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“Come, my Princess,” Tansy said coaxingly. “Let’s get you dressed. The ceremony starts in less than an hour.”
Sighing, I agreed. I reminded myself that I had a plan—a reason I was entering into this wedding without complaint instead of doing my best to run away. I had considered escape, you know—of course I had. I thought I might be able to pass in the mortal realm if I dyed my hair with witch hazel and black oak bark and concealed the pointed tips of my ears. But I had chosen not to.
I had a plan for Liath Blackthorn, my husband-to-be and murderer of my beloved older brother. A plan I meant to carry out at the earliest opportunity.
Once we were married and he had taken me away to his palace in the Unseelie Court, I would wait until he was off his guard and then I would kill him. I might die myself in the process but I had decided that I didn’t care.
I would have my revenge for Quill’s death, one way or another.
“Come on, let’s get you into this.” Tansy’s soft, coaxing voice brought me back from my murderous thoughts to the present—my wedding day.
“Yes, all right,” I agreed. I had bathed earlier in water scented with primroses and lilies and Tansy had brushed my hair until it shimmered like midnight blue silk. Now I allowed her to unwind the drying sheet I was wearing and help me into the virginal white undergarments which would go under the wedding dress.
First the lacy underpants, made specially for me from the gossamer of the giant albino spiders which spun only for the fairy seamstress who kept them. They barely hid the tiny patch of midnight blue curls on my mound and did nothing at all to make me feel thinner for they were cut low and the tiny strings at the sides seemed to emphasize rather than hide my wide hips.
Then a special garment which Tansy had commissioned just for me.
“It is a kind of under-halter for your breasts, my Princess,” she had explained when she first showed it to me. It was made of a sturdier silk with whalebone stays that lifted my large, full breasts proudly as though they were resting on a shelf. It did not, however, cover my too-large nipples.
“Never mind,” said Tansy, when I pointed this out. “You still have the underslip and then the dress itself to cover everything.”
As she spoke, she pulled the long, silky underslip over my head. It was a kind of sheath made of close-fitting silk which started at my shoulders and ended at my ankles. The silky white material clung to my curves almost as though to show them off and clearly showed my nipples, poking against the thin fabric. It had long, flowing sleeves that came down to brush the backs of my hands and a slit up the center of its skirt, presumably to allow me freedom of movement.
The top of it was cut in a low V-neckline so that jewelry could be worn with it. A special necklace that a mother might pass down to her daughter, for instance. I had no such pendant to wear, however. If my mother had set aside anything for me, my father had never given it to me. He probably thought I didn’t deserve any part of her, since my birth had killed her.
I wished now that I had a living mother to help me get dressed on my wedding day—to love and care for me and possibly to cry because she was losing her little girl. I wished also for Quillian who had always been so kind and supportive. But I had no one but Tansy and though she was an excellent maid and I considered her a friend, she was not family.
“And now for the dress itself,” Tansy said brightly. “Let’s see what the seamstress has done, shall we?”
She lifted the mountain of frothy white fabric over my head and helped me find the armholes to get into it. Then she pulled it down and straightened the long train and pointed me towards the tall mirror in the corner of my room.
I generally avoided the mirror—I did not like to be reminded of my ugliness—but now I supposed I had better look to make sure the dress was straight. And so I looked bravely into the shiny, reflective surface.
The dress was hideous.
“Oh my,” Tansy said weakly as we stared at the mirror together.
I have said before that my seamstress, who was accustomed to making sylph-like dresses for the other High Born Fae maidens of the Seelie Court, often tried to make my clothing larger to hide my unsightly curves. But in this instance, she had gone far overboard.
The dress was a monstrous confection—almost smock-like in its volume. It strove to hide the fact that I had any curves at all by covering me completely in yards and yards of white fabric worked with delicate lace and frilly bows. It was the ugliest thing I had ever seen and it made my own deficiencies even more glaring even as it sought to hide them.
