Page 22 of The Cursed Crown

She kept her eyes shut.

He ignored her jab. “Good, you’re awake. The court is gathered in the throne hall. They’re curious about you. I need your entrance to befit your rank.”

Now, she did open her eyes. To glare. Whatever sharp words she might have thought of, she kept them to herself.

Rydekar was holding a dress that seemed to have been cut from a cloth made of night sky, smooth, soft, with a dark velvet backdrop against the brightest of stars—pure diamonds. Not the small kind either.

“Oh, give it here!” She extended her arms greedily.

The corner of his mouth lifted. “I thought you might like it, little crow.”

Her second glare didn’t have much heat.

To her annoyance, he set it on her bed rather than bringing it to her.

“We wouldn’t want it to get wet.”

She conceded his point.

“Shall I call a lady in waiting?”

“I’ll manage,” she replied, disinclined to put up with a stranger.

Rydekar paused, and she rolled her eyes. “What, do you doubt I can look resplendisant without aid?”

He shrugged. “Siobhe needs a dozen ladies and several servants to get ready.”

“I’m no Siobhe,” she shot back.

Truth was, if they were at the Court of Sunlight, she would have called upon Cressa, the half-puck city girl she’d plucked out of the slums to elevate as her maid. Cressa had wanted to join Rissa in her retreat, but knowing that she intended to spend her time in a treehouse, she’d bid her old friend to remain at court.

“I suppose you aren’t. Could you manage to get ready in an hour?”

“Come find me in half that.”

His eyebrow lifted, but he said nothing, nodding before leaving her to it.

Rissa rushed out of the bath. Delightful as it was, it had nothing on thedress. To her surprise, her clean skin was also dry to the touch, and pleasantly perfumed, in a way that seemed to increase her natural scent, rather than overwhelm it with strange tones.

Up close, the dress was a marvel of stitching, lace, and embroidery in white-gold threads. It ought to be displayed like a piece of art.

She noted the back, so low it might show the tail of her spine. The skirt pooled with a small train.

“Oh, Rydekar.”

The seelie folk didn’t use the term thank you easily. Thanks were an insult, implying that whoever doing them a favor had gone out of their way. Saying “thank you” for a gift was like insinuating that the person was so poor they must have spent a great deal of their coin on the present. Yet the words were practically at her lips. She was grateful for this gown. It seemed made for her. How had he procured it in so short a time?

While thanks weren’t the done thing, the folk did believe in repaying favors—preferably with something even more consequential in order to push the favor back onto the original giver.

Rissa didn’t have anything on her that would suffice to express her appreciation.

But she could do something Rydekar would take for what it was: gratitude.

First, she donned the gown, delighting in its softness, its ethereal beauty, then she worked on braiding her hair, her skilled hands flying through the dark waves till they were half loose, half crowning her head. In her red leather bag, she found the cosmetics she needed to enhance her complexion: silver powder she trailed along her cheekbones, the curve of her long ears, and at the tip of her nose, and dark plum balm for her eyelids and mouth, giving her a hooded gaze. That would have been enough, if she didn’t owe the unseelie king. As she did, she moved to the head of Alder Braer’s bed—also plastered with too many mirrors.

The headboard was carved in the shape of a beautiful winged fae with open arms. Someone, perhaps Alder himself, had discarded a red crown that hung crooked on the angel’s brow. Rissa made a face, but she took it nonetheless.

It was nothing like Mab’s crown—a small, thin diadem with a black heart. But it’d do. For a moment, she’d play the king’s game.

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