Second Night
ROYAL LOVERS’ TIFF? was the headline of the morning’s gossip sheet.
No one was sure who wrote them—Rose thought it was enterprising pixies with a handpress.
Lord Bloodthorn made a point to magically set the papers on fire whenever he saw them, but the ladies of the household had long learned how to disguise them to avoid this.
Acantha had her nose buried in the report—disguised as an improving work of history—when I came across her later that morning. She was muttering to herself.
“How are you, Cinders?” Lady Bloodthorn asked me with a smile. There was an unusual solicitousness in her manner, and I wondered if it was driven by guilt about disowning me in casual conversation last night.
“Fine, my lady,” I said, in direct opposition to my actual emotional state. My nerves hadn’t stopped twisting since Tāwhiri’s outrageous proposal. Had the Lord of the Golden Wood really asked me to marry him?
Acantha flung the paper sideways with a sound of disgust. “This is nonsense!”
I picked it up and began to grin. Apparently, I—or rather “a mysterious masked lady” who’d appeared at the ball—was Tāwhiri’s old flame, come to publicly show my displeasure at his planning to marry somebody else.
I couldn’t help scanning the article for details of the rest of his evening after I’d left.
He had danced only once with each of the scions of the twelve houses and excused himself after that duty was discharged.
“Who was the masked lady?” I couldn’t resist asking.
“No one knows,” Acantha said. “Lowborn, clearly, behaving in such a way. Probably Tāwhiri told her he was ashamed to see her and that’s why she left so dramatically.”
“He didn’t look ashamed,” Rose murmured.
Acantha scowled at her.
“Now, now, girls!” Lady Bloodthorn soothed.
“It matters not. I’m sure we shan’t see her again.
It was vulgar of her to come, of course, but I’m sure that’s all done with now.
” She got up in a determined sort of way.
“We shall make sure the king’s attention falls where it should, next time.
Go and get ready. We are going to the Butterfly Market. ”
Acantha brightened and bounded to her feet. The Butterfly Market was where fashions were bought and sold, and the wares ranged from beautiful-but-unmagical gowns to elaborate personalised glamours to everything in between.
Rose burrowed defensively into the chair. “I already have a gown for Second Night.”
“Oh, come on, Rosie,” Acantha coaxed. “We can go to the book-lenders afterwards. And don’t pretend you’re above the lure of shiny jewels; I saw you sighing over the display last time.”
Rose gave in with good-natured grumbling and got to her feet.
I hovered uncertainly, looking to my stepmother for guidance.
Sometimes she took me with them, to carry their purchases, but I didn’t mind it.
Well, not much. Being with them in public made me feel as if I truly were part of the family.
But perhaps Lady Bloodthorn would not want to be seen in public with a mortal pet so close to the ball.
It wasn’t as if I would be shopping for myself, ball or not.
My clothes never came from the same fine dressmakers as my stepsisters.
Once a year, the local seamstress took my measurements along with the servants’ and made us all sensible garments in modest fabrics.
I was grateful to be so provided for, wasn’t I?
It’s not as if you’d have any use for fripperies, Cinders, would you?
Such a sensible girl, not shallow about such things.
After wearing the tūī’s midnight green dress, I now knew I was indeed hopelessly shallow about fripperies. There was a hurt there, deep as a bruise, but I didn’t want to press on it too badly.
“Well, go and get ready,” Lady Bloodthorn told me after an infinitesimal pause. “You want to help your sisters, don’t you?”
A strange conflict of emotions welled up in me. “Yes,” I said, and didn’t know whether I was lying or not. It must be nice for fae, to always be sure about such things.
But before any of us could leave the room, Lord Bloodthorn appeared in the doorway. He was smiling, and I wished I could disappear into the walls, but his gaze didn’t fall on me; his attention was all for Acantha.
“I have brought you a gift, my dear,” he said to her, his smile sharp enough to cut. He held a slim wooden box.
Acantha took it from him, and I craned my neck to see its contents without success. Acantha smiled at Lord Bloodthorn, though I could see the hint of confusion in her eyes. “Thank you, my lord. They’re beautiful.”
“Allow me,” he said, revealing the contents of the box to be twin gold bracelets in a pattern of leaves and thorns I was intimately familiar with, having climbed up the tree they were based on to rescue the king. Or to fake-rescue him, I supposed, with bitter amendment.
