Princess Nymeria's Arc

Chapter 14 of 32

Three days after the letter came, Madam Honey left before dawn. She walked to the seamstress two towns over, the one who owed her a favor. Nymeria waited at the inn and could not sit still. She swept the floor twice. She rolled dough until Lyra took the pin from her hands. "You'll wear a hole in the table," the elf said. "Sit. She'll come back." By dusk on the fourth day, the front door swung open. Madam Honey stepped in with a long bundle wrapped in linen, her cheeks pink from the cold. She smiled the way she smiled when the bread came out right. "Found it," she said. "The perfect one." She laid the bundle across the table and peeled back the cloth. The gown spilled out, black and smooth, cut to fall off the shoulders. Silver thread ran along the hem like frost. Nymeria touched it and could not speak. In Shadowfen she had worn gowns like this by right of birth. This one she had earned with flour and coin and honest days. "Well?" Madam Honey said. "Try it, child. I didn't walk half the realm for you to stare." Nymeria dressed behind the curtain. Madam Honey worked the laces and pinned the shoulders and smoothed the skirt with careful hands. When she stepped back, she went still. Her eyes shone. "Oh," she breathed. "Look at you." Nymeria turned. Her purple horns caught the firelight. Her black hair fell sleek down her back. The gown fit as if it had been born on her. Lyra, who never ran short of words, said nothing at all. She stood with her mouth open. Then she crossed her arms and grinned. "Well, crumbs. Somebody scrubbed up into a real princess. Don't trip on those fancy stairs and make a fool of us." Nymeria laughed, and her chest tightened at the same time. The gown was ready. The one thing standing between her and the ball was gone. Now nothing stood between her and the crowded hall of strangers she had been afraid of all along. She looked at herself in the small mirror by the hearth. A stranger looked back, beautiful and dressed for a prince's choosing. But a beautiful face was the whole trouble. Men wanted that face without meaning to. Her charm did the rest. How would she tell true love from the pull of her own magic? "The ball is tomorrow night," Madam Honey said softly. "You have the gown. You have your feet under you. The rest is up to your own heart." Nymeria smoothed the black skirt. She had a way there now. She would walk into that castle a stranger among strangers, and she would learn a man's heart before he ever felt her charm. If she could. She folded the gown with care and set it by the door. Tomorrow she would ride to the ball.