semi-sexy; sitting on the edge of my bed putting lotion on my legs. I did it every time I showered, but since Finn was in the room, I tried to play it off as being sensual when it really wasn’t.

Not that Finn had even noticed. He knocked once, opened my bedroom door, and only gave me a fleeting glance as he headed straight to my closet. I sighed in frustration and hurriedly rubbed the lotion in while Finn busied himself. He flicked on the light and rummaged through my clothes.

“I don’t think I have anything in your size!” I said and leaned farther on my bed, trying to see what he was doing in there.

“Funny,” he muttered absently.

“What are you doing in there?” I asked, watching him, but he didn’t even look at me.

“You are a Princess, and you need to dress like one.” He leafed through my dresses and pulled out a long, white sleeveless gown. It was gorgeous and much too fancy for me, and when he came out of the closet, he handed it to me. “I think this might work. Try it on.”

“Isn’t everything in my closet suitable?” I tossed the dress on the bed next to me and turned to look at him.

“Yes, but different things are better for different occasions.” He came over to the bed to smooth out the dress, making sure it didn’t have any wrinkles or creases. “This is a very important dinner, Wendy.”

“Why? What makes this one so important?” I asked.

“The Stroms are very good friends of your mother’s and the Kroners are very important people. They affect the future.” Finn finished smoothing the dress and turned to me. “Why don’t you continue getting ready?”

“How do they affect the future? What does that mean?” I pressed.

“That’s a conversation for another day.” Finn nodded towards the bathroom. “You need to hurry if you’re going to be ready in time for dinner.”

“Fine,” I sighed, getting up off the bed.

“Wear your hair down,” Finn commanded. My hair was wet so it was lying nicely down, but I knew that as soon as it dried, it would turn into a wild thicket of curls.

“I can’t. My hair is impossible.” I ran my fingers through my dark hair.

“We all have difficult hair. Even Elora and I. It’s the curse of being Trylle,” Finn said. “It’s something you must learn to manage.”

“Your hair is nothing like mine,” I said dourly. His hair was short and obviously had some product in it, but it looked smooth, straight, and obedient.

“It most certainly is,” Finn replied.

I meant to prove him wrong, so instinctively, I reached out and touched his hair, running my fingers shallowly through the hair past his temples. Other than being stiff with product, it felt like my hair.

It wasn’t until I had done it that I realized that there was something inherently intimate about running my fingers through another person’s hair. I had been looking at his hair, but then I met his dark eyes and realized exactly how close I was to him.

Since I was short, I had stood on my tiptoes, leaning up to him as if I were about to kiss him. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I thought that would be a very good course of action right about now.

“Satisfied?” Finn asked, and I retracted my hand and took a step back. “There should be hair products in your bathroom. Experiment.”

I nodded my compliance, still feeling too flustered to speak. Finn was unnaturally calm, and at times like that, I really hated it. I barely even remembered to breathe until I was in my bathroom.

Being that near to him made me forget everything but his dark eyes, the heat from his skin, his wonderful scent, the feel of his hair beneath my fingers, the smooth curve of his lips…

I shook my head, clearing it of any thoughts of him. That had to be the end of that.

I had a dinner tonight to worry about, and somehow, I had to do something with my hair. I tried to remember what Maggie had used in my hair before I went to the dance with Patrick, but that felt like a lifetime ago.

Thankfully, my hair had magically decided to behave itself tonight, making the whole process go easier. Finn seemed to think my hair looked better down, so I left the length of it hanging in the back and pulled the sides back with clips.

The dress turned out to be trickier than my hair. It had one of those stupid zippers that refused to move higher than my lower back, and I couldn’t win. After struggling with it so long my fingers hurt, I had to get help.

Tentatively, I pushed open the bathroom door. Finn had been looking out the window, at the sun setting on the bluffs, and when he turned, his eyes rested on me for almost a minute.

“You look like a Princess,” Finn smiled crookedly at me.

“I need help with the zipper,” I said meekly, gesturing to the open slit down my back.

He walked over, and I almost felt relieved when I turned my back to him. The way he looked at me made my stomach swirl with nervous butterflies. One of his hands pressed warmly on my bare shoulder to steady the fabric as he zipped me up, and my skin shivered involuntarily.

When he had finished, I went over to the mirror to investigate for myself. Even I had to admit that I looked lovely. With the white dress and the diamond necklace, I almost looked too lavish. Maybe it was too much for just a dinner.

“I look like I’m getting married,” I commented and glanced back at Finn. “Do you think I should change?”

“No, it’s perfect.” He looked pensively at me, and if I didn’t know better, I’d say he looked almost sad. The doorbell chimed loudly, and Finn nodded. “The guests have arrived. We should greet them.”

12. Introductions

We walked down the hall together, but at the top of the steps, Finn deliberately fell a few steps behind me. Elora and the Kroners were standing in the alcove as I descended the steps, and they all turned to look up at me. It was the first grand entrance I had ever made in my life, and there was something wonderful about it.

The Kroners consisted of a stunningly beautiful woman in a floor-length dark green dress, an attractive man in a dark suit, and an attractive boy about my age. Even Elora looked more extravagant than usual. Her dress had more detailing and her jewelry was more pronounced.

