Page 80 of When Sorrows Come

I did, blinking at her in the exaggerated way I knew she preferred when she was trying to check my makeup.

She pursed her lips, looking thoughtful. “Close them, I need to fix your eyeliner.”

I closed my eyes. “You know, one illusion and all this is handled.”

“I don’t want to cast any more spells around your dress if I can help it, and while Tybalt doesn’t need you wearing makeup to see how beautiful you are—he’s a smart man, he knows who he’s marrying—I expect you to be awake come dawn, and I’d rather your mascara didn’t disappear between one breath and the next. No illusions. Everything that touches you today is real.” She leaned closer as she worked eyeliner along the line of my eyelid, voice low and warm. “This is really happening. He really chose you. You really get to choose him back. Just this once, you get to choose being happy over taking care of all the rest of us. We can take care of ourselves for a little while. So open your eyes.”

This time my rapid blinking was less about showing Stacy her handiwork and more about keeping myself from crying. She raised an eyebrow.

“If you ruin that mascara, you get to sit through this again,” she said.

I blinked harder.

“Good girl.” Stacy stepped back, expression smug as it always was when she made me presentable by her standards. Which had never involved making me look like a proper pureblood but had always involved making sure that they wouldn’t be able to find anything wrong with me.

I finally looked down at my dress, receiving little more from my view at this angle than the impression of arctic white and deep blood red. The smell of roses permeated the fabric, getting stronger when I stood, and the skirt fell gracefully to swirl around my ankles. Not just roses—if I breathed in, I could catch a dizzying array of perfumes that seemed to encompass the magical signatures of half the people I’d met in my lifetime. I blinked again, this time in confusion, as I looked sharply up at the smugly smiling Stacy. She was standing next to May, watching me examine myself.

“You said you didn’t want anymorespells around my dress,” I said carefully. “What did you mean by that?”

“I mean I’d wait a while before you start popping out littlehalf-Cait Sidhe Tobys to run around getting into trouble, because no one’s going to give you any cradle gifts, since May and I have been going door to door convincing people to enchant your wedding gown for weeks,” said Stacy. “Pretty much everyone we know who knows how to throw a semi-competent stain-repellent spell gave us one. You could go swimming in the La Brea Tar Pits in that thing and come out spotless.”

I looked down at the dress again, this time with more appreciation. “That’s a lot of magic.”

“Probably the most magical thing you own, so please, for the love of Oberon, try not to set it on fire or accidentally feed it into a wood chipper or anything else like that. It’s protected against stains, not Toby.” Stacy reached out to grasp my shoulders, pressing them in to make me stand up straighter. “Now go get married.”

“Aren’t you coming with me?”

“You have a ride.” She and May exchanged a smirking smile. Neither of them was dressed for the wedding yet, making me suspect their clothes would be more illusionary and less literal than mine. It made sense. You can’t really stain an illusionary dress, but you can’t keep it and let it take up too much space in your closet, either.

Julie moved to open the fitting room door. “You look beautiful,” she said softly as I passed her.

“I appreciate that,” I said, swallowing the forbidden “thanks,” and touched her arm as I stepped back into the main room.

Quentin was waiting there for me, perfectly relaxed in his formal stance, which should have been a contradiction but somehow wasn’t. Maybe that was one of the prince lessons that managed to actually stick, unlike “leave the sea witch alone” and “when it’s time to choose a knight, go for the one who won’t get you almost killed on a regular basis.” His parents would besoproud when they realized he could at least stand like a proper gentleman. He was wearing a wine-colored suit over a stark white shirt, a spray of white violets pinned to his lapel, and he managed not to look like a candy cane. Boy was full of surprises today.

His eyes widened at the sight of me, mouth moving in silence for several seconds before he gave up and just gestured emphatically.

“You look—um.” He paused. “I feel like there’s probably etiquette here that I don’t know.”

“There’s etiquette you don’t know?” My skirt was long enoughto brush the floor as I walked, but not long enough—at least in the front—for me to trip on. There didn’t seem to be much of a train in the back, either. Maybe this was one area where the purebloods were somehow more sensible than the mortals they insisted on cribbing half their customs from.

“I was a kid when I went into fosterage,” he objected. “No, I hadn’t already sat down with my parents—or Nessa—for a lecture on exactly what would be expected of me when I chose to get married, only that I wouldbeexpected to get married, and stay married to the same woman long enough for her to provide me with at least one heir, if not an heir and a backup. But what that would actually look like? No. And it’s not like I could ask you, and Etienne never even tried to teach me about how marriage works.”

“That’s because Etienne married his human lover in a county clerk’s office for the sake of keeping her paperwork in order, and doesn’t necessarily know anything about pureblood marriage customs,” I said blandly. “They left you here alone?”

“Indeed, no, fair lady, but I thought it best to give you a moment with this complete stranger who will be standing in your son’s place during the ceremony that is to come,” said the warm, familiar voice of Crown Prince Nolan Windermere. I turned, and there he was, leaning against the wall outside the fitting room door, a small smile on his face.

“I need to pay more attention to my surroundings,” I said with a blink.

He laughed. “This is perhaps the one day of your life where no one, not even my sister, is allowed to fault your inattention. We have no white horse for you to ride, no fine chariot to carry you to your groom, but we have me, and I would be overjoyed to fill their role.” He pushed away from the wall, offering me his arm. “Please.”

“Are white horses and chariots the standard here?” I asked, moving to put my hand in the crook of his arm as Quentin moved into position behind me, stooping to pick up the back of my dress, which must have been dragging on the ground more than I realized.

Oh, well. Magic intended to repel bloodstains can handle a little dirt.

“White horses were, once,” said Nolan, face falling. “Before our time in the Westlands began, white horses carried a maid to marriage or a man to sacrifice. After Maeve’s Ride was shattered, welet them fall to the wayside, favoring carriages instead. A wedding carriage can be a glorious thing when constructed from the right materials, but I hope a Prince will suffice.”

“Always,” I said as I smiled warmly at him.

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