“Pleeeeeeeease,” Taryn says to me, bending her head and looking up through her eyelashes. She’s joking, but she’s not. She needs to look nice for this boy who is supposed to declare himself at the coronation. She doesn’t understand what use my looking nice would be, me with my grudges and feuds.
With a half smile, I set down the bolt. “Sure. All yours.”
Taryn kisses me on the cheek. I guess we’re back to normal. If only everything in my life were so easily resolved.
I choose a different cloth, the dark blue velvet. Vivienne chooses a violet that seems to be a silvery gray when she turns it over her hand. Oriana chooses a blush pink for herself and a cricket green for Oak. Brambleweft starts to sketch—billowing skirts and cunning little capes, corsets stitched with fanciful creatures. Butterflies alighting along arms and in elaborate headpieces. I am charmed at the alien vision of myself—my corset will have two golden beetles stitched in what looks like a breastplate, with Madoc’s moon crest and elaborate swirls of shining thread continuing down my front, and tiny sheer drop sleeves of more gold.
It will certainly be clear to what household I belong.
We are still making small changes when Oak runs in, being chased by Gnarbone. Oak spots me first and scrambles onto my lap, throwing his arms around my neck and giving me a small bite just beneath my shoulder.
“Ow!” I say in surprise, but he just laughs. It makes me laugh, too. He’s kind of a weird kid, maybe because he’s a faerie or maybe because all kids, human or inhuman, are equally weird. “Do you want me to tell you a story about a little boy who bit a stone and lost all his pearly white teeth?” I ask him in what I hope is a menacing fashion, sticking my fingers under his armpits to tickle him.
“Yes,” he says immediately between breathless giggles and shrieks.
Oriana strides over to us, her face full of trouble. “That’s very kind of you, but we ought to begin dressing for dinner.” She pulls him off my lap and into her arms. He begins screaming and kicking his legs. One of the kicks lands against my stomach hard enough to bruise, but I don’t say anything.
“Story!” he shouts. “I want the story!”
“Jude is busy right now,” she says, carrying his squirming body toward the door, where Gnarbone is waiting to take him back to the nursery.
“Why don’t you ever trust me with him?” I shout, and Oriana wheels around, shocked that I said a thing we don’t say. I am shocked, too, but I can’t stop. “I’m not a monster! I’ve never done anything to either of you.”
“I want the story,” Oak whines, sounding confused.
“That’s enough,” Oriana says sternly, as though we’ve all been arguing. “We will speak about this later with your father.”
With that, she strides from the room.
“I don’t know whose father you’re talking about, because he’s sure not mine,” I call after her.
Taryn’s eyes go saucer-wide. Vivienne has a small smile on her face. She takes a minute sip of tea, and then she raises the cup in my direction in salute. The seamstress is looking down and away, leaving us to our private family moment.
I cannot seem to contort myself back into the shape of a dutiful child.
I am coming unraveled. I am coming undone.