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Before my eyes, I’m transforming into someone even I could mistake for a noble.
Staring at my reflection, my mouth goes a bit dry. A sour flavor lingers on my tongue—I choked down another cup of pipe fleece tea a half hour ago.
I turn away from the mirror toward Esmae. “Can I help you with your hair? I don’t know any complicated styles, but I’ll do my best.”
She smiles back at me. “Thank you. I actually like the way you have yours usually—the broader loops with some of it left loose along your shoulders. That would be perfect with this dress.”
“I think I can manage that.”
It’s a damn sight easier pinning whorls of hair when I can see them right in front of me. I fix the strands in place carefully around the tie of her eye patch, hoping I don’t repay my schoolmate with a hairstyle that’ll tumble apart halfway through the dancing.
“It’s nice, you know,” Esmae says abruptly when I’m about halfway through my work. “I mean… I haven’t really had a friend here before. Not someone I could get ready for the balls with and that sort of thing.”
The admission jabs right through the center of me. I’ve never had a friend like that ever in my entire life, unless you count the kids my sister and I used to ramble around with when I was small enough to wear smocks.
Imagining I could be wrapped up in the warmth of Ewalin’s family wasn’t anything like actually having that company. And I can hardly call my grudging allies “friends” even if they saw my uninvited passenger as one.
“You made an exception for me?” I say.
Esmae laughs lightly. “I guess I’ve always been so focused on my studies, I didn’t see the point. But maybe that was silly of me. And… I feel more at ease with you than I usually do with the other students here. It never seems like you’re waiting for an ideal moment to get one up on me.”
I suppose that’s true, even if I am putting on a totally false front about who I am. Her openness leaves me momentarily off-balance.
I offer a little honesty of my own, as much as I can. “I haven’t really had good friends either. I’m grateful you’ve looked out for me.”
Julita makes a faint gagging sound in the back of my head, and I resist the urge to smack her through my new fancy hairdo.
“Anyway,” I add, “there’s nothing wrong with studying. I’ve always believed that the more you can learn, the more you can do.”
Esmae lets out another laugh. “I just want to be able to do enough to impress the palace staff. There’sgotto be a position for me there. I don’t have any familial connections to give me a leg up.”
I grimace around a twinge of guilt. “Stavros pushed me awfully hard to make sure I could handle being his assistant.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean—I wasn’t thinking of you specifically. I wouldn’t be looking to land a job as assistant to a professor anyway.”
As I step away from her, she sighs and peers at her reflection approvingly. “I want to meet all the people coming in and out of court, travel with the royal family when they move around the provincial palaces, see everything I can of the continent. I never ventured more than a few counties over before I came to the college.”
“I’m sure you’ll manage it,” I say. If nothing else, her determination rings through every word.
She closes her eye just for a second and then shoots me a tighter smile over her shoulder. “I’d better. If I end up having to go home, I know my parents are just waiting to arrange a marriage to whichever blustering merchant in the area they most want to appease at that particular moment.”
Ugh. I offer a little shudder in sympathy. “You can definitely do better than that.”
“I’m getting there. Is this what you want for the rest of your life? Work at the college? Even if your family didn’t want to spare you before, now that you’re here it wouldn’t be much trouble to enroll in classes as well. You could aim for anything.”
If only she knew.
I shrug as if the topic isn’t of all that much importance to me. “I’m glad to be where I am now. It’s a good position. But I’m not married to it if a better opportunity comes along.”
The vague answer feels slimy as it slips off my tongue, with all the things I’m hiding.
Esmae doesn’t seem to notice. “I suppose that’s a healthy outlook.”
She brandishes a stick and a couple of containers of powder she was carrying with her. “Now let’s see what a little makeup can do for you.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Is that really necessary when we’re all wearing masks?”
The nobles apparently prefer to cover their faces for a little plausible deniability about whatever hijinks they expect to get up to while they party. I guess that means Alek will fit in better than usual.
