I nod, sitting back, proud of myself. Saskia looks at me for a long moment.
Then she comes around the desk and hugs me clean off my feet. My ribs creak, and every spare bit of air is squeezed from my lungs.
"You're one of us now," Saskia says into my hair. "That's it. It's decided. You're one of us, and I'll fight anyone who says different, including you."
"Ribs," I wheeze, giving her a light pat, trying not to anger the strong orc warrior who is holding me like a bag of manure.
"Ribs are negotiable." She sets me down, holds me at arm's length, and grins. And then — she looks from me to Torgan and back, and the grin slips into something with more humor.
"So," she says conspiratorially. "Should I do my fittings alone, or will my brother be attending all of them the way he attended Ysolde's and Brynna's fittings?"
"Saskia," Torgan says.
"Because the chaperone arrangement was Ma's, and Ma has been back from the summit for weeks now, and yet here you are." She crosses her arms and faces him directly. "You have no official duties in Starling Vale that I'm aware of. So why are you here?"
"Saskia."
"I'm just saying, as your sister, that when a man vanishes from his sister's wedding, and comes back with a blushing dressmaker?—"
“OUT.” Torgan gets to his feet and crushes the newspaper in one fist. He catches himself and glances at me, his Adam’s apple bobbing.
“Wait outside.”
He draws one breath.
“Now. I need to settle the deposit.”
"The deposit," Saskia says flatly.
"The deposit."
"You're going to settle the deposit."
"Yes."
“There's a bakeshop just around the corner,” I say, breaking into their conversation. “You can go there and get a pastry. Arabella will get you the best pastry possible.”
Saskia looks at him. She looks at me. She backs toward the door with both hands raised, grinning like the sun coming up, and pauses on the threshold just long enough to mouth — silently, enormously, with full theatrical clarity — one of us — while pointing at me with both hands.
The bell jingles as she leaves. Through the window I watch her stop on the street, punch the air once, and start talking to Mr. Dapplebeam, who looks taken aback by the vivacious orc.
The shop is very quiet. It’s not until Saskia is out of sight that Torgan crosses to my desk and sets down coins — far above the correct deposit — and doesn't leave.
We look at each other properly for the first time in six days. He seems… distracted. Nervous.
Exactly how I feel.
"She knows," I say. She knows we kissed.
"They all know. Brynna started a betting pool at her own wedding." He exhales loudly. "I came today because I couldn't think of a reason not to that didn't sound like the real reason."
"Which is?"
"That I've been counting the days between fittings." He says it flatly, like a fact he's confessing to a magistrate. His hand comes across the desk — not far, just far enough — and I put mine in it. His thumb crosses my knuckles once.
I look at our hands on the desk. Then I look at my sketchbook, still open, showing yet another wedding dress. Another dress that will not be mine.
The needle. The oak. You know how this ends.
