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The fairies gives me a wide berth anyway. Eina watches them, then clucks at me, “On your monthly?”
“Oh no,is that a problem?” I intone. “Guess I can’t go.”
“They can handle a little blood. Just make sure it doesn’t get on the dress.” She makes a clicking sound at them.
“You can speak to them?”
“I pick things up.”
The fairies chirp to each other rapidly as if quarreling over the details. Ribbons burst into existence and pop away with another flick. Ugh. I’ll be satisfied as long as they don’t make me look split in three; fairies have stubborn tastes.
A breeze swirls around my legs. When I look down, they’ve pulled petals of chiffon out of the air to cocoon me in—layers and layers of it, each one barely more than translucent. Gloves wrap my hands, shoes slip onto my feet, then the rest of the moon-gray fabric settles into the shape of a gown. As I step away from the mirror, the skirts trail like mist, drifting with the slightest movement. Tiny pearls on the low neckline glimmer like dew on a spider’s web.
“Oh,” I say in a stuffed voice, nose still pinched. “I look nice.”
Eina nods, smugly satisfied. She undoes my braid and winds my hair up in some fancy knot. I lift up the mask the fairies conjured. A phoenix stares back at me, its silver wings spread, shining with a rainbow of color as they catch the light. The shoes are, thankfully, practical slippers, so I don’t fall to my death when Eina finally shoos me out of the tower.
I guess I cantryto enjoy the night.
The north end of the palace grounds is empty. No one witnesses me fail to juggle the purse, shawl, and fan also conjured up on my behalf. I end up abandoning all of them on a garden bench. I pass lions and dragons in the courtyard, each in their own splendorous outfits: gravity-challenging skirts, trains that change colors, embroidered scenes that would take a year to sew. One dress looks like a giant cage with birds fluttering inside.
All top-notch glamour. Fairies are indifferent to our mortal jockeying untiltheywant to show off. On a regular day, I can tell who bought their fairy with ambrosia—those people’s hands too soft, their shoes too clean, their attitude too coarse—but in costume, the rich are indistinguishable from real fairy wards. The true winners of the night are the ambrosia merchants.
I join the line to enter the grand ballroom as if I’m just another pretty face seeking my destiny. Once through the ballroom doors, I suck in a breath.
It’s as if the stars have been brought down to the earth.
I’d seen the setup. I know there are mirrors on the wall creating the illusion of the ballroom stretching endlessly. The fog that skims the floor is a chemist’s trick. Overhead, a thousand candles have been carefully placed to replicate the constellations of the night sky. Not real magic, but the palace has done a half-decent job of replicating it. When the clock strikes eleven, the girl arranged to be Cyrus’s true love will walk through the doors—and for a moment, I forget it’s a deception.
A servant guides me toward the central area, where the capital’s population is dancing and dining. Snatches of conversation reach my ear: speculation over the prince’s mask, his true love, and bawdier talk of how many will be debauched tonight and in which dark corners.
“Behind that aloofness, I can see that the prince has a kind soul and a profundity—”
“And he has the body of a god! Sorry, was that blasphemous?”
I’ve been to fancy events before. I can put on a smile. I do it every day. But for the first time in a long time, I feel out of place. Everyone’s glad to be here, their heads thrown back in tipsy gaiety, while I…
I’d like to fill up a plate with food and leave.
I don’t care to talk to anyone here. I don’tlikeanyone here. The gossip bores me; I already know the surprise.
I’ve never been sociable. As a child, it was safer to be quiet, to be unmemorable as a shadow, and I couldn’t speak of my Sight freely lest the wrong person take advantage. When I first arrived at the palace, I was admittedly shy until I learned my way around. Nobles are nice in ways I didn’ttrust. Many of them are related to the royal Lidines in some distant way, and they made me wonder if I was fortunate to have never had a family, so that they couldn’t exploit my position.
The streets made me wary, but palace life frosted my heart in ice. A small part of me hoped that the Fates’ judgment was true—that the best people lived the best lives—but as I settled into my duties, I accepted that no such hierarchy exists. People are cruel even when they have everything—more so, for fear of losing what they have. How petty my pickpocketing seemed compared to the crimes of the wealthy: merchants who flouted regulations, lords who struck deals that were rotten before the ink dried, a Council scheming behind closed doors.
Still, they came to me, unworried and unashamed, despite knowing what I could see in my threads. I learned at last what it took to make a kingdom prosperous, and it had nothing to do with goodness.
I’ve made my own bargains, my own allowances, but I can’t laugh along in this company. Not without grimacing.
Sighing, I look for the largest crowd. That’s where Camilla will be—with the wine.
It only takes a minute to locate the princess lounged atop a spare table like a throne, surrounded by no fewer than two dozen girls. A pair of iridescent wings sprout from her velvet blue suit. Her mask of peacock feathers is as wide as I am tall. She beckons toward me and, loath to ruin her ball, I melt the gloom from my face.
“Cyrus and I have a bet about who can woo more before the night is over,” Camilla says, tipping a glass of wine ontothe lips of a masked cat. Traditionally, girls kiss a trinket and give it to those they favor. The princess is sitting on a trove that would make a dragon envious.
“Is Cyrus even here yet?”
Camilla points up. On the second-floor landing of the ballroom, a gent in a golden fox mask leans over the railing. From the sound of the crowd’s gasps, others have noticed, too. Cyrus’s mask isn’t much of a secret after I whispered about it in my readings. The goldsmith’s apprentice blabbed about a special commission last week, too, and every newsletter had details by the next day.
