Girls are a poisoned breed. Few would admit they ever thought this way, but one need only cast a lazy glance around the world, in the opinion of the great Lady Dimitrescu, to see it brimming with women afraid of themselves, and always battling for control of their own nature: control of their temper, their appetites, their time, their desires. All threatening to spiral, and ruin them. One need only talk to any given man for mere minutes before seeing he wished the locking away of a girl’s nature, like he wanted a tiger, caged.
Her girls were different, of course. They were worse. Much worse. This was a thing she loved in them. It was needed for her girls to have tempers, appetites, times, and desires as black as coal and twice as incendiary. But just as a woman with viciously effective guard dogs needed them still to come to heel, so too did the Dimitrescu Matriarch have an issue to resolve.
To call the girl in question an issue seemed a joke, if you asked her. A fight? Between Cassandra and Daniela? Over this little thing? Red-haired, scarred, and subjugated, she looked every inch a stray cat that had meowed toward the hearth of this Castle for scraps of pork and the ends of milk. The sound of heels on marble echoes, until everything came to a certain and dangerous stop.
The shadow of the owner of this maid loomed large. Dangerous seconds slipped by. The Lady’s expression is shielded by the shadow of her hat — two glinting eyes sparkle, a haughty chin juts out. That was all that was readable. That, and the hands placed on the lofty lady’s hips.
“So you’re the morsel that’s got my daughters in a frenzy.” A cold scoff forced out of her mouth. The words hang there, a languid, icy accusation. “I had expected more.”
