New to our story? Start with Chapter 1, Briar Rose, here. Catching up? Go back to Chapter 8, Stone Rose, here. Scent Notes: A vase of blooming white roses next to a handmade journal overstuffed with pages. Spicy aromas of clove and cardamom waft through on the breeze from an open window. Once upon a time, there was a woman named Cindy, who was currently in the midst of sighing dramatically. “Why does nobody take me seriously?” It was Friday at 9PM. It was also the earliest she’d been home all week — as a litigator trying to make partner at Tremaine Thomas LLP, ‘early’ evenings like this one were a rarity for her. She’d been drudging her way through for years, slowly working her way up. But it wasn’t easy, as she was earth-shatteringly beautiful, and nobody believed that she had a brain to match. Which was absurd; she had litigated some of the highest profile cases for the firm and, more importantly, WON them. A lot of her colleagues, however, thought she won only because she had a pretty face and juries naturally trusted beautiful people. She knew this to be somewhat true, of course, as the aggressively handsome and hirsute lawyer in a neighboring land had won several cases by somehow having all-female juries who swooned over him and agreed with everything he said. This was before he was disbarred (not for any of his indiscretions, of course; he commingled client funds), and she heard he now ran a popular tavern in a neighboring kingdom that was always full of beautiful women and decorated conspicuously with antlers of all sorts.... Click here to read the rest of the story!