Chapter 16 #2
She was here. She had seen this. 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 gone luminous 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 words where only a husband would find it arrived 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.”
“Why not?” asked Rosavyn.
“Because one does not simply—”
“It is a rite of sisterly fellowship,” Charlotte declared.
“It is not a rite of anything,” Lucie said with a laugh, “and you had not even heard of it until Mrs Penridge’s son told Theo about it a few days ago.”
“Ah, but Rosavyn is determined.” Charlotte spread her hands, the picture of regret at being forced to so unavoidable a conclusion.
“And for reasons of safety and propriety, we cannot allow her to go alone. So at least one of us must accompany her. Which means, really, we should both go. And since we will be there too, we shall simply have to have it done.”
Lucie opened her mouth to observe that this was not, by any measure she knew, how logic worked.
And then closed it again. Because the trouble was that here, on this river made of chocolate, under this sky that had no business existing, the world had unhitched itself from its usual moorings, and somehow, in the process, had taken her usual careful, sensible objections with it.
“Oh, very well,” she heard herself say.
Charlotte clapped her hands.
Rosavyn made a sound of pure triumph and added, “Wonderful! It shall be your secret celebration, Lucie, after The Honeycomb launches. A little bee, perhaps. Or a small honeycomb pattern. Something only you and—” she caught herself, but the wickedness won, and she gave Lucie a look that was entirely too knowing “—whomever will ever know is there.”
Lucie’s face, which had only just begun to cool, betrayed her all over again. If only you knew, she thought, profoundly grateful that Rosavyn did not know.
In the boat beside them, a gentleman in a fine coat was leaning over the side of his vessel and dragging two fingers slowly through the surface of the river.
“Oh!” Rosavyn straightened. “I did not tell you—the chocolate in the river is real. Edible. You can taste it!”
Charlotte was already tugging her gloves off and reaching over the side.
“Is that entirely hygienic?” Lucie asked.
“It is dream chocolate,” Rosavyn said, as though this settled the matter entirely. “Dream chocolate has no hygiene concerns. It is magical. This is known.”
Charlotte had already brought one finger to her lips and made a sound of profound satisfaction that settled the debate. “Oh, Lucie, you simply must taste this. It is surely a professional matter for you.”
With a laugh, Lucie gave in and removed her gloves.
She leaned over the edge of the little pearl boat and dipped her fingers into a river of chocolate beneath an impossible sky, and tasted it.
And it was indeed extraordinary. Dark and silken and not too sweet, with something floral at the back of it that bloomed rather than faded. She tasted it again just to be certain.
“Well,” she said. “That is rather magnificent.”
The boat carried them on along the winding chocolate river, past dark gleaming banks and beneath low-hanging branches that trailed candy blossoms into the current.
Above them, little umbrellas continued to float away, spinning and growing smaller until they were only points of light among the stars.
And then sweets began to rain down again, in every color and shape, and this time they did not turn to chocolate pebbles.
Charlotte caught one in her cupped hands.
Rosavyn caught three. Lucie caught one against her knee and another in her lap, and soon all three of them were comparing colors and trading shapes and arguing over who had found the finest one, and laughing so hard their stomachs ached and the little boat rocked beneath them.
And the weight of everything Lucie had been carrying for weeks—the launch, the showpiece, Henry, the question of Kazrian that she would not name—loosened its grip, just for a moment, and drifted up and away like one of those little umbrellas, disappearing into the sky.