Page 51 of The Scarlet Veil

Dimitri closes his eyes with a slow exhale, while Odessa watches with rapt fascination. Her anger seems to have evaporated—a small mercy, as I will need to wear her gowns for the rest of my wretched life.

The dressmaker, at least, takes pity on me. “Oh, verywell. Come in, come in, and make certain you wipe your feet on the mat. I am anartist. I cannot be expected to sully my hands with mud and mops and orange trees. What are you waiting for, papillon?” He seizes my wrist and yanks me inside when I hesitate on the threshold. “Time stops for no butterfly!”

Ducking my head, I hurry after him.

The shop boasts only a single room and two apprentices—a female and male vampire who appear no older than me. But looks can be deceiving in Requiem. These two are probably hundreds of years old. I tear my gaze away from them as a leaf flutters on top of my head.

“Onto the platform, if you please. Hurry up!” Monsieur Marc pushes aside carts of fabric in our path: sparkling muslin, indigo wool, velvet and silk and linen and even pelts of soft white fur. The tips of the fibers glitter peculiarly in the candlelight. “Take off the cloak.”

Squeezed between a cluttered table and a shelf full of feathers, buttons, and bones, Dimitri and Odessa sit to watch the proceedings. The former gives me a reassuring nod and mouths,Well done.Though I try to return his smile, it feels more like a grimace—a suspicion I cannot confirm, however, as there are no mirrors in this dress shop.

Strange.

Flicking his wrist, unfurling a tattered measuring tape, Monsieur Marc trills, “We are waaaaiting.”

I hasten to shrug out of Odessa’s cloak, but when Monsieur Marc glimpses the gown beneath, he nearly swoons, pressing a hand to his chest. “Oh, no no no no no.Non.Mademoiselle Célie, surely you mustknowthat such a warm hue does nothing for your complexion. Tons froids, papillon. You are awinter, not a summer. This—this”—he gestures indignantly to my gown of amber lace—“monstrosity must be burned. It isdisgraceful. How dare you step into my shop with it?”

“I—” I shoot a wide-eyed look at Odessa over my shoulder. “My apologies, monsieur, but—”

“You created this monstrosity for me not six months ago, Monsieur Marc,” Odessa says, sounding enormously entertained. “You called it your pièce de résistance.”

“And itwas.” Monsieur Marc stabs the air with his pointer finger, triumphant. And perhaps a little unhinged. “It was my pièce de résistance foryou, the sun cursed to live in eternal night, not forher—the waxing moon, the lustrous crescent, the starlight on butterfly wings!”

I stare at him for a beat, strangely flattered, as new warmth suffuses my cheeks. I’ve never been calledstarlight on butterfly wingsbefore. It makes me think of the lutins. It makes me think of Tears Like Stars. It makes me think of—

“Your hair is lovely,” I say abruptly, and this time, my smile is tentative but true. He blinks in surprise. “It... reminds me of snow.”

“Snow?” he repeats softly.

My face flushes deeper at the avid curiosity in his gaze.

I don’t know why I told him that. It’s too personal, too intimate, and I only just met him. He’s also a vampire... so why did I? Perhaps it’s because his fangs are short, and I cannot see them. Perhaps it’s because his shop is cozy and warm. Perhaps it’s because he calls me butterfly.

Or perhaps it’s because I miss my sister.

I shrug casually, trying and failing to explain the situation away. “My sister adored the snow. She would wear white any chance she could—on gowns, ribbons, scarves, mittens—and every winter, she would bundle into her white cloak and insist on building an ice palace.”

I hesitate then, feeling more ludicrous with each word. I need to stop talking. I need to at leastpretendI can adhere to social graces. In the dark whimsy of this shop, however—surrounded by the strange and beautiful—I can almost feel Filippa’s presence. She would have loved it here. She would have hated it here. “She once imagined her life a fairy tale,” I finish quietly.

Tilting his head, Monsieur Marc considers me with unsettling intensity. No longer curiosity but something else. Indeed, for such a distracted sort of man, his expression grows almost... calculating. Though I twist Odessa’s cloak with clammy fingers, I keep my gaze fixed on his. Odessa said Monsieur Marc is an excellentjudge of character, and this moment—it feels like a test. Another leaf drifts to the floor as the silence in the shop stretches.

And stretches.

At last, a peculiar smile splits his powdery face, and he steps away from the platform. “My apologies, papillon, but I seem to have forgotten my measuring tape in the workroom. S’il vous plaît”—he gestures to the shop at large, his hand mysteriously empty now—“feel free to select your fabrics in my brief absence. Cool tones, mind you,” he adds sharply. Then—with the same uncanny smile—he drifts through a door previously hidden behind a rack of costumes.

Uncertain, I stare at the door for several seconds before descending tentatively from the platform.

We have officially left familiar territory.

Not because I stand in a shop full of vampires, of course, but because my mother never allowed me to choose my own fabrics, and this shop bursts at the seams with them.

Cool tones only.

No one speaks as I approach the nearest shelf, trailing my fingers along a bolt of raw vicuña wool. My mother would’ve absolutely salivated over the mulberry silk beside it. Even as children, she insisted we wear only the most lavish of fabrics—and in silver and gold, mostly. Like pretty coins in her pocket.

Instinctively, I cast around the shop in search of either.

A rack of liquid metallics hangs directly behind Odessa and Dimitri. Their eyes track me across the room, and heat prickles up my throat when I realize they’ve been watching me this entire time. No—studyingme. I clear my throat in the awkward silence, sifting through the metallics without truly seeing them.Copper andbronze. Rose gold. Lavender.“Do you think I... passed his test?” I ask at last.

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