Grave Destiny (Alex Craft, #6) - Kalayna Price Page 0,65

she is properly attired for the evening. And store that shamble of an outfit somewhere she can collect it later.”

“Yes, my lady,” the little fae said, handing her combs and pins to another of the handmaids. Then she turned and unfurled large wings that resembled an intricate snowflake. She flitted silently toward me—defying physics with lazy beats of wings that should have been too small to lift her, to say nothing of the lacelike holes in the thin membranes. Yet she moved smoothly and hovered in front of me, two and a half feet off the ground, putting her at eye level. “If you will follow me, lady planeweaver.”

She fluttered toward the door. I shot one last look where Falin still knelt on the ground, but it wasn’t like I had a choice but to follow the ice fae.

* * *

• • •

The dress could have been worse. I kept reminding myself of that fact. The top was a shimmery pale blue corset with silver piping. The skirt was silver with soft blue snowflake embroidery and at least a dozen layers of petticoats. It was sleeveless, which seemed completely impractical for an outdoor celebration on the Winter Solstice, regardless that Faerie was always comfortably warm, even in the snow. The corset also had hard boning that, once tightened, prevented me from taking a deep breath, to say nothing of anything practical like bending. Oh, and the gown had a train.

A train.

I was going to fall over myself all night.

My boots had been confiscated, replaced by a pair of pale heels, and my simple white gloves had been traded for long blue satin ones that reached the middle of my biceps. I felt like I was auditioning for Cinderella. Except if the queen was a fairy godmother, she was a demented one who wanted me to stand around like a doll, not meet a prince.

The worst part of the entire ensemble wasn’t that I was going to sprain my ankle, or that I wouldn’t be able to breathe. It was that there was no good way to carry my dagger. The enchanted blade used to unnerve me with its bloodlust, but it had gotten me out of quite a few tight spots in the past. Most of my magic was useless in Faerie. I was not about to walk around unarmed as well.

“There is a truce that lasts for the entire revelry,” the frost fae said, disapproval threaded thickly through her words. “You don’t need a weapon.” Her tone implied a lady never needed a weapon, but particularly at this occasion.

I didn’t care. The skirt was completely unmanageable. Even if I cut a slit in it, I wouldn’t be able to dig through all the layers to reach a thigh holster. I couldn’t bend to reach my calf, and without boots or anything to support the holster, it wouldn’t have been secure. I tried wedging it into the top of the dress, but there was barely room for me in the corset. The dagger and sheath definitely couldn’t fit. I briefly entertained trying to use the dagger as a hair ornament, but while my hair drove me nuts sometimes, I liked it too much to let the dagger slice half of it off by accident. The frost fae insisted that it would be an insult if the dagger was visible—or even hidden with glamour, not that I could have hidden it myself. When I refused to leave it behind, she finally relented and found a clutch purse. It was small and the same frosty blue as my dress with a chain of sparkling ice. It wasn’t perfect, but the dagger fit, so it worked.

The frost fae was now attempting to tame my dirty-blond curls into something fashionable. She kept muttering very pretty-sounding words in the musical language of the fae that I suspected were none too kind. Her large, pupil-less eyes narrowed as a clump of curl escaped, but she caught it deftly, spinning it to join the rest. She must have had a lot of practice, because her own hair wasn’t exactly organic-looking but resembled icicles protruding from her scalp.

“Did you know Icelynne?” I asked, because she looked similar enough to have been the cousin of the ghost fae who haunted my castle.

Her hands went still. A few months ago I wouldn’t have been able to identify the emotions that flashed over her not-completely-humanoid features, but I’d been around Icelynne quite a bit, and this fae’s reflection in the mirror