“Will I have to say something?” I ask Liana. Today, at the midday feast, we will announce my betrothal to the Enduar King. Six days have passed since the giants brought me to the Enduar Mountains, and my body is fully healed.
She shakes her head. “No. You’ll just have to stand there. Of course, we will need to practice your wedding ceremony, but we can do that some other day.” She grabs something in the chest she had two Enduares carry in. “This should be your size.”
She’s holding out a golden dress with bark-colored gems dotting the bodice. There is a silky brocade across the low-dipping neckline. Two lacy sleeves have been sewn to slide off my shoulders, and the skirt will drag across the ground.
“What the hell is that made from?” I ask, holding the thin blanket over my naked body. Giant ladies wore dresses under their gowns, but I was given some sort of undergarment that resembled extremely short pants. The dresses here were far more revealing, not requiring corsets, but leaving little of my chest to be imagined.
Arlet touches the fabric. For some reason, she is desperate to be like them. She wears her hair like the Enduar women, opts for the most elaborately stitched furs available to her, and even makes some earrings to hang off of her lobes. I am doing this out of obligation to save my brother, she seems genuinely content.
“Stone silk,” she says. “It’s a similar process to how they make paper, but this is mixed with metals that are soaked in something special to create something soft enough to be a fabric. You are going to look stunning. I can’t believe how lucky you are.”
I roll my eyes.
Liana runs her spindly fingers over my cheeks, forcing me to look at her. “You look so healthy. You know what would make you look even better?”
I draw my eyebrows together. Liana is a strange woman, but it’s hard not to feel comfortable around her. “What?”
“A few piercings.” She taps my lip and nose. “Here and here. It’ll drive the king mad with lust.”
I push her away, catching her smile as she returns to the dress. “Right, because that’s what I want.”
Liana reaches over to pull out a pair of golden slippers. She lays them on the ground before my feet. “Try these.”
I step into them, and they slide onto my feet easily. As if they were made for me. I look at myself in the mirror. My hair is shiny, and my cheeks are red.
I look different.
Arlet frowns. “How do you want your hair?”
I glance at her in the mirror. “As it is? I think it looks fine.”
Liana raises an eyebrow. “You don’t want a bun?”
I furrow my eyebrows. “Should I want one?”
She shrugs. “Human customs are far different to ours. Unmated women wear their hair in buns. For a long time, the man would braid his woman’s hair after the mating ceremony, but that changed several hundred years ago when we realized that some preferred their own gender. Our small court holds onto the custom mostly out of nostalgia, adapting it to fit couples like Iryth and Svanna or Morht and Verl.”
“I don’t know who they are,” I say softly as a shiver starts at the base of my spine while thinking of the Enduar King’s long fingers sliding across my skin. When he walked into my room yesterday, his eyes had been haunted. Feral for me. I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s been so long since he’s touched me.
I shake my head.That’s a good thing.“So I should wear my hair in a braid?”
My heart starts to pound at the thought of the king coming to see me again. The last time he visited was to bring me a contract to sign.
The whole affair had been laughable. I’ve never needed to know how to write my name, so I drew a rude gesture, and he counted it as binding.
He had left with a promise to protect my people. He takes his deals and contracts very seriously, but I have a harder time believing him. There had been slaves, many slaves, who had been stolen. I couldn’t forget the slaves who had lived to tell tales of watching their companions gutted while still alive. Sergi’s blood stain still accompanied my lonely thoughts, and I couldn’t rule out the gem in my chest making me long to see him.
“Estela?” Liana said again.
I blink and look back at her. “Sorry.”
She smirks. “Why don’t you wear your hair however you’d like? We can make new customs.”
I press my lips together and nod. “That sounds good to me.”
The old Enduar gestures me forward, and takes the towel I’ve kept wrapped around myself while Arlet slides the stone silk across my skin. When she steps back, she looks at me and smiles so wide it hurts my chest.
“You are so beautiful,” she says, pressing her hands to her mouth as Liana holds up a few jewelry pieces. She wraps gold chains around my unpierced ears, and clasps cuffs on my wrists. She has a ring for each finger, and some of them make strange sounds as they come in contact with my skin. I hold up my hand, inspecting one of the purple stones.