A Court of Blood & Mercy || Elriel Dual POV

Chapter 3 - It Makes Me Wonder

"I don't think we should take it in again. The silk will bunch at the back of the bodice. And there's no time to do it today."

"What if we brought out the emerald green one instead?"

"That one was designed for Penelope. It's tiny!"

"Exactly. It'll be a better fit than the others."

Elain focused on her reflection in the gilded mirror, carefully applying a film of peach lip stain to her plump lips, feigning ignorance to the hushed murmurs coming from the dark corner of her dressing chambers.

She watched the stain glide across her mouth in a studied expression of disinterest, though it was impossible to not feel her heart begin to race as the conversation floated past her pricked ears.

How many times had she cursed these fae ears over the past twenty years?

The ears which had heard words she wished had never been spoken.

She decided to put her lady's maids out of their misery.

"Oxana, Sasha," she called toward them without taking her eyes off her reflection. "I believe I need to meet with my dressmaker this week to update my collection."

She rose from the golden vanity table, nonchalantly wrapping her robe tighter around her small waist as she sauntered toward the hanging dress closet. "But until then, perhaps I shall borrow a gown from my daughter. I have been wanting to wear something lively tonight. Perhaps green?"

The lady's maids exchanged a look before curtsying toward Elain, nodding and whispering as they scuttled out of the room down the gilded hall toward Penelope's suite.

That was the way of the Lady of the House, wasn't it?

To cradle the emotions and duties of everyone around her?

Like her mother before her, Elain had become an expert at such practices.

Reaching toward one of her many jewelry boxes, Elain's eyes flickered down to her wrist creeping out from the red cuff of her robe. She felt guilty, in a way, for the discomfort she seemed to be causing her staff. Her bones must be showing again. Gazing at her wrist, she surveyed the blue vein traveling toward her palm, wondering where her sense of self-preservation had gone.

Except she knew that perhaps it had never existed in the first place.

Glancing up, her eyes rested on her reflection in the floor-to-ceiling mirror at the end of her mahogany and cherry dressing chamber, the edges of the glass pocked with black and gold dust, framing a spindly wisp of a creature with long curly hair.

Did she look frightening to others?

She didn't know.

Elain had never been able to see herself clearly.

Not when she was human, and certainly not now that she was a made-fae... frozen in a strange eternal youth she had never desired.

Stepping forward, she gazed at the sharp angles and bones jutting beneath the red fabric robe.

Disgust twisted in her gut and she looked away, reaching back to the jewelry box displayed in the center of the chamber in a swift motion, grasping her rings and cuffs in automatic rhythm, placing the jewels on her fingers in a familiar sequence, starting with her pinkies and finishing on her thumbs.

And it wasn't her imagination when she felt the heavy emeralds and sapphires tilt to the sides, the weight of the jewels dragging the tops of the rings down to her palms. She frowned, pulling her hand closer to her face to survey the rings when Sasha and Oxana reappeared with the emerald gown.