Here, now, drifting along a river of chocolate beneath a sky that belonged to no world she knew, with her sister on one side and Rosavyn on the other and the whole of Dreamland shimmering around them—the ache shifted. Softened. Rearranged itself into something else.
She washere. She had seenthis. Not the masquerade, not a glittering ballroom full of fae nobility, but this. A place so extraordinary that surely even the Rowanwood Masquerade, for all its splendor, could not quite compare. And from now on, whenever that familiar longing surfaced—the wistfulness that arrived each year when the masks emerged and the gowns were fitted and the world she was not part of dressed itself in gold—she would have this. A chocolate river in a pearl boat under an impossible sky. And that, she thought, settling the knowledge quietly into her chest, was more than enough.
“Now,” Rosavyn said, straightening as though consulting an invisible itinerary. “What else. Oh! Have you heard? The Stardust Night Market is coming early this year.”
“Oh, yes, I had heard that,” Charlotte said. She looked at Lucie. “Not too long after your launch, I believe. Though I cannot recall if it is before or after the masquerade.”
“My launch,” Lucie repeated, and felt the familiar small clutch at the word. The showpiece, the honey light, the dozens of fae guests watching, the future of The Honeycomb resting on her performance. She breathed it down.Not here. Not tonight.Tonight she was in a boat on a river of chocolate, and everything else could wait on the far side of the dream.
“And I’ve heard,” Charlotte went on, dropping her voice in the way that always meant something deliciously improper was coming, “that there is an elf artist traveling with the market this year. From the far continent. Doing body art.Discreetly.”
“Oh?” Rosavyn said. “Tattoos?”
“Indeed,” Charlotte said with a conspiratorial nod.
“An elf?” Lucie asked. “Are you certain?”
“Yes. I do realize, dear sister, that they so rarely travel across the sea that you once believed they did not even exist. You even called them?—”
“Oh, do not repeat it,” Lucie groaned, pressing her hands over her face.
“—dark elves.” Charlotte spoke over her, eyes dancing.
“You believed the very same!” Lucie insisted, hands dropping to her lap. “So you have no business—it was Father. Remember! Those ridiculous stories he told us to keep us from wandering past the end of the lane after sunset. Dark elves who would carry us off across the sea. We were convinced he had invented them.”
“Well.” Charlotte folded her hands with great primness. “Thank goodness we have grown a little better educated since then. I even know all about the custom of the markings now. Mrs Penridge’s eldest saw the artist several weeks ago, a few towns over, and he was telling Theo all about it. It is not simply decorative. It records something true about the bearer. The artist will sit with you, and look at you, and ask what truth you wish to carry.”
“What truth you wish to carry,” Lucie repeated quietly.
“In your skin. Forever.” Charlotte’s eyes had gone wide and bright with the romance of it. “A vow, or a grief, or a name, or some great thing you have survived, or simply something that reflects a part of your own nature. Is that not truly beautiful?”
“We should do it,” Rosavyn said.
A silence in the boat.
“What?” said Lucie.
“A tattoo. We should have it done. Each of us.” Rosavyn had goneluminous with the idea. “Somewhere hidden, naturally. Where only a husband would ever have cause to find it.”
“Yes!” Charlotte seized upon it at once, as Lucie had known with sinking certainty she would. “Somewhere hidden. Oh, that is the most splendid idea.”
Lucie thought, with no warning at all, of Kazrian.
She had not meant to, but the wordswhere only a husband would find itarrived in her head trailing an image she had absolutely not summoned, and her face went so instantly hot that she was fairly certain she could have set a glaze on her own cheek and watched it caramelize.
Do not. Do not think of him. Think of anything else at all.
“Imagine Henry’s face,” Charlotte said with a wicked little giggle, “should you reveal something so deliciously exotic on your wedding night.”
“Charlotte! We are not even—” The words tumbled out far too loud, and a couple in a passing boat turned to look. Lucie lowered her voice and her burning face along with it. “Henry and I. There is no courtship, there is—nothing of the kind.” She did not add,and besides, I was thinking of someone else entirely.
“As for mine,” Rosavyn went on, “it shall be a secret no one else shall ever know, since marriage is no longer part of my future.”
“Do not be so hasty disposing of the husband,” said Charlotte. “Perhaps Lord Grayfield—” and here she leaned forward with a shameless waggle of her eyebrows “—would prove unexpectedly appreciative of a small, hidden tattoo.”
Rosavyn laughed outright. “That remains exceedingly unlikely. Now.” She looked at Lucie. “Where would you say is the best hidden spot for it?”
“You cannot truly be in earnest about this.”
