Bryce

I found the crate that I was looking for and pulled out a box filled with packets of no-rinse shampoo I had ordered a few months ago. It advertised that it would work with curly hair, and at the time it had seemed like a suitable compromise while I was stuck on the research station for days at a time.

I had been disappointed with the results, but all things considered, I was more than willing to give it another shot.

It took a little too much effort to pull the band out of my hair and the curls dropped in clumps down my back and shoulders.

I started combing through the mess with my fingers, but flinched every time I pulled at a particularly bad knot. The whole thing was getting frustrating.

There was no way that I could get through this mess. I still didn’t know when Teolix’s messenger was going to get here, and I needed to look presentable.

The blood, sweat, and dirt that had dried into my hair was going to make me look like I was desperate. Which was probably close to the truth, but looking like it would make it impossible to negotiate.

I gave up on the idea of trying to wash my hair and started digging through the boxes, frantically tossing aside their contents. That must have worried Thea, because I could feel her approaching from behind me. I ignored her and kept digging until I felt a hand on my shoulder.

“Bryce, what’s wrong?” she asked. Her tone was calm in a way that cut at the tension that had been building in my body. I took a deep breath and slowly exhaled, trying to pull my thoughts together before explaining.

“I’m looking for scissors or a knife or just literally anything sharp enough that I can cut my gods damned hair.” My voice was surprisingly shaky.

Thea nodded and caught my eyes with her own. She maintained eye contact and kept her voice steady.

“That’s fine. We’ll find you something and worse case, I have a few knives that we can use if that’s what we need to do.”

“Okay,” it was more difficult than I expected to reply. “We can’t look weak in front of Teolix, not if we’re going to convince him to give us a ship.”

Thea smiled, but the look of concern didn’t leave her eyes. “We won’t look weak, because we aren’t weak, are we, Bryce?”

We weren’t weak. Actually, we were pretty damned far from weak.

I was a skilled and powerful arcane practitioner, and with my mana flowing through her, Thea had pretty good odds at being able to kill Teolix on her own.

We were powerful. Scary powerful even.

But I didn’t feel like it, not at that moment. I felt dirty, and I felt miserable and I felt frustrated and I felt tired and I felt hungry and oh gods, did I feel hungry.

I felt so many fucking things, but powerful? I felt so far from powerful.

I was feeling helpless.

I felt so helpless for so long that I forgot I was even feeling that way. I had been rebelling against the corporation in tiny ways over the years. Redirecting payments to hidden personal accounts, ordering useless equipment that I didn’t need, lying about discoveries and submitting false reports. I had been doing it all to maintain some semblance of control over my life.

Then Daelin, Aiden, and Ava drove home exactly how helpless I really was.

“Bryce, are we weak?” Thea still held my eyes in hers as she repeated the question.

I shook my head as a response. It was only then that I noticed the tears that were cascading down my cheeks. I had no doubt that they were completing the desperate damsel look I had been so desperate to erase. I barely managed a self-pitying chuckle at that thought.

“You don’t actually want to cut your hair, do you?”

I didn’t, I really didn’t. I liked my hair and if I had to cut it to clear out the clumps of dirt and blood, then I would have to cut it really short. Like down to the scalp short.

I’ve always felt like the curly mess was part of my identity. Sure, it was annoying to deal with, and it would grow back eventually, but it was a piece of who I was and I already had so much of myself taken from me.

Thea smiled and a sense of relief seemed to pass over her when I didn’t answer. She finally broke eye contact and walked back over to the box of shitty shampoo, where she grabbed a handful of the small packets and set them in a pile on a still closed box. She then pulled a much shorter box over near it before summoning a towel and a few water bottles from her ring.

“Here, take a seat and let’s see if I can’t fix those lovely curls. Don’t expect any miracles until we get you in a proper shower, but maybe we can have you feeling even a small fraction of the bad-ass bitch you are. Which will be way more than enough to intimidate some stupid dragon.”

I moved over to where she had indicated and sat down. She sat on the box behind me and draped a towel over my shoulders, presumably to stop the tank top I was wearing from getting soaked by the runoff from my hair.

“You seriously have a towel in there?”

She pulled my head back and looked at me in the eyes before speaking with an overly serious voice.

“I never go anywhere without my towel. That’s like the absolute basics of extra-planar travel.”

“Sorry, I must’ve skipped that class.” I replied with a smile at her upside-down face. She just huffed and pushed my head back forward with more than a little force.

“I doubt you’ve skipped a single class in your life, princess. Don’t even think about lying to me either; because I can tell.”

“Is that a devil thing? Being able to tell when somebody’s lying?”

Thea was pouring one of the shampoo packets into a water bottle, but answered, regardless.

“Not really, it’s more of a ‘this devil’ thing. It was part of dad’s domain and I kept it after I fell, but it’s not entirely what it used to be; now I can only tell if somebody is lying directly about something specific.”

“So Daelin…”

“He didn’t lie, not directly, at least not to me. Well, not about anything important enough to call him out on,” Thea explained. “Everybody lies about little things that don’t actually matter and I usually just ignore the small stuff. It lets me actually keep friends.”

“So you didn’t know?”

“No, I didn’t know. That’s why I asked you to be sure. I hadn’t suspected anything and usually I can pick up on something, but I sensed nothing with him.”

“I was sure.”

“I know you were. Now lean your head back and I can get started.”

I did as she asked, leaning my head back as far as I could while still sitting up straight. She started from the bottom of my hair, wetting it with the shampoo-water bottle before using her fingers to work out the worst of the knots and then she would gently pull a wide-toothed comb through the less tangled portions.

Before long, I had closed my eyes and was basking in the treatment. I couldn’t remember the last time somebody had washed my hair for me. None of my exes had known what to do with it, and going to a spa wasn’t something that had really ever appealed to me.

“You’ve done this before.”

It was more a statement than a question and it came out as much closer to a moan than I would like to admit. If Thea hadn’t realized how much I was enjoying it, well, at that point, she definitely did.

“I have,” the smugness was apparent in her voice. But I wouldn’t hold it against her, she had earned it. “A few of the young ones in my household have curly hair like yours, and they like to play in the mud.”

“Demon children?” I asked.

“A few, but there are a lot of mortals living in the lower planes. It’s pretty common for them to join a household for protection when they have nowhere else to go.”

I think I must’ve mumbled some sort of response, but at that point Thea had made it up to my scalp where she was massaging out the grime that had dried around my roots and I was entirely vacant.

Time passed far too quickly, and it was late afternoon by the time Thea finished with my hair. She even dried it with a combination of her heated hands and the towel she was using.

I pulled my hair back into a ponytail. There were still a few tangles Thea couldn’t get out, but it was in a much better state than it had been this morning.

“Thank you, Thea. If I had to cut my hair, I would have regretted it for years.”

I handed her the now dry towel, and she beamed a smile back.

“Don’t worry about it. I think what you really needed was just to decompress a bit. It’s been a stressful day.”

Thea took a step forward, holding the towel between us with both hands. She grinned up at me before building on her last statement. “Although, if you’re looking for a way to repay me.”

I mimicked her step forward, closing the distance between us and lowered my face to be a few centimeters from hers.

“Did you have something in mind?” I asked.

At this distance, I could feel her smile more than see it. Her reply felt warm against my lips.

“I do apologize, ladies. I had not realized that my presence would be interrupting such a heartwarming moment.”

I sighed and Thea growled as we broke the kiss to turn towards the accented drawl of the dragon that stood alone in my warehouse.