Chapter 24: +Chapter 24+

Mari found herself sitting in King Kade’s shirt hours later. She told herself that there was nothing else to wear which was a lie as she could have worn a bathrobe.

But she soon came to find that as much as the owner of the scent terrified her, his scent was grounding, it helped her focus on the moment. Her life had changed so much that it was scary, she didn’t know what the future held for her and she could die at any time.

Mari had tried to be so brave this whole time, ever since she woke up to her entire life burning down, she had sucked it up and fought to survive.

Now that she was no longer thinking of escaping she had gotten a moment of respite. She had already given into her fate from the night before, even when she was trapped in a fiery nightmare. The fact that she was a witch had branded itself deep into her.

Mari laid on top of the sheets and stared up at the dark ceilings, her dark hair splayed out on the bed. She found herself thinking of Bert’s Diner and all of her coworkers there. She wondered if they were worried about her absence or if they were happy to have her carted away like her neighbors.

There was no need to wonder about Dana or what the sour old lady would be doing because she knew exactly what she would do, exactly what she had done every time someone quit out of the blue. She would yell about their absence for a few minutes and never speak of them again. It was almost like people who were no longer useful to her ceased to exist in her eyes.

Mari really hoped she would be able to fall asleep, anything to make the time till she would have to meet up with King Kade passed faster but her thoughts were a whirlwind. She couldn’t settle them down enough to fall asleep.

And considering that she had slept early the night before, it was no surprise that she couldn’t sleep. Mari was used to sleeping out of pure exhaustion but recently, other than mental exhaustion, she hadn’t really been doing much. Short sprints in the wild didn’t count.

She sat upright so fast she nearly gave herself whiplash at the sound of knocking. It wasn’t noon yet so she wasn’t too worried about the possibility of King Kade showing up.

This time, there was a uniformed maid at the door pushing in an entire mobile rack of clothes into her room. Mari could only watch on in silence as the maid bowed before proceeding to carefully fold and arrange all of the clothes she had brought inside the wardrobe.

*‘Was all that for her?’* Mari had never had so many clothes before, it felt unreal, like she was watching someone else live their life through their eyes.

She waited for the maid to leave before slowly getting off the bed, her depressive thoughts about her life easily forgotten. Mari stopped in front of the wardrobe, wondering if she was actually allowed to do this. She was just a classy prisoner after all but still a prisoner all the same.

But she wasn’t snooping though, she was just picking out what she would wear to learn to fight in an hour. She opened the wardrobe at the same time that the uniformed maid that had just left opened the door again, making her jump in fright.

“I apologize for not knocking, Miss,” The maid apologized with a curtsy, “I just wanted to bring your shoes.”

Mari listened to the maid explain herself with a sheepish expression. She didn’t know why she felt guilty about looking at clothes that had literally been bought for her and brought to her ‘room’ by a maid acknowledging that it was all hers.

“It’s fine, it’s fine, I’m just a little jumpy,” She reassured the sweet maid.

“Would you like my help in dressing you up, Miss?” The uniformed maid offered politely.

Mari immediately whipped her head from side to side, she wasn’t interested in getting dressed up for any reason around either King. “Oh there’s no need, I’m going to be fighting after all, dresses and make-up aren’t very suitable.”

The maid had a very visible look of confusion on her face, trying to figure out what the King’s lady was going on about talking about fighting. Was it maybe… *ah* Her face reddened as she realized what kind of fighting she was referring to. “I’ll be uh… I’ll be away if you need me…” The maid said absently, her words not making much sense.

Mari didn’t notice the seed of confusion she had sown, her eyes fixed on the rack of heels and thankfully, combat boots that were just brought in. There were shoes of almost every kind, sandals, boots, heeled boots… Would she ever get the chance to wear them all?

The clothes in the wardrobe had more in store for her. It might seem shallow of her that she would jump on clothes gotten for her by someone that had threatened to kill her but at this point in her life where she was living every day with one foot in the grave, she deserved to be shallow.

The time ran by as she ogled her new clothes; she arranged her shoes all by herself because the maid had run off in a hurry but she didn’t mind, her current living conditions were already such an improvement from her past - the threat of death didn’t count.

She got out the clothes provided for her to train with, she couldn’t very well learn to harness her witch fire in a fur coat unless she was about to become a fire hazard. There were sports tops and booty shorts, and that was all the variation she got. Just who had been in charge of picking her clothes?

She could admit that it was practical to wear less clothing while training with fire but wasn’t this overdoing it a bit?

She had to get dressed though so she took off King Kade’s shirt and got dressed, putting her hair in a braid to put it out of the way. When she was all done, she hurried to the floor-length mirror to do a little twirl only for her door to swing open.