I’m not sure I feel good, but I know I feel great.
Everything is wondrous. Even Cardan. I didn’t like him before, but that seems silly. I give him a wide, happy grin, although he doesn’t smile in return.
I don’t take it personally.
Noggle turns away from us, muttering something about the general and foolishness and princes getting their heads removed from their shoulders. Cardan watches him go, hands fisting at his sides.
A knot of girls flop down in the moss beside me. They’re laughing, which makes me laugh again, too. “I’ve never seen a mortal take the fruits of Elfhame before,” one of them, Flossflower, says to another. “Will she remember this?”
“Would that someone would enchant her to do otherwise,” Locke says from somewhere behind me, but he doesn’t sound angry like Cardan. He sounds nice. I turn toward him, and he touches my shoulder. I lean into the warmth of his skin.
Nicasia laughs. “She wouldn’t want that. What she’d like is another bite of apple.”
My mouth waters at the memory. I recall them strewn across my path, golden and glittering, on the way to school and curse my foolishness for not stopping to eat my fill.
“So we can ask her things?” Another girl—Moragna—wants to know. “Embarrassing things. And she’ll answer?”
“Why should she find anything embarrassing when she’s among friends?” says Nicasia, eyes slitted. She looks like a cat that has eaten all the cream and is ready for a nap in the sun.
“Which one of us would you most like to kiss?” Flossflower demands, coming closer. She’s barely spoken to me before. I’m glad she wants to be friends.
“I’d like to kiss all of you,” I say, which makes them scream with laughter. I grin up at the stars.
“You’re wearing too many clothes,” Nicasia says, frowning at my skirts. “And they’ve grown dirty. You should take them off.”
My dress does seem abruptly heavy. I imagine myself naked in the moonlight, my skin turned as silvery as the leaves above us.
I stand. Everything feels as if it’s going a bit sideways. I start pulling off my clothes.
“You’re right,” I say, delighted. My gown slides into a puddle of cloth that I can easily step out of. I am wearing mortal underclothes—a mint-and-black polka-dotted bra and underpants.
They’re all staring at me oddly, as though wondering where I got my underwear. All of them so resplendent that it is difficult for me to look too long without my head hurting.
I am conscious of the softness of my body, of the calluses on my hands, and of the sway of my breasts. I am conscious of the soft tickle of grass underneath my feet and the warm earth.
“Am I beautiful like you are?” I ask Nicasia, genuinely curious.
“No,” she says, darting a look toward Valerian. She picks up something from the ground. “You are nothing like us.” I am sorry to hear it but not surprised. Beside them, anyone might as well be a shadow, a blurry reflection of a reflection.