I morphed it into a collar for Wraith, then spent considerably longer on a subtle chimaera to make the crystal look like a dangling, silver name tag with Wraith’s name on it.
“If anyone comes in here, you take off,” I told her seriously, showing her an image in my head and hoping she understood. “Don’t stick around, okay?”
Wraith meowed.
By the time I finished, Miranda and Jolie were both dressed, and yelling through my door that they were going to leave me behind if I didn’t let them do my make-up.
Miranda looked stunning in a moonstone-blue minidress, also by Michel.
She’d already changed her hair and eyes a pale blue to match, after consulting with him. To complement the dress, Michel added moonstone-colored shoes with teeteringly high heels, pale-blue stockings, silver earrings with more matching stones, and an elegant moonstone necklace that showed off her décolletage, along with a silvery-blue bracelet in a fish design that wrapped from her wrist to her elbow.
Jolie went with a different designer, a woman named Willow, who dressed her in burgundy and black. The dress itself was fairly simply, a form-fitting mermaid style, but the spellwork was difficult to look away from. Iridescent, gauze-like clouds moved around the asymmetrical folds like liquid metal. Herfeather fascinator glinted gold where it was held together above her ear, and moved like it was underwater.
She looked ethereal, like a water faery, or a mermaid.
I worried we were going a little overboard, but Jolie and Miranda both assured me it was tradition to go all-out for this thing.
Despite that, in the end I wore my hair down and a little wild around my shoulders. The dress left nothing but skin from the low-backed corset to the lace around my throat. My hair at least covered part of my back.
I thought Miranda would complain, but she squinted critically, then nodded in approval.
And yes, I let Jolie and Miranda do my make-up, mostly because they insisted.
When I came downstairs, I admit I felt a small ripple of satisfaction when I saw Graham and Draken’s eyes pop a little when they saw me. It’d been a long time since I’d made an effort before going out with anyone other than Alaric, and the look Alaric generally aimed for was some flavor of “club slutty,” (his words), so not exactly the same.
My feeling of satisfaction ebbed when Graham continued to stare at me, and offered me an arm before we walked into the party, which was being held in the gardens on the south side of Malcroix Mansion.
I really didn’t want to be there with a date.
From the look I saw on Draken’s face as he stared at my arm looped through Graham’s, he didn’t want me there with a date, either.
Honestly, though, that was maybe the only upside. The sooner Draken gave up on me as dating material, the better.
Not that the Draken thing wasn’t complicated. It was. Sort of. But, wise or not, I was a lot less sure why I kept saying no toDraken than I was about not wanting to be at a formal event on Graham Strangemore’s arm.
I slipped free of him as soon as we got inside.
Past the magical entrance, a golden gate which stood maybe twenty feet down the path from The Promenade, every part of the landscape had been completely transformed.
Someone, possibly Forsooth himself, had conjured a stone floor, also magicked and not normally there, beginning with the stone arch that held the gate. The arch itself was fascinating to look at, if a little disturbing, carved all over with moving, lifelike faces that changed expressions and even spoke to me, introducing themselves or laughing maniacally or complimenting my dress when I stared at a particular face for more than a few seconds.
The conjured floor covered at least forty feet to the right and left, but stretched much, much deeper, well past the Fountain of Furies, well past the rose gardens and the low hedge maze, until it disappeared into the southern part of the garden, possibly all the way down to the Great Lawn. Faery lights, floating lanterns, fireflies, statues, rugs, furniture, and trees that weren’t normally in that part of the garden, decorated the floored area.
Little kiosks had popped up everywhere, offering party favors, food, and drink.
I noticed a dance floor surrounded by torches, and a band playing discordant classical-style music from the side furthest from the gates.
The area closest to The Promenade and the main gate was tented with violet, green, and gold silk, marked on the outer edges by guttering torches. High, white, stone walls stood behind the torches, which was strange; I’d seen nothing of those walls while we’d been walking along The Promenade down the hill from Valarian College.
The statues, benches, and fountain itself were all lit from below in gold, violet, and green, another approximation of the school colors.
Despite all of those physical changes, however, it soon grew obvious that the main “decorations” took the form of Forsooth’s skill as a chimaerist and theurgist. As soon as I walked past those golden gates covered in faces and roses, I felt the magic inside the party’s boundaries as a tangible vibration all over my skin.
Chimaeras filled the air with colorful strands of light.
Occasionally those strands morphed and twisted into more complicated apparitions: birds, trees, rosebushes, ghostly people, dragons, butterflies, hares that ran by through the mowed lawn, a sphinx the size of a full-grown lion striding casually amongst the party guests. A number of vortex-like openings also appeared as I walked in the direction of the rose bushes, and those felt like doorways to somewhere else entirely.
Whatever they contained, I felt my magic tugged in that direction, as if the chimaera itself urged me to walk through and visit.
