Page 43

She looked at Oskar. He was prodding at his beef without much enthusiasm.

Earlier, he’d looked contemptuous and bewildered by the myriad spoons and forks and knives, but he’d watched them all carefully to see which utensils were used when.

He was making an effort—not to fit in, but to acquiesce to their sensibilities, even if it must have all seemed very silly to him.

Guinevere wasn’t quite sure that it didn’t seem silly to her, too.

She’d once held these rules sacred, but she had mostly eaten with her hands from Druvenlode to the Wuyun Gates, and the gods hadn’t struck her down or anything like that.

So, what was it all for, and to whom did it really matter?

She imagined telling Clan Bonecrusher about the existence of a knife that was used only for salad.

They’d probably be enraged enough to start a war.

The meal ended with iced oranges and a pristine blancmange.

Guinevere begged off from the customary beverages in the parlor, claiming exhaustion.

It wasn’t even a lie; not only had she and Oskar ridden hard today to make it to Nicodranas before nightfall, but they’d also usually been asleep long before this time while they’d been traveling.

It was…awful, to think of it in the past tense. To be brought up short every few minutes by the painful realization that she and Oskar weren’t traveling anymore. That soon there would be a goodbye, after which they would never be in the same room again.

Wensleydale kissed the back of Guinevere’s hand as she hovered at the threshold of the dining room.

“Sweet dreams, Miss Guinevere.” He looked deep into her eyes, that ever-present smile dancing at the corners of his lips.

“I bid you welcome to Nicodranas. I hope that you will be happy here—that we will be happy, together.”

She was seized by the urge to cry. She glanced over at Oskar. He was staring down at the floor. Then her gaze swung back to Wensleydale, who was kind and handsome and impeccable in both dress and manner. The sort of man that she had always been expected to marry, that she had dreamed of marrying.

But he wasn’t Oskar.

Guinevere didn’t, for the life of her, have any idea what it was she said in response to Wensleydale that evening.

She fled to her room, where she lay down on a feather tick instead of a lumpy bedroll, and she tossed and turned, astounded by the silence of the indoors, until sleep claimed her at last.

Guinevere woke up late the next day, which felt like a luxury in and of itself. There was a staggering moment of disorientation when she opened her eyes expecting the usual canopy of fiery trees but saw, instead, the embroidered flowers on the tapestry hanging over her four-poster bed.

After that, everything came by rote. Tugging at the bellpull to summon the chambermaids, who drew her a hot bath.

Slipping into the enormous claw-foot tub, sitting there in the rose-scented water while a servant washed her hair and scrubbed her back.

Standing while the same servant dried her off and laced her up into one of the day dresses that Wensleydale had commissioned for his bride.

Then drifting downstairs to the salon, to join her mother and a gaggle of Nicodranian ladies who had come to call.

Menagerie Coast nobles draped themselves in brighter colors and more elaborate patterns compared to their Dwendalian counterparts.

Aside from that, though, almost everything was the same.

Pretty manners, airy voices, politely muted laughter that was as delicate as the clinking of the porcelain teacups, which were held without the pinkie finger extended, because that was apparently considered rude here on the other side of the Cyrios Mountains.

Guinevere suspected that there were more minute differences in etiquette that she’d have to keep track of.

Despite the innocuous chatter, the guests had clearly come with one purpose in mind: to gawk at Lord Wensleydale’s commoner intended. Every question directed to either Guinevere or her mother was subtly steeped in a patronizing edge that sailed right over the latter’s head.

How do you not see it? Guinevere wanted to scream at Betha, who was tittering like a schoolgirl at someone’s wry, not-that-funny remark. They’re all laughing at us. They know we’re buying our way into their world. I will always be treated like an upstart.

But that didn’t matter to her parents. The title was the only thing that mattered.

She saw neither hide nor hair of Oskar the whole day.

Wensleydale had taken him and her father around the estate immediately after breakfast, and, once the last of Guinevere’s callers had made their exit, the guard that Wensleydale assigned her in view of the Spider’s Web threat followed her around wherever she went.

He reported to Wensleydale, and she could hardly ask him to let her be alone with another man.

Not that she knew what she was going to say to Oskar if she ever did get him alone.

All too soon the dusk descended, and golden lanterns throughout the mansion and its grounds roared to life in preparation for the ball.

Guinevere once again submitted herself to the rituals of bathing and drying and powdering, this time with some hair-curling thrown into the mix.

It took the combined efforts of three servants to get her into her fiendishly intricate evening gown.

As they fiddled with her buttons and her ribbons, she stood at the window, watching one carriage after another roll up the driveway, discharging lords and ladies in jewels and silks, feathers and fur.

“All done, my lady!” chirped the youngest of the servants. The other two lugged the standing full-length mirror over to Guinevere for her inspection.

At first, she could only stare.

The girl in the mirror didn’t look at all like she had ever been on the Amber Road.

Her hair had been brushed to a radiant sheen, and it spilled down her shoulders in loose waves.

Her skin was smooth in the soft light, gleaming with traces of the pearl dust that had been sprinkled into her bathwater.

She wore a long-sleeved lilac gown spun from the Menagerie Coast’s famed crushed silk, shot through with threads of sparkling silver.

The low-cut bodice was cinched tight at the waist and flared out into a voluminous, trailing overskirt that was artfully slashed and gathered up into rosettes in several places, revealing the gauzy layers of embroidered silver tulle beneath.

She didn’t look like herself. It was an epiphany that momentarily robbed her of breath. She didn’t recognize this stranger in the mirror, who knew nothing about wilderness. She didn’t want to be this stranger.

Guinevere drifted out of her room in something like a daze.

She was barely aware of her parents beaming at her and ushering her off to the west wing of the glittering mansion, every inch of which had been meticulously dusted or polished until it was as sterile and perfect as her life would be from now on.

Wensleydale was waiting for her at the top of the staircase in dove-gray formal attire.

He did a double take at the sight of her, an appreciative grin spreading across his handsome features.

She should have blushed and preened. She should have been grateful that her future husband was attractive and charming on top of being wealthy and titled. She could have had it so much worse.

But there was more to life than settling for good enough.

She had watched clouds of mist wreathe craggy peaks and dawn break in gentle golden rivers through an autumnal forest. She had broken bread with goblins and feygiants and gone shopping with gangsters.

She had wanted someone so much that it was impossible to breathe, and she’d had him in all sorts of glorious ways, and what she felt for him was stronger than any inferno.

There was a whole world out there, and she had only so recently found it. What a waste, to let go so soon.

Guinevere tucked one hand into the crook of Wensleydale’s arm.

“Ready, Miss Guinevere?” asked her would-be husband. His twinkling eyes were blue, not liquid topaz. His elegantly coiffed hair was gold, not a soft, disheveled black. He didn’t have tusks.

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” said Guinevere.

And she fell into step beside him, down the marble staircase, down into her picture-perfect future.