Chapter Thirty-Six #2
Yellower. A tiny chip. A brown mote.
It’s not much to go on.
“Can we get you anything in the meantime?” Titus asks. “Food? Another blanket?”
“I could use something sweet,” she says. “To fuel me as I sneak into the preserve.”
At my confused look, Syla adds, “I can cast illusions, just like Mother. They help me hide. But only for a minute or so. And
I have to time it just right.”
“You’ll be able to do a lot better with practice,” Titus assures her. “It’s barely been a year.”
They both look to me. The silence between us is awkward until I realize what’s being asked of me. “I can make things cold,”
I blurt. “Or even ice. A Gift for a Gift.”
Syla grins. “A Gift for a Gift.”
There. I have exchanged Gifts with the high princess of the Surat Confederacy. What would Ma think if she knew?
It hits me all of a sudden: It doesn’t matter what she thinks. It matters what I think. And I think my Gift is more powerful and useful than Ma ever imagined. A Gift that is better shared.
Titus and I remain in the tunnel with Syla until late afternoon. Titus catches her up on everything that happened during our
journey. Syla tells me the tale of Titus first learning to use his longbow and shooting through a palace window, terrorizing
the laundry staff.
Inevitably, the sky turns coral and the moons begin to peek over the horizon, heralding the coming festivities. Titus rises
to his feet, saying, “It’s time.”
The dressing room is unoccupied when we return, but we don’t wait long before Master Mehuda marches in, followed by a bevy
of young men laden with so many packages and so much paraphernalia that I can’t make heads or tails of any of it.
“Screen, there,” Mehuda orders, pointing, and one unfolds a privacy screen made of reddish wood and cordons off a section
of the dressing room. “Stool, there,” Mehuda barks, indicating a spot before the mirror. “Candelabra. Table. Refreshments.”
Everything appears and is placed to meet his demands.
Mehuda turns to me. “Your hair. Braided all day, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Does it hold a wave for long?”
My hands find their way to my braids. I hadn’t given a single thought to what to do with my hair for the ball. “For hours.”
“Good,” he says. “Behind the screen with you,” he says, waving me away. “Undress completely.”
I strip nearly naked—I can’t bring myself to remove my drawers—and my skin prickles. Only a thin wooden barrier separates
me from Titus, Mehuda, and a roomful of strangers.
A muscled, dark-skinned arm reaches around the barrier, thrusting something at me. It’s a riot of color—periwinkle blue and
amethyst, trimmed with shimmering gold and beads of glass.
“Put that on,” comes Mehuda’s voice.
The gown is heavy with several flowing bits, and it takes a moment to puzzle out how to don it. Eventually I puddle it on
the floor, step into it, and pull it up to my shoulders.
The privacy screen blocks my view of the mirror, and a hook low on my back evades my reach, but I can tell the gown is spectacular.
The skirt is made of the softest, airiest silk I’ve ever seen, in a gradient that goes from bright blue at the flowing hem
to soft periwinkle at the hips. The tight bodice is made of shimmering amethyst feathers sewn into black velvet. The velvet
sweeps up in a halter style and hides my amulet completely. Tiny bits of glass are sewn throughout the fabric, making the
gown glisten with my every movement.
But the most arresting thing about the gown, the part that takes my breath away, is the detailed dragon appliqué made of golden
scales embroidered into the silk, which sweeps up the skirt and swirls around to my left hip, accentuating my curves and breathing
a plume of glorious fire around my waist.
It’s not something I would have ever chosen for myself. It’s too wild, too opulent, too brazen.
It’s also perfect and—somehow—perfectly me.
“Master Mehuda,” I say. “This gown is magnificent. A true masterpiece.”
“Show yourself!” he says gleefully. “Come out, come out!”
I peek around the screen. “There’s a hook I can’t reach.”
Instantly, one of Mehuda’s attendants is at my back, and the gown goes snug around my waist and hips as the gown is fastened
with expert speed and finesse.
Emboldened, I step out. A shiver of mild embarrassment colors my cheeks as I realize I’m still wearing my traveling boots;
the blush only deepens when I see Titus’s face.
He looks concussed—wide eyes glazed, lips parted—as though he’s just been walloped by a bag of bricks. It seems like I could
level him with a smile, and so I do. Slowly, deliberately, boldly, letting my heart shine in my eyes.
His breath hitches.
Mehuda is suddenly before me, blocking my view of Titus. “Almost perfect,” he says. “Here, sit.” He guides me to the stool,
reaches down to arrange the gown so I can sit unhindered. “Hair and train.”
The tailor snaps his fingers, and an attendant brings another voluminous explosion of shimmering fabric—sheer, this time,
with more glass like sparkling stars—which he attaches to the back of the gown. Another begins undoing my braids.
“My prince. Your turn,” Mehuda says, and I’m aware of Titus’s form moving behind the privacy screen, though I can’t see much
now that I’m surrounded by attendants who are busying themselves with my hair, my hands and nails, even my bare arms, which
feel the cool application of several somethings along their length.
Was it yesterday I was scrubbing urine from a rug? Now I’m in the dressing room of a queen, being attended to like a queen, wearing a gown fit for a queen.
As one attendant attacks the dead ends of my hair with shears and another smooths rouge on my lips, I remind myself that all
of this is because I have a job to do. I’m being dressed to kill.
“Stand,” Mehuda commands. “Look.” He indicates the mirror.
I obey, and I gaze at the stranger before me. Her light blond hair is wild and wavy, streaked with white from the sun, tumbling