And under all of it, somewhere out there is a woman he loves enough to spend twenty gold pieces protecting her from her own heart. That is still the only story I've ever managed to make of that vial. And a man does not flee a dance floor like the floor is burning unless?—
Something lands in my lap.
Not lands — climbs. A girl of perhaps five, green as spring grass, one tusk barely through, wearing what was this morning surely a very fine dress, hauls herself up my skirts like they’re a ladder, and looks up at me with wide, bright eyes.
"You're the dressmaker," she says.
"I — yes." My worries scatter like startled birds. "I am."
"You made Cousin Ysolde beautiful."
The whole hall goes a little watery, but I manage not to cry. "She was always beautiful, sweetheart. I just made the dress agree with her."
She considers this with the gravity of a judge. Whatever verdict she reaches, it apparently entitles her to settle deeper against me.
"I'm Mima," she says. "When I get married, I will have a dress with wolves on it."
I raise an eyebrow "Wolves?"
"Embroidered wolves. Running ones. All around the bottom, so when I dance, they run." She yawns enormously, tusk and all. "You'll make it. You make all our dresses now. Everyone said."
Everyone said.
I open my mouth to explain that there are other dressmakers – better ones – and the fact that her wedding is presumably twenty years away?—
She's asleep, completely boneless, her fist still closed around my hand like I’d leave her.
I sit very still.
And the worries — the dance, the shutter, the woman I've invented to explain a vial — don't leave, exactly. But for a moment, I can believe they’re gone. Across the hall, through the smoke and the singing, I catch Lady Ishara watching me over the rim of her cup.
She raises the cup an inch in a salute.
I don't know what I've just passed. But I know I've passed something.
"Welcome to the family," says a voice beside me. Brynna slides onto the bench beside me. “Mima decides who she wants to stay with, then falls asleep wherever she likes.”
“She’s adorable,” I say honestly.
Brynna nods. “I saw you dancing with Torgan, by the way.” She says it like she’s talking about the weather. Like she doesn’t have a lot of interest in it. “Don’t worry about him. He does that.”
"Does what?" I say. Too fast.
“Runs when he feels like he’s getting too close to something he cares about.”
“It has to be hard for him,” I find myself saying, and it sounds far away, like someone else is saying the words. “Because he cares about you and your sisters so much.”
Brynna chuckles lightly and shakes her head. Then she pulls out a small leather notebook from her sleeve — flips past pages of tiny precise handwriting, and lays it open in front of me.
Embroidery patterns. Vines and letters intertwined — lines of text becoming stems, stems becoming words again, whole sentences flowering up a bodice seam.
I stroke the page, marveling at the designs. “Brynna, I never knew you could draw.”
She nods. "Time for my consultation," she says. "I want a dress with writing in it. Evander and I met in the royal archives — I want our books stitched into the gown where only the two of us know to find them. Everyone says you're the one who can do it." She pauses. "Sorry to jump on you at the wedding, but I wanted to reach you before Saskia does, because her dress is going to be armored, and I refuse to inherit a consultation schedule organized around load-bearing embroidery?—"
"I ALSO NEED TO BOOK," Saskia bellows, from somewhere in the crowd. Luckily, Mima does not even stir.
"Me too." Mirelle materializes on my other side, holding a plate of wedding cake. "When it's my turn. You'll make mine too, Lissy. Promise it."