Acantha did an admirable job of keeping composed as he clicked each bracelet into place, even though I knew she was just as puzzled as the rest of us. Lord Bloodthorn was not given to random acts of generosity.
She gave a sharp gasp as the second one went on, pulling her wrists away from him and scrabbling for the clasp. The blood drained from her face.
“What—” she asked, sounding frightened in a way that she never did.
“These will keep you from disappointing the king tonight,” Lord Bloodthorn told her. “Do not bother trying to remove them; I have the only key. But then, why would you want to? Your claws are of no use to this House. Do not fail me again.” He gave another dagger smile before he turned and left.
Acantha stared down at her hands, spreading her knuckles over and over in a way that usually resulted in her golden claws extending. Her fingernails remained pink and blunt.
AS USUAL, I KEPT three paces behind my family in the Butterfly Market.
My stepmother and sisters were all pretending that everything was painfully, cheerfully fine.
They chattered with brittle-edged brightness, about the weather and the wares and the people we passed, as if filling up all the spaces with fluff would leave no room for anything serious to exist. Like the fact that Lord Bloodthorn had just casually and cruelly bound his own daughter right in front of us.
Well, he’d done that once already, hadn’t he, and we all pretended the dawn-curse was fine, didn’t we? But I’d always assumed my sisters were safe from him. Safe-ish. To find that even Acantha could suffer his wrath made me want to both break something and weep.
The market was even busier than usual—clearly other members of the court had had the same idea.
We ran into the same Sweetgrass fae who had sneered at the idea of humans last night, coming out of a glamourist’s shop.
They had their own hopeful scion in tow, a thin-legged man with mesmerisingly perfect skin and startling purple eyes—his grass-name was Lavender, I remembered.
Even with all that, he had nothing on Acantha’s beauty, a fact that clearly cheered Lady Bloodthorn immensely as she haughtily acknowledged the pair.
“They bought a glamour for him,” Acantha said in a low voice after they had departed. “He had a green cast to his skin last night.”
“I can bestow pure sidhe beauty on anyone,” the shop’s proprietor broke in behind us. His gaze flicked over Acantha, and he bowed his head. “Not that you need it, my lady.”
Only I noticed how Acantha’s fingers curled reflexively before she stopped herself. The bracelets gleamed. Hot anger rose up in me all over again, and I pressed it down as I’d become so practiced in doing.
The shopkeeper’s gaze had moved on to Rose and Lady Bloodthorn’s horns. He didn’t acknowledge my presence at all. “I have some glorious hair enchantments in stock, if your companions would care to try them.”
Lady Bloodthorn said that they would, a hand sneaking up to rub at her left horn before she could stop herself. Acantha and I were left to explore the depths of the shop while Lady Bloodthorn and Rose tried on different styles.
I eyed a wall of different-sized scissors labelled “enchantment shears”.
“Shall we try them on the bracelets?” I asked Acantha in an undertone.
Acantha was bending over a display of brooches glamoured to wink like eyes.
She raised her gaze briefly to the wall of scissors, and for a moment there was a spark of something wild in her eyes, but then it was gone.
She gave a minute shake of her head. “I am not going to try anything, and you should not think of it either,” she said.
“But Lord Bloodthorn—” I began hotly.
“—Our father is acting in the best interests of our house. I never intended to be anything other than the perfect sidhe bride until after the wedding in any case. The bracelets don’t change that.” Acantha’s tone declared the discussion now closed.
“Do you even like him?” I asked, unable to leave it alone.
She frowned. “Who?”
“The king.”
She shrugged and opened another drawer in the brooch cabinet. “He’s handsome, powerfully magical, and rules the Golden Wood. What’s not to like?”
I bit my lip. “But if he weren’t? What if he were a, a humble woodworker or something? Would you still want to marry him?”
She laughed at me. “Oh, Cinders. Of course I’m not going to marry a woodworker.” Her eyes grew wicked, and she checked to make certain her mother wasn’t listening. “Even if I might dally with a handsome one. After I’m married, of course.”
I blushed.
WHEN MY FAMILY LEFT for Second Night, I retreated to my attic with mixed feelings.
Another dress lay on my bed, blue this time, alongside a silver mask once again decorated with tūī feathers.
It was hard to read the feathers now as anything other than the public statement they were, of the king casually laying claim to me. The arrogance of it ruffled me.