Gavin’s face seared my memory—sunlit and laughing, his armor molten as he tossed coins to cheering children. Bitterness dug spikes into my throat. Scion knew the crowds had reacted abitdifferently on my one sojourn out. How was I supposed to compete with that kind of glamour … that kind ofglow?
Unless I didn’t try to compete at all. I thought of my unwanted new nickname—Duskland Dauphine.
Not all spectacle was sunlit.
“You’re the designer.” I narrowed my eyes at the spread of cloth and sewing accoutrements clogging her rooms. “Did you have something else in mind?”
Oleander gave me a complicated look as she began to rifle through the swathes of fabric and half-finished dresses that covered her apartment. “Fashion is much like court, Mirage. You would do well to make a study of it. A gown can tell a story or keep a secret, flout rules or flaunt treachery.”
“That’s actually an excellent segue,” I said, suddenly remembering Barthet’s report on the Vidâme de Cascara and his little rebellion. Oleander’s dynasty was Sinister—surely she was friendly with the legacies I’d put under house arrest. “Several noble families are refusing to pay taxes because they feel their children are being kept at court against their will.”
Oleander’s eyes glittered. She pinned ribbons onto a half-finished mess of satin. “No one likes being kept prisoner in retaliation for choosing the wrong side in a coup d’etat.”
“They’re not so much prisoners as insurance.”
“Against?”
“Rebellion? The mobilization of personal armies against me?”
“If Sinister parents think you’re going to execute their heirs out of spite, that may happen anyway.”
“I’m not going to execute them!” I flushed, feeling defensive. “I never intended on keeping them as hostages forever. I’m frankly not sure what to do with them. Should I just let them go home?”
“And give their families the chance to secede while the empire is in flux, and never pay taxes again?” Oleander picked up a gown with its sleeves torn off. “You’re right to keep them at court. Truthfully, it’s where they’re happiest. But you have to understand—they’re bored.”
“Bored?”
“Bored.”She arched an eyebrow. “They’ve been confined to their chambers for weeks now. Some of them can afford apartments with multiple rooms, like Sunder and me, but most of them live in rooms this size, in Gaillarde and Jacinthe wings.”
A discomfiting shame crept along my spine. I’d never bothered to wonder what it might be like to be trapped in my room for weeks on end, unable to talk to friends or family, with Belsyre wolves posted at my door.
“Do you remember what this place used to be like?” Oleander went on. “Picnics at Prime, salons during Compline, balls and masques with feasting and dancing well into Nocturne. They don’t care about politics—they want their lives back.”
“But that was one of the ways Severine controlled her nobles,” I hedged. “She kept them distracted with parties and fashions and intrigues so they didn’t have time to worry about their estates hemorrhaging money or their fellow legacies disappearing without a trace.”
“I know that. It doesn’t change the fact that parties are fun.”
“So you think I should let them have a party?”
“If that’s what you think is best.” She licked the end of a thread and pushed it through the eye of a needle.
“Perfect,” I said. “Tell them to have a party whenever they want.”
“Do I have to explain it to you?” Oleander rolled her perfectly lined eyes. “Youthrow a party forthem, and thenyougo to it.”
“Why?”
“Four spans at court and she still behaves like an illiterate Dusklander gamine.”
“Won’t they have more fun if I’m not there?”
“Inevitably.”
I tried to think around the headache beginning to pound at my temples. “You think I should woo them.”
“By the Scion, I think she’s got it,” she drawled. “Their world turned upside down the day you staged your coup. Their empress—who, as you pointed out, controlled everything from their fashion choices to their finances—is dead. The only thing they know about you—the presumed Sun Heir—is that they tormented you relentlessly when you were nobody. Half their friends died in the fighting and the other half are isolated in their own chambers. They’re scared and lonely and, yes,bored.”
She was right. Maybe I did have an opportunity to woo them to my side—to give them a gesture of good faith, to prove to them and their families this transition of power didn’t mean an end to the life they knew. If I gave them a modicum of normalcy, maybe they’d give me a chance.
