“Now I am ready to put on my new gown,” I say. There are a few cheers, as though they don’t understand the game is humiliation. Locke, surprisingly, appears delighted.
Cardan steps close to me, his gaze devouring. I am not sure I can bear his cutting me down again. Luckily, he seems at a loss for words.
“I hate you,” I whisper before he can speak.
He takes my chin in his fingers, tilting my face to his.
“Say it again,” he says as the imps comb my hair and place the ugly, stinking crown on my head. His voice is low. The words are for me alone.
I pull out of his grip, but not before I see his expression. He looks as he did when he was forced to answer my questions, when he admitted his desire for me. He looks as though he’s confessing.
A flush goes through me, confusing because I am both furious and shamed. I turn my head.
“Queen of Mirth, time for your first dance,” Locke tells me, pushing me toward the crowd.
Clawed fingers close on my arms. Inhuman laughter rings in my ears as the music starts. When the dance begins anew, I am in it. My feet slap down on the dirt in time with the pounding rhythm of the drums, my heart speeds with the trill of a flute. I am spun around, passed hand to hand through the crowd. Pushed and shoved, pinched and bruised.
I try to pull against the compulsion of the music, try to break away from the dance, but I cannot. When I try to drag my feet, hands haul me along until the music catches me up again. Everything becomes a wild blur of sound and flying cloth, of shiny inkdrop eyes and too-sharp teeth.
I am lost to it, out of my own control, as though I were a child again, as though I hadn’t bargained with Dain and poisoned myself and stolen the throne. This is not glamour. I cannot stop myself from dancing, cannot stop my body from moving even as my terror grows. I will not stop. I will dance through the leather of my shoes, dance until my feet are bloody, dance until I collapse.
“Cease playing!” I shout as loudly as I can, panic giving my voice the edge of a scream. “As your Queen of Mirth, as the seneschal of the High King, you will allow me to choose the dance!”
The musicians pause. The footfalls of the dancers slow. It is only perhaps a moment’s reprieve, but I wasn’t sure I could get even that. I am shaking all over with fury and fear and the strain of fighting my own body.
I draw myself up, pretending with the rest of them that I am decked out in finery instead of rags. “Let’s have a reel,” I say, trying to imagine the way my stepmother, Oriana, would have spoken the words. For once, my voice comes out just the way I want, full of cool command. “And I will dance it with my king, who has showered me with so many compliments and gifts tonight.”
The Court watches me with their glistening, wet eyes. These are words they might expect the Queen of Mirth to say, the ones I am sure countless mortals have spoken before under different circumstances.
I hope it unnerves them to know I am lying.
After all, if the insult to me is pointing out that I am mortal, then this is my riposte: I live here, too, and I know the rules. Perhaps I even know them better than you since you were born into them, but I had to learn. Perhaps I know them better than you because you have greater leeway to break them.
“Will you dance with me?” I ask Cardan, sinking into a curtsy, acid in my voice. “For I find you every bit as beautiful as you find me.”
A hiss goes through the crowd. I have scored a point on Cardan, and the Court is not sure how to feel about it. They like unfamiliar things, like surprises, but perhaps they are wondering if they will like this one.
Still, they seem riveted by my little performance.