Caswell’s gaze touched the brooch in my hand, paused at my face, and emptied itself.
“Verita,” he said.
“Caswell.”
The women passed their attention over me without quite letting it land. Hem, wrist, shoulder, throat. Nothing missed, nothing acknowledged.
Caswell held out a folded page.
“The Council has approved the return of an item from family inventory for use at the alignment formal. You will receive it now. A fitting will be scheduled by basin summons. Until then, the dress is not to be altered, concealed, lent, or removed from school grounds. Do you understand?”
“I understood the words.”
His mouth stayed flat.
“Do you understand the instruction?”
“No altering, concealing, lending, or removing. Very generous list of things I am not allowed to do with my own mother’s dress.”
One of the women shifted her grip on the box.
Caswell didn’t soften.
“It is not your dress until the Council releases it from inventory.”
I looked at the black box between the women.
“And when does the Council plan to do that?”
“At the formal, if release is approved.”
“If?”
“Yes.”
A laugh rose in me, sharp enough to hurt.
I kept it mostly behind my teeth.
“Bring it in, then.”
Caswell stepped aside. The women carried the box into Room 114. One set it on the bed. The other placed a small packet of papers on the chair beside it.
Inventory copy. Fitting notice. Conduct requirements.
The school loved a paper trail almost as much as it loved a locked door.
The women opened the brass clasps together.
My whole body heard the sound of the click.
Inside, folded in layers of dark tissue, was my mother’s dress.
The only dress I remembered had been ordinary from use: blue faded almost gray, cuffs rubbed soft, the hem darkened by streets that never seemed to dry.
This was far from that.
Deep green silk, almost black where the folds held shadow. Fine silver thread worked at the waist in the shape of branches. Tiny leaves stitched along the bodice. At the collar, nearly hidden until the tissue moved, a single wren in silver thread.
