Page 46 of The Alien's Vicious Starflash Manor

The young women deploy around the room, setting up their makeshift workshop like a well-trained army.

The older woman—the seamstress Ivrael had promised, I presume—claps her lace-gloved hands and says in a voice that sounds like it could be coming straight out of a cartoon, somehow both throaty and high-pitched all at once, “It is time to wake up, my pretty new charges. You have been chosen by Lady Uanna, companion to Prince Jonyk himself, to receive the attentions of her entire dressing team.”

Lucilline trails in behind everyone else, her eyes wide. She carries our jeans, T-shirts, sweaters, and undergarments, all carefully laundered and folded in a stack.

She glances around the room as if trying to decide where to put them. But the entire space has been taken over by the seamstress and her team, so Lucilline sidles around the edges of the room until she gets to a freestanding armoire. She hastily opens it, stuffing the clothes inside on a shelf before shutting the cabinet door again.

Izzy and I are in chairs in the sitting room when the dressing team arrives, and I pull the belt of my borrowed robe tight around my waist before standing. I’d rather put on my jeans again, but I know how the Caix work.

Izzy glances at the armoire and announces, “I like what I was wearing before.”

The seamstress tilts her tiny nose high in the air. “That…costumewill never do for a member of the Ice Court.”

I move closer to my sister and murmur, “Usually, it’s easier to just go along with whatever weird-ass thing is happening.”

“Are you sure?” she hisses.

“As sure as I can be about anything. This is a strange place.”

My sister is much more polite to the dressing team than I am. Or maybe it’s just that I have been in the Icecaix lands far too long—much longer than she has—and therefore no longer give a shit about being polite to anyone who doesn’t wield direct power over me.

In any case, Izzy is the one who asks our fairy godmother seamstress her name. I’m glad, since I can’t remember what Ivrael called her.

“I am Madame Evangeny,” she trills out in that strange voice of hers.

“Bippity, boppity, boo,” I mutter.

Evangeny gives me an odd frown, but Izzy snickers.

“That’s not how you say it,” my sister says, just like she always did when we watched that movie as kids.

“I like my way better.” I move to the armoire where Lucilline has stashed our newly laundered clothing.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” the maid asks.

I start to tell her I’m fine and send her on her way, but then I pause. “Where will you go if I say I don’t need anything?”

Her face twists. “Back down the stairs to help your housemaids with the dusting. I hate the dusting. Makes me sneeze, it does.” Her nose wrinkles and she shakes her head.

“Our housemaids? You mean Ramira?”

Lucilline’s mouth ties up in an unhappy twist. “Aye. That one”

No wonder she didn’t want to go. “What if I say I might need you later?”

Her eyes brighten perceptibly. “Then I would need to stay with you, just to be sure.”

I nod. “Then I am almost certainly going to need you for something later. Why don’t you stick around?”

She smiles so brightly I’m surprised the whole room doesn’t light up. I’m glad I made that call.

After I rifle through the clothing in the armoire, I decide to pull on my panties under my robe. As soon as they’re on, I breathe a sigh of relief, feeling less vulnerable than I did before.

Evangeny sniffs. “We will arrange for new undergarments by the time you arrive at court,” she says, as if my underwear offends her.

“And until then, I’ll go ahead and wear these.” I’m gearing up to do battle over my panties when Madame Evangeny backs down, sneering but making no further comment when I hand Izzy her undergarments, as well.

As it turns out, I shouldn’t have bothered making a stand over them. Izzy and I spend the next hour taking turns beingmeasured and discussed, lengths of fabric held up to our faces and draped across our bodies. Bits of fabric are twisted and shaped and held in place with pins, then cut and sent away with minions for, I assume, sewing.

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