“Time to try this on,” she says quietly. Once clothed, I find the measurements are exact again. They begin to tighten the corset, and sharp pains erupt over my rib cage.
It is enough to awaken my friend.
Why not just kill all of them? The king already wants you. Why the torture?
I ignore the curse, but when Kiala tightens the laces another notch, blood rushes in my ears. I force myself to stand as commanded and feel the chair’s absence like a betrayal. Pins prick my scalp. The floor feels inclined at some strange angle.
“I heard last night went well,” Eslina said, not looking at me but at the place just above my shoulder where the air hangs oddly still. “Some say you showed spine. Some say you showed ignorance. Most are annoyed about their wardrobes.”
“Lady Ceryth plans to sponsor a new set of seamstresses,”Merlina adds. “Auditions the morning after tomorrow. She would like you to attend.”
The seamstress currently working on my dress stills, but doesn’t say anything.
“What good would I be?” Acid climbs up my throat.
“To demonstrate that you can make a choice that supports your husband without trembling,” Merlina says. “The court hates a trembler, as does His Majesty. Right now, more than ever, they want to see him cement his power. Otherwise, they topple delicately built things.”
“What does that mean?” I ask without thinking.
The three women pause, looking at themselves.
No one answers, and I squirm. Sure that there is even more I cannot parse out or understand.
Merlina picks up a comb and begins playing with its teeth. “So you used to be a weaver?”
“In another life, yes,” I say, and my insides ache. “But my knowledge is of technique. I’m not that up-to-date on fashion.”
“Well, you will learn with us. Think of yourself like an ornament,” Kiala says evenly, almost as if she’s grateful that we’ve successfully changed the subject, “until you are not. Or until you are broken.”
I think of last night. The meal, the dinner, and the attempt on my life. My breath is shallow. This place is hell, and they already want me to start working. I don’t know which noble person sent the assassin.
Maybe it was Lady Ceryth.
It likely doesn’t matter, I’m sad to say. They will never tell you. What matters is that you still breathe,Cursed One says.
Merlina starts working on adjusting the neckline of my dress and then she produces a bejeweled belt. “She enjoys polishing until she finds bone. Now hold still, human.”
“I am trying.”
“Trybetter.”
That phrase. I keep hearing it from them, from Arion, from Thorne. It makes me want to cry in frustration.
They turn me away from the gilt mirror, and the belt tightens. The light in the room shifts as the sun hauls itself higher, and for a moment, a spray of brightness breaks across the floor, onto the mirrors, and into my eyes.
Behind that light, I see—ridiculously, impossibly—the memory of another kind of glow, warm as a hearth laid against a chest. Glimmering crystals and stones glitter in caves, with a magical temple supplying the connection each underground citizen holds to their gods. A memory from Enduvida. The man who lied to me is there, with his palm over my hand, his jaw tight, his breath quickening—the way, when he drew near, I felt something inside me answer. We moved as if there were a string stretched between us.
I sway as they pull on the ties of my dress again.
Eslina’s hand presses to my elbow. “Breathe,” she tsks. I do.
It does not help.
Not now, I chide my memory.
But I likethememories of your past. Better than this shithole.
Kiala sets a circlet on my head, then steps back.