Page 22 of When Sorrows Come

She bustled around me, pulling the pieces of the corset into place before starting to draw the laces tight. I smiled down at her, feeling suddenly, overwhelmingly fond. “Hey,” I said.

“What?” Stacy didn’t lift her head, focused on getting the knots to lay just right so they wouldn’t show under whatever confection of a dress she was planning to slide me into. Stacy’s illusions have always been stronger than mine, despite being a thin-bloodedchangeling; whatever she inherited from her Barrow Wight ancestors doesn’t fight against flower magic the same way my mother’s blood does.

Despite that, she’s never been a fan of enchanting or creating dresses out of raw materials. It’s considered a basic hearth trick that every changeling should master, and shecando it, but she prefers real things that can’t be accidentally destroyed by the wrong counterspell. One incident at Julie’s twelfth birthday party, and she’d rather haul what looked like half of Nordstrom to Canada than risk dressing me in feathers and cobwebs.

It’s endearing, if weird. “I love you a lot,” I said.

She did glance up at that, startled, before she turned her attention back to my laces. “Yeah, well, let’s see if you still love me when I finish your makeup,” she said. “You’re going to get a mascara wand to the eye.”

I did. Twice. I also got a cloud of assorted cosmetic powders in my nose, causing me to sneeze while she was zipping me into my dress, muttering under her breath about how any purebloods who didn’t like the modernity of zippers in the royal knowe could bite her, and then she was behind me, yanking my hair into compliance with brisk, rough efficiency that made me yelp several times.

I was sure at least one of them was audible in the chamber outside, but Tybalt did not appear to save me. Traitor.

When Stacy was finally done, she stepped back, her own hair in sweaty disarray, and planted her hands on her hips, looking me frankly up and down. “You’ll do,” she said. “Now get out.”

“Do I get to look in a mirror?”

“Eyes are reflective. Go let Tybalt look at you.” She pointed to the door. “If you make the High King wait, I think that’s technically treason, and if I’m the reason you’re late, I’m as treasonous as you are. People have died for less. Go. Get out.”

I got out. Stumbling through the door back into the main chamber with no real sense of what I was wearing, save that it was one-shouldered and sleeveless and long enough to cover my feet, and the distinct sense that Stacy would send me to the High King naked if I forced her hand.

Tybalt was sitting on the loveseat across from the squire’s room, a book in his hands, idly turning pages without seeming to really look at their contents. Stacy slammed the door behind me. Tybalt looked up.

He had been busy while I was getting changed, trading his traveling clothes for a pair of black leather pants that made his ass look amazing and were going to look even more amazing on my floor later in the morning, when I peeled them off of him. His shirt was probably better called a blouse. It started a deep shade of orchid purple at the shoulders, trending paler as it descended, until it turned white just above his waist. It was tucked in and belted, so I couldn’t see what color the bottom was. Clear, maybe. Clear would have been perfectly fine by me.

I swallowed. It didn’t help. “Um,” I managed. “Wow.”

“I was about to say similar,” he said, setting his book aside and rising. “You look...”

“Stacy dressed me,” I said needlessly. “I don’t even know what I’m wearing.”

He walked over to me, placing his hands on my shoulders, and turned me to face the hot tub. The wall beyond it was mirrored, because, of course, it was. The local nobles apparently got up to some kinky shit when they were visiting the High King.

My impressions of the way the dress fit were correct; it was fastened over one shoulder with an asymmetric neckline, hugging the line of my body until it reached my hips, where it broadened out into a flowing skirt. The fabric was uniformly black to my hips, where it began to show flashes of purple, red, and pale pink. Those colors became more dominant as the skirt continued to descend, until my entire lower body was the color of a bruised orchid. My hair was braided along the sides, fastened with pins shaped like orchid blossoms, and gathered into a twist at the back of my head. Stacy had managed to give it body somehow, making it look less like someone had used a ruler to style it.

I had no jewelry, and in this dress, I didn’t need it. My only adornment was the knife belted at my hip. Over the dress at Stacy’s insistence, to make it easier to take away if it turned out that even heroes weren’t allowed to go armed into the company of the High King.

“You look amazing,” said Tybalt, voice low, and kissed my cheek. “Now, we should be going. Nessa came to the door a few minutes ago, and I assured her that you were almost ready. If this is how Stacy thinks you should be dressed at all times, do you think we could employ her to live in the guest room and clothe you nightly?”

“Something’s not quite right about that woman,” I muttered, before returning to the matter at hand and raising my voice back to normal levels. “We both know that if we weren’t in the high knowe of the Westlands, someone would put a stab wound in this thing before we had a chance to make it to dinner,” I said, letting him guide me toward the door. “Is everyone coming to dinner?”

“I think they were concerned about causing offense to someone important by inviting only members of our party, so yes, we are all to dine with the High King and High Queen of your Divided Courts tonight. All save Stacy and Kerry, who have, I believe, pled preoccupation with addressing the disaster of your life as a reason they are unable to attend.”

“Cheaters,” I murmured.

“Quite.” He opened the door, revealing the hall, where Nessa was waiting with the rest of our group. True to Stacy’s prediction, Quentin was standing with Dean, the two boys holding hands as if they had nothing else left to cling to in the world. Chelsea and Raj stood nearby, Chelsea behind the pair, Raj in front, clearly protecting their friends. Interesting.

Everyone had changed for dinner. Everyone, that is, except for the Luidaeg, who was still wearing her customary overalls, hair taped into ponytails. I raised an eyebrow at her. She smirked.

“You clean up well enough,” she said. “Shall we?”

“Yeah, let’s go,” I agreed, and she started down the hall, leaving the rest of us—Nessa included—to follow after her. Nessa looked anxious about the whole thing, clearly believing she was meant to be in the lead, and to be fair, she probably was. But the Luidaeg just as clearly knew where we were going. “Have you been here before?” I asked, pitching my voice low.

She laughed, bright and musical and delighted. “I attended the convocation where they decided to put the thing in Maples,” she said. “Who do you think convinced the Roane it would be safe for them to leave Beacon’s Home long enough to come and tell the land folk what to do with themselves? There were four of them in the kingdom, a family, living together at the edge of the sea, terrified of things they couldn’t quite predict or see coming. But they were kind, and they wanted to help. Archibald and Sarah were close descendants of mine—I knew their parents, and their grandparents had been my own children, although they had different fathers, thankfully. That’s part of why it’s so important yourFirstborn stay a little bit to the side of Faerie. You would all be horrified to learn how closely your forebears were related to one another.”

“Fae genetics are weird,” I said, trying to keep my voice neutral. She was right.

Everyone knows Faerie began with the Three, that Oberon, Maeve, and Titania had created us all, one way or another, in some combination or other with one another. No one, seemingly not even the Firstborn, knows where they came from in the first place, but Maeve and Titania have always been referred to as sisters, making our family tree, morphologically diverse as it is, more like a family branch.

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