I supposed that made sense because it was the Zee I knew who was the illusion and this man, and his clothes, that were real.
Zee's true face was uncanny--beautiful, proud, and cruel.
I remembered the stories I'd found about the Dark Smith of Drontheim.
Zee had never been the kind of fairy who cleaned houses or rescued lost children.
He'd been one to avoid if you could and to treat very, very courteously if you couldn't.
He'd mellowed a little with age and didn't disembowel anyone who displeased him anymore.
Not that I'd seen anyway.
"Wow," said Jesse.
"You are beautiful.
Scary.
But beautiful." He looked at her a moment, then said, "I have heard Gabriel say the same of you, Jesse Adamstochter.
It was meant as a compliment, I believe." He turned to Ariana.
"You'll have to leave the glamour behind.
The only glamour that works in Elphame is the queen's, and if you wait until the Elphame rips it from you, it will alert those inside that they have an intruder." She clenched her fists and glanced at Samuel and away.
"I've seen your scars," he said.
"I am a doctor and a werewolf.
I saw those wounds when they were new and raw--scars do not bother me.
They are the laurels of the survivor." Like Zee, she didn't bother with theatrics.
Without glamour, her skin was a warmer color than Zee's and several shades lighter.
It was beautiful against silver-lavender hair that was no more than a finger-length long anywhere and floated out from her scalp more like plumage than hair--a lot like Jesse's current hairstyle.
Ariana's clothes altered when her glamour dropped as well, into a simple knee-length dress of an off- white color with a handkerchief hem.
She wasn't conventionally beautiful--her face was too inhuman for that, with eyes that were too big and a nose too small for humanity.
Her scars weren't as bad as they'd appeared when I'd seen them before.
They looked older and less angry .
.
.
but there were a lot of them.
"We are ready," Samuel said, looking at Ariana with a hunger that had nothing to do with his stomach.
Zee reached behind his head and drew his dagger, dark-bladed and elegant in its deadly simplicity, from beneath the collar of his shirt.
Either it was magic or a sheath, I couldn't tell, and with Zee it could be either one.