I could feel them appraising me as I walked towards them, so I was careful to keep my steps as smooth and elegant as possible. 

“This is my daughter, the Princess.” Elora smiled in a way that almost looked loving and held her hand out to me. “Princess, these are the Kroners. Aurora, Noah, and Tove.”

I smiled politely and did a small curtsy. Immediately after, I realized that they were probably the ones that should be curtsying to me, but they all smiled pleasantly at me.

“It’s such a pleasure to meet you,” Aurora had a syrupy tone to her words that I wasn’t sure if I trusted or not. A few perfectly placed curls fell from her dark hair wrapped up on her head. Her chestnut eyes were large and stunning.

Her husband, Noah, did a very small bow towards me, as did her son, Tove. Both Noah and Aurora looked appropriately respectful towards Elora and me, but Tove looked vaguely bored. His mossy green eyes met mine very briefly, then looked away, as if he were uncomfortable looking at me.

Elora ushered us into the sitting parlor to talk until supper. The conversation was overly polite and banal, but I suspected there were undercurrents that I wasn’t really picking up. Elora and Aurora did most of the talking, with Noah adding very little. Tove said nothing at all, preferring to look anywhere but directly at anyone.

Finn was more in the background, speaking only when spoken to. He was very poised and polite, but from the way Aurora looked at him with disdain, I gathered she didn’t approve of his presence.

The Stroms were fashionably late, as Finn had predicted they would be. He’d debriefed me extensively on both them and the Kroners earlier in the day, but he was much more familiar with the Stroms and talked of them in much affectionate tones.

Finn had been a tracker for Willa, so he knew her and her father, Garrett, quite well. Garret’s wife (Willa’s mother) had died some years earlier. Finn claimed that Garrett was easy-going, but that Willa was a tad high-strung. She was twenty-one, and prior to living in Förening, she’d been privileged to the point of excess.

When the doorbell rang, interrupting the irritatingly dull conversation between Aurora and my mother, Finn immediately excused himself to answer the door and returned with Garrett and Willa in tow.

Garrett was a rather handsome man in his mid-forties. His hair was dark and disheveled, making me feel better about my own imperfect hair. When he shook my hand with a warm smile, he immediately put me at ease.

Willa, on the other hand, had that snobby look that was always simultaneously bored and pissed off. She was a waif of a girl with light-brown waves that fell neatly on her back, and she wore an anklet covered in diamonds. When she shook my hand, I could tell that her smile was an attempt at sincere, making me hate her a little less.

Once they arrived, we adjourned to the dining room for supper. Willa seemed to try to engage Tove in conversation as we walked into the other room, but he remained completely silent. 

Finn pulled my chair out for me before I sat down, and I enjoyed it since I couldn’t remember a single time that anyone had done that for me before. Garrett sat in the chair nearest to Elora, Willa took a seat next to him, and I sat at the other head of the table, with Finn and Tove flanking me on either side.

Finn waited until everyone was sitting to take a seat himself, and this would be the standard for the evening. As long as at least one person was standing, so would Finn. He was always the first to his feet, and even though the chef and a butler-type fellow were on staff tonight, Finn would offer to get anyone anything they needed.

The dinner dragged on much more sorely than I had imagined it could. Since I wore white, I barely ate out of fear of spilling anything on my dress. I had never felt so judged in my entire life. I could feel Aurora and Elora waiting for me to screw up so they could pounce, but I wasn’t sure how either of them would benefit from my failure.

I could tell that on several occasions, Garrett tried to lighten the mood, but nobody allowed it. Aurora and Elora dominated the conversation, and everyone else rarely said anything.

Tove stirred his soup a lot, and I became mildly hypnotized by it. He’d let go of his spoon, but it kept swirling around the bowl, stirring the soup without any hand to guide it. I must have started to gape because I felt Finn gently kick me under the table, and I quickly dropped my eyes back to my own food.

“It is so nice to have you here,” Garrett told me randomly, changing the entire topic of conversation. He smiled at me, and it seemed genuine. “How do you like the palace so far?”

“Oh, it is not a
palace
, Garrett,” Elora laughed. It wasn’t a real laugh, though. It was the kind of laugh rich people had whenever they talked about new money people. Aurora tittered right along with it, and that quieted Elora down somehow. 

“You’re right. It’s better than a palace,” Garrett said, and Elora smiled demurely. 

“I like it. It’s very nice.” I tried to look happy, but I was afraid to elaborate more.

“Are you adjusting here alright?” Garrett asked.

“Yes, I think so,” I said quietly. “I haven’t been here that long, though.”

“It does take time.” Garrett looked at Willa with affectionate concern. His easy smile returned quickly and he nodded at Finn. “But you’ve got Finn there to help you. He’s an expert at helping the changelings acclimate.”

“I’m not an expert at anything,” Finn said quietly. “I just do my job the best I can.”

“Have you had a designer to come over to make the dress yet?” Aurora asked Elora, taking a polite sip of her wine. It had been a minute since she’d last spoken, so it was time for her to take the conversation back over. “That dress the Princess has on is very lovely, but I can’t imagine that was made specifically for her.”