Page 60 of A Lady’s Guide to Fae Kings

Chapter Fifteen

Pippa’s gown was a Fae concoction made of white silk and owl feathers and lace sewn together into moth wings. Silver-tipped thorns bristled in a row along her sleeves and spine, scratching at anyone who dare ventured too near. It was stunning and fierce, certainly far fiercer than she had ever felt.

Especially at a Fae masquerade ball.

Which was more daunting than being chased by Red Ladies.

She had nothing against balls or dancing, only that she had very little experience with either. Grand assemblies were scarce on the ground for village girls with no parents. Learning to dance a quadrille had never been high on the list of useful accomplishments she might need. She knew how to mend antique books and old stockings when her shoes pinched a hole in the toe. She knew how to keep an accounting ledger and run a circulating library and negotiate with trolls. She did not know any complicated dance steps. Did they even dance quadrilles in Elphame?

And she certainly had never owned a dress such as the one that had appeared in her rooms this evening. “I could buy my own cottage with what it must have cost to make this gown,” she muttered, knowing she sounded ungrateful. It was better than sounding as confused and jumbled as she felt.

As vulnerable.

“Good, sell it when you return to Hallow,” Lachlan returned, dashing as ever with his dark coat and silver-tipped walking cane. “You ought to have a proper set of apartments at the very least. That room of yours is dismal.”

She turned to eye him. “How do you know what my room is like?”

His expression did not change; it remained coolly indifferent, hard. But his ears went ruddy before his dark hair fell forward to cover them. “Everyone knows the state of the University apartments.”

That was true.

And yet it did not sound true.

Someone laughed, and it formed a swarm of golden butterflies. Pippa’s moth fluttered after them. Her mask had been carefully crafted to mirror her familiar, all pale colors and delicate patterns in crystal beads that caught the candlelight. Her hair fell loose, studded with blackthorn blossoms that did not wilt. It was not much of a disguise, but she supposed it wasn’t meant to be. Not for a Tithe and not at one of the Revels.

“You’re still missing something,” Lachlan said. He whispered a charm she could not hear, before bending to brush his lips over her brow. It wasn’t really a kiss, only a fairy glamour.

When she glanced at herself in one of the mirrors hanging from the ceiling like strange, silvery fruit, her hair was no longer or brighter. She was not taller or slimmer. She was still Pippa. Same eyes, same rosebud mouth. But a cloud of moon-white moths circled her like a crown, fluttering and shimmering. They hovered along her bodice, gently gathered over the burns on her wrist. She did not look like a Librarian.

She looked like a woman who could burn down a city.

Even if she felt like neither in this gown and in this place, with her bearings all askew and a dangerous Fae king at her side.

Music poured from inside the castle, and candlelight flickered in crystal cages hanging from the willow trees. The long, sweeping branches were parted and secured like curtains, creating intimate bowers filled with languid glimpses of bare skin. More guests circulated, drinking wine and honey mead, wearing velvets and gossamers, flowers and fronds. There were masks of stags and swans, carved into raven beaks and leering gargoyles, all secured with silk ribbons.

“I don’t care for parties,” she said. “Surely you don’t need me on your arm.” Already there were several guests—many of whom wore very little aside from their masks—who were very interested in their arrival. Lachlan’s specifically. He wore no mask, not even a pretense that he was not who he was. Even without a crown, it was obvious that he was a king.

She could see Cai with his golden crown, the Honeybee Queen with a wreath of gold leaves. The Swan Queen wore braids of crystals dangling over her hair, which reached past her knees. It was almost all she wore, save a few gray-green fronds and tiny, silvery crystals pasted to her skin.

But if Lachlan noticed the attention he received, he gave no indication of it. He was likely too accustomed to it. “This is not a party,” he said.

There was laughter, and dancing, both inside and out. Flirtations, feasting. Political machinations she did not understand. Magic and honey wine. “Looks like a party,” Pippa pointed out. More laughter. “Sounds like a party.”

She was even more out of her depth here than she had been when he abducted her from the Library. Surely he could see that.

“This is not a party,” Lachlan insisted. “It’s strategy.”

A marble fountain in the shape of three intertwined mermaids flowed with fairy wine like the night sky, a deep darkness swirling with sparkles. She could all but taste it on her tongue. She wondered if this particular wine would lend her wings or the ability to understand owls. See music.

Lachlan’s fingers were cool on the inside of her wrist as he drew her away.

“If there are alliances to be made, this is where you will make them,” he said, his deep, dark voice winding around her, tethering her when the Fae magic threatened to sweep her up in its dangerous wake.

It made a certain sort of sense. She did not bother to remind him that she was not the type to dazzle people into making alliances with her. It was not something that someone like him could ever understand. He wore power and confidence like it was as much a part of him as his violet eyes or his stern, demanding expression. He knew what he was capable of.

Meanwhile, Professor Marwick still pinched her whenever he sent her to fetch books, and he was a grown adult who had been a professor for longer than she was alive. He was the reason Algernon and Sidney were so horrid to her. And she was not allowed to fight back. It was a rule she had made for herself the day she burned down the village bread ovens when she was thirteen. Three of the village women had barely escaped. All because she had lost her temper.

But she was starting to worry that she had lost the ability altogether. Was she now made up only of downcast eyes and polite murmurs? Had she smothered her fire and her own entire self? Was that the price she had paid? And was it worth it, in the end? She was no safer than she had been before. And she had never felt so drab or mouselike than amid the wild, unfettered magic of the Fae.