Princess of the Midnight Ball - Jessica Day George [72]
Everything was black. Or dark purple. Or midnight blue. There were occasional flashes of silver: the lamps, some silver gilt on a few of the chairs. But other than that, everything was dark, the colors of shadows and spiders and twilight. Their own clothes had been taken away, and they had been given wardrobes of ballgowns, morning gowns, and nightrobes in shades of black, purple, and indigo blue.
“I want my pink dress,” Pansy sobbed. She had been so exhausted the night before that she hadn’t protested when Lily, dismissing the strange, silent maids, had put Pansy in a filmy black nightrobe and tucked her into the ebony-wood bed. But now it was morning, although there was no sun to shine here, and Pansy was refusing to put on any of the dresses provided.
“I don’t want to wear mine either,” Petunia said, struggling free of Jonquil, who was trying to dress her in a dark purple gown. “It’s ugly and it smells funny. Where’s my yellow dress?”
Rose could hardly blame them. The clothing did indeed smell funny—like stone and earth and something else unpleasant. And the fabrics were cold and slippery and strange. She had had to repress a shudder of revulsion at the sensation of her own indigo-colored gown sliding over her head and down around her shoulders.
Her one comfort was the shawl Galen had made for her. The silent servants had tried to take that as well, but Rose had hissed at them that if they took her shawl, she would have them all beheaded. Something in her face convinced them, or perhaps it was not an unheard-of punishment for the King Under Stone’s servants, for they left the shawl alone.
Her sisters had not been as fierce, or as fortunate.
“These shoes don’t fit,” Lilac complained, holding up a pair of black leather slippers.
“Then try some of Iris’s,” Rose snapped. She caught Petunia as the youngest girl tried to crawl under a bed, and held her out at arms’ length while Jonquil attempted to slip the purple dress over the girl’s head.
“Herr Schmidt’s slippers fit us much better,” Orchid announced.
“Of course they do; he made hundreds of them for us,” Lilac said.
“Hold still,” Rose shouted at Petunia. “Your yellow dress is gone; you have to wear this one!”
Her sisters all froze and stared at her. Rose never shouted.
“Listen to me,” she said, doing her best to moderate her tone but sounding angry all the same. “It doesn’t matter if the clothes smell funny or don’t fit right. We’ll get used to it soon enough. Don’t you all understand? We’ll never leave this place again! We’ll never see the sun, never see Mother’s garden, never see Father, ever again.”
She released Petunia, half-dressed in the purple gown, and walked away. She didn’t know where she was going until she had gone out the door and into the long corridor beyond. It was empty and horribly silent. Rose kept on walking.
Eventually she came to a door that was not closed. Beyond it she could see a room that mirrored the one she had left: long and narrow, with twelve tall beds. Illiken and his brothers were sitting on the various sofas, playing music on strange, shrill instruments, reading books, or simply sitting and staring.
Rose went in.
The princes all stared at her, then scrambled to their feet as one. Illiken came forward after some nudging from his brothers.
“Rose, what are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be in your room?”
“Does it matter?”
“Father doesn’t like it if people wander around without permission.”
“None of you are very bright, are you?”
A spark of something lit in Illiken’s eyes at her harsh words. “Father doesn’t like us to be too clever,” he said carefully, as though testing to see if she understood. “He does not appreciate rivalry.”
“Nor will you,” the King Under Stone said as he swept into the room. “If you ever sit on my throne.”
Illiken’s pale skin turned a sickly green, and he and his brothers bowed.
Rose remained stiffly upright, however. She was through paying homage to this evil creature.
“Where is Galen?” She had many