“Are you ready?” the door-fairy asks, annoyingly unperturbed. “If so, I will take you and your photographer to visit our hosts.”
I straighten. This is the first bit of good news I’ve had since arriving.
“Is that where my assistant went?” I ask, self-consciously touching my claw clip, then my dress.
“Potentially. Shall we?”
“Not yet.” This servant may be low-ranked, and he may dislike me, but I’ve got to try and fix my wardrobe problems while I can. “You may not have noticed, but the dress I’m in… it’s white.”
“Correct,” says the fairy servant.
“With a tulle skirt. And hand-beading.”
“Correct.”
“So, it’s a wedding dress.”
The door-fairy looks affronted. “Absolutely not.”
I stare at him until he looks bored.
“You know,” he says, “I expected a little more from you. Visually speaking.”
Fine. Goddamn fine whatever. “Jurgis? Let’s go.”
Light sparks in Jurgis’s eyes, like he’s equipped with his own internal flash button. “Photos now?”
“No, no. Save your batteries, bub.”
“You, bride?” he asks.
I have a feeling this will get old, fast.
The servant fairy guides us down long, winding corridors into a new section of the castle. Here, the walls morph from cozy and torchlit to ornate and magical, decorated with old tapestries lit by candle sconces. Said sconces hold floating balls of light. The honeysuckle is orange, interspersed with purpling ivy. And there’s more carvings overhead than ever.
Ugh. The colors and patterns are justnotworking. Only a professional designer could pull off this techno-magic and traditional décor, and clearly, such a designer was not involved in ornamenting this castle.
“Tell me this area won’t be part of the wedding,” I say to the fairy.
“It won’t be! We’re in the Green Wing, for visiting nobility.”
I mentally take note. After all, I’ll need acting knowledge of the castle’s layout for tomorrow.
“Ahh, there’s your assistant.”
Sure enough, Mandy lingers at the end of the hallway, speaking to none other than Rochester. Seeing me, she flounces over in a newly acquired balloon-bottomed dress. It is not white, which feels both like a relief and an insult.
“Mandy,” I say. “What’s going on? This schedule doesn’t match the quote I gave the Roachster.”
“Some things have changed,” she chirps. “Hi, Jurgis!”
So the appearance of this royal photographer doesn’t surprise her. I rub my temples, making no effort to hide my annoyance. Unexpected changes to the wedding timeline, a weird dress in my closet—it all points in a troubling direction. I already knew that fairies were unhinged. Who’s to say they wouldn’t throw a wrench in their own wedding, just for funsies?
And then throw the blame on us somehow?
Rochester interrupts my silent contemplation with manly throat-clearing. I’m impressed when Mandy only melts incrementally against me.
“Sorry,” she says. “Do we need to keep moving?”
