The Wicked King (The Folk of the Air #2) - Holly Black Page 0,71
There’s no way to wear it with a bra.
She just looks at me for a moment, with a puzzled, almost insect-like stare.
“I guess I can try it on,” I say, remembering that I had joked about being naked just a moment ago.
This being Faerie, she makes no move to leave. I turn around, hoping that will be enough to draw attention away from my leg as I strip. Then I pull the gown over my head and let it slither over my hips. It sparkles gorgeously, but, as I suspected, it shows a lot of my chest. Like, a lot.
Oriana nods, satisfied. “I will send someone to do your hair.”
A short while later, a willowy pixie girl has braided my hair into ram’s horns and wrapped the tips with silver ribbon. She paints the lids of my eyes and my mouth with more silver.
Then, dressed, I go downstairs to join the rest of the family in Oriana’s parlor, as though the last few months haven’t happened.
Oriana is dressed in a gown of pale violet with a collar of fresh petals that rises to her powdery jawline. Vivi and Heather are both in mortal clothes, Vivi in a fluttery fabric with a pattern of eyes printed on the cloth, and Heather in a short pink dress with little silver spangles all over it. Heather’s hair is pulled back in sparkling pink clips. Madoc is wearing a deep plum tunic, Oak in a matching one.
“Hey,” Heather says. “We’re both in silver.”
Taryn isn’t there yet. We sit around in the parlor, drinking tea and eating bannocks.
“Do you really think she’s going to go through with this?” Vivi asks.
Heather gives her a scandalized look, swats at her leg.
Madoc sighs. “It is said we learn more from our failures than our successes,” he says with a pointed look in my direction.
Then Taryn finally comes down. She’s been bathed in lilac dew and wears a gown of incredibly fine layers of cloth on top of one another, herbs and flowers trapped between them to give the impression that she’s this beautiful, floating figure and a living bouquet at the same time.
Her hair is braided into a crown with green blooms all through it.
She looks beautiful and painfully human. In all that pale fabric, she looks like a sacrifice instead of a bride. She smiles at all of us, shy and glowingly happy.
We all rise and tell her how beautiful she looks. Madoc takes her hands and kisses them, looking at her like any proud father. Even though he thinks she’s making a mistake.
We get into the carriage, along with the small hob who is going to be Oak’s double, who switches jackets once we’re inside, and then sits worriedly in a corner.
On our way to Locke’s estate, Taryn leans forward and catches my hand. “Once I am married, things will be different.”
“Some things,” I say, not entirely sure what she’s talking about.
“Dad has promised to keep him in line,” she whispers.
I recall Taryn’s appeal to me to have Locke dismissed from his position as Master of Revels. Curbing Locke’s indulgences is likely to keep Madoc busy, which seems like no bad thing.
“Are you happy for me?” she asks. “Truly?”
Taryn has been closer to me than any other person in the world. She has known the tide and undertow of my feelings, my hurts, both small and large, for most of my life. It would be stupid to let anything interfere with that.
“I want you to be happy,” I say. “Today and always.”
She gives me a nervous smile, and her fingers tighten on mine.
I am still holding her hand when the hedge maze comes into view. I see three pixie girls in diaphanous gowns fly over the greenery, giggling together, and beyond them other Folk already beginning to mill. As Master of Revels, Locke has organized a wedding worthy of the title.
The first trap goes unsprung. The decoy climbs out with my family while Oak and I duck down in the carriage. He grins at me at first, when we huddle down in the space between the cushioned benches, but the grin slips off his face a moment later, replaced by worry.
I take his hand and squeeze it. “Ready to climb through a window?”
That delights him anew. “From the carriage?”
“Yes,” I say, and wait for it to pull around. When it does, there’s a knock. I peek out and see the Bomb inside the estate. She winks at me, and then I lift up Oak and feed