“Wait, what?” I turn to Tori, who has the good sense to at least pretend to be chagrined, while Evie only snorts and rolls her eyes at her sister.
“You’ll learn pretty quick that it’s easier to just let her do her thing.”
“I wasn’t planning on getting anything,” I insist, but they all just stare at me, and I can feel the flush of embarrassment creeping up my neck.
“It couldn’t hurt to try something on, could it? Even if you don’t find anything you like.” Brynne suggests, winking at me from the mirror where she’s been twirling for the last five minutes.
“Famous last words,” I mutter, but Lisette’s already shooing me towards a back room.
“Let’s see,” she says, eyeing me up and down. I’m somewhat less self-conscious now than I was when Maeve fitted me for my uniforms a month ago, but I’m still stiff and awkward as she appraises me and gestures with her finger. “Do a little turn.”
When I face her again, her eyes are bright with excitement. “Oh this will beperfect.” Without waiting for me, she dives into the racks, wrestling garment bags and dresses into submission as she searches for something I’ll probably hate anyways.
“You really don’t have to—” I begin to protest, but her triumphant shout cuts me off. When she reappears with a black garment bag in tow, I resign myself to playing nicely.
“Take this,” she says, handing me the deceptively heavy bag, “and let me know if you need help putting on the cape.”
There’s a fucking cape?Whyis there a cape?
Five minutes later—after contorting my body into the skintight dress, too afraid to breathe lest I split the seams—I realize why.
“Holy shit,” I exhale in disbelief. The dress, if you can even call it that, is primarily nude mesh with strips of sparkling, embellished black velvet that trace the lines of my body. They run down my chest and stomach, hiding my chest and groin, but otherwise leave me exposed before transitioning into a full black skirt and train. The mesh sleeves hook around my middle fingers with loops of black velvet, but it’s not until the cape—a heavy blanket of even more embellished black velvet—that I understand.
“Oh myGodthe suspense is killing me, just come out already!” Evie complains from the other side of the door, and I cant help but smile as the other two join her.
“Behold,” Lisette announces as I begin to open the door, “The Goddess of Night.”
Their silence is more than a little unnerving as I step to the last unclaimed riser as Lisette follows to bustle the train. It’s not until I see the dress in triplicate thanks to the trifold mirrors that I’m also struck speechless.
Because the version of Nyx Byrke I’ve known all my life has disappeared under a cloak of endless, glittering night. Tendrils of dark fabric reach out like shadows from beneath the cape to twine and curl around her naked form, until she’s bound by a ravenous darkness that threatens to consume her.
Time stills from one stuttering heartbeat to the next as pressure grips my chest like a fist. The tendrils of fabric begin to move like shadows, creeping and writhing as they climb myreflection. But I feel the whispers of their touch, cool against my skin.
Curious.
Searching.
The embellishments on the dress begin to blink in and out of existence, like stars in the night, dying and flaring to life from one breath to the next.
Beneath the hood, the darkness tremors.
I feel, rather than see, the gaping maw of the void open wide.
And suddenly, something stirs in the bottom of that black abyss.
Something… endless.
I can’t look away.
It won’tlet melook away.
The abyss holds me captive, its gaze raking over me.
Delving under my skin, through my veins, into the depths of my mind.
But I refuse to blink.
Irefuse.
