“No time,” one of the maids replied, and hustled me out. She winked at me as we got outside the door. There was still plenty of time, but she knew how much I disliked being laden down with trinkets. If Belinda had had her way, I’d have been wearing two necklaces and an (aptly named) choker, huge earrings that would leave my ears sore for the next two days, and so many bracelets on either wrist that I’d jingle every time I raised my hand. Wearing that much heavy jewelry makes me look like I’m trying to attract attention when, in fact, I’d prefer to do the opposite. The only jewelry I ever really wore regularly was a plain silver locket on a silver chain that held three locks of hair—Mama’s gilded chestnut, Father’s night black, and now Aurora’s golden curl, each one bound up with a bit of silk thread.
At this point, I really envied the servants who had dressed me. You never saw them laced into tight gowns until their cheeks were red. You never saw them wearing the sorts of things Belinda thought “appropriate,” which generally meant “impossible to move in.”
I kind of understood why Belinda thought that this was necessary. Servants had jobs to do. People like me were supposed to look as if we never had to raise a finger for anything because everything was done for us. But, in the first place, I’m not like that because I would always rather be doing things than having them done for me, and in the second place, that’s always seemed very precious and pretentious to me.
The maids rushed off to some other task—probably to help one of the visiting ladies get into her gown—leaving me to make my own route to the chapel. Normally, I’d have taken the servants’ stair rather than the long path to the main stair, but today there would be so many servants running up and down that I’d be seriously in the way. So I continued through the maze of interlocking rooms to the front of the palace.
Our little manor had actual corridors, so when I’d first come to live in the palace, all this running through other people’s private spaces had just felt wrong. Actually, it still felt wrong, but according to Mama, the polite thing to do was to pretend that you were a ghost and saw nothing, so that was what I did.
I finally got to the front of the palace; the main stair was there, and it took up a lot of space. There was a walkway around it, and it went down to the fourth floor, where it split and went down to the third floor, where it joined up again into a much wider “presentation” staircase down to the second floor that ended in the anteroom to the Great Hall. The last part of it actually spread out with each step so everyone could make an impressive entrance.
I wasn’t the only one on the stairs; I hadn’t gotten far before I was joined by a growing stream of guests. I was extremely grateful not to be laden with jewelry at this point; most of these people didn’t recognize me, but they assumed that I was probably their equal in rank, so there wasn’t the constant interruption that there was anytime Mama and Papa went anywhere, with people stopping and bowing as they passed. When I reached the stairs down to the second floor, I stuck way over to the side next to the rail. Let other people make their impressive entrances; I was happy to stay unnoticed for the moment. Mama and Papa were finishing their own preparations and easing their nerves right now, and the best thing I could do would be to get to them as quickly as I could, which was something I wouldn’t be able to do if people recognized me and stopped me for an obsequious little chat.
Everyone but me was filing into the Great Hall, which took up the entire width of the building on this floor. I, however, slipped over to the side and opened an inconspicuous door to another stair that took me down to the first floor, which was where all the business of the palace took place. From there, I could go through all the offices and workrooms—which were empty right now—to another stair that took me up to the pantry at the head of the Great Hall. This was where the food was brought when the Hall was being used to eat in. Papa, in a splendid indigo uniform, and baby Aurora, in a waterfall of white silk lace and cradled in her nurse’s arms, were already there, and just as I entered, Mama came down the last few steps of the privy stair, which comes off their bedroom and goes straight down to the pantry. She looked amazing; the enormous dagged sleeves of her gown were lined in gold silk, and she wore her Crown of State, a more delicate match to the one Papa wore.
The Great Hall was used for every function where lots of people had to be housed, everything from meals to great ceremonies. There was a peephole in the door of the pantry that looked into the Hall, and I used it. The Hall was absolutely full.
At the front of the right-hand side were all the Light Fae. This was the first time I had seen more than two Light Fae at any one time, and I was a little startled by their variety. Some were wearing so little that they were almost nude; some wore clothing in styles like ours but made with much finer materials than anything I had ever seen; and some were wearing elaborate outfits that were so absolutely impossible, there was no way someone could actually have sewn them. Like the clothing that looked as if it was made of leaves or flower petals or snow or water. They all had long hair, often done up in equally impossible styles that came in every possible color. There were jeweled hair ornaments, and necklaces, and belts and bracelets on all of them, even—or maybe especially—on the ones who had very little actual clothing. One couple looked as if their clothing was jewelry.
And, of course, they all had wings. Tiny wings that seemed like an afterthought, huge sweeping wings that rose several feet above their heads, velvety bat wings, transparent metallic-veined insect wings, bird wings, moth wings, butterfly wings. The one thing that they all had in common was that they were studiously ignoring the group on the opposite side of the center aisle from them. If there were the kinds of infighting among them that we see in the Dark Fae, we humans would never know. We see only a tiny fraction of their lives and habits, and they like to keep it that way.
Living up to their name, the Dark Fae had similarly fantastic costumes that were almost all in shades of midnight blue or black, although a few wore white outfits that looked like spiderwebs or shrouds. Most of them were raven-haired, though a few ran counter to that trend with bone- or ice-white tresses. They too had wings: crow wings, the wings of death’s-head moths, tattered bat wings, sable insect wings, carrion-fly wings, dragon wings, even a few bone wings. Some had impressive staffs, some carried wands, some were empty-handed. All of them were so pale that they looked bloodless in contrast to the complexions of the Light Fae, which ranged from pale pink to deepest brown with a few blue and green ones thrown in just for variety. They glared at the Light Fae with such rage that I almost expected the Light Fae to burst into flames. But, of course, they were powerless against the Rules. They were here mostly to show their contempt for us mere mortals, although there were a few who were here in the hopes of frightening enough of the guests to make a meal of their terror, which was permitted by the Rules.
One of the clerks of the court came in by way of the stairs I had used and carried a sheaf of papers in his hand. “All of the Dark Fae are present, Majesty,” he said. He was one of the older clerks who had probably started service under Papa’s father. He looked very calm for someone who had probably stood at the side of the Hall, papers in hand, counting Dark Fae off his list at least three times to make sure he hadn’t missed anyone, because if we started before one of the Dark Fae arrived—and they were known to arrive late on purpose—well, there’s another Dark Fae offended. The Dark Fae were the ones who mattered, of course. If any of the Light Fae came late, they’d laugh and be charming about it, but we didn’t dare start anything until all the Dark Fae had arrived.