Her gown resembled an overstuffed toadstool turned upside down. Selena found it difficult to draw breath thanks to the corset beneath, a torturous device that rendered her already thin waistline almost nonexistent while thrusting her small breasts up into places neither natural nor comfortable. She wondered if fainting would be enough to get out of the night’s obligation.
Knowing her mother, Selena doubted it.
The fiercely frowning woman who had dressed her took a step back to examine her handiwork. Staring at herself in a full-length mirror that had been dragged from somewhere else in the castle, Selena saw the seamstress smile briefly before stepping away to fetch something off a nearby table.
Selena had not had occasion to smile all day, and seeing herself in the garish yellow dress certainly would not change that. She estimated there to be nearly a dozen layers of fabric in her outfit. Already her skinny legs were roasting beneath the glistening canopy of her gown. As beads of sweat dripped down her back, she could not help but think of the boar that was to be the sixth course of tonight’s feast.
At least she was covered from the waist down. It seemed to Selena that the dressmaker must have run out of silk by the time she got to the top! Her arms and shoulders were bare except for the pair of straps whose duty it was to support three tons of cloth.
The seamstress returned, carrying a piece of jewelry. Selena jumped at the touch of cold metal against her skin. The necklace was heavy. She asked the woman if she were trying to transform her into an anchor and received no response. The two of them stared at the pendant for a moment before the seamstress’s reflection left the mirror once more.
Selena, however, continued to study the big red gem resting against her chest. She did not think she had ever seen the necklace before, though surely it was a part of her mother’s ever-growing collection.
Duchess Charlotte Nelesti harbored a fondness for rubies. In fact, her mother wore rubies whenever she had an excuse, believing they brought out her color of hair, which had once been as vibrantly red as Selena’s.
Selena did not like the idea of people’s eyes being drawn to the necklace and, hence, her pitiful excuse for a bosom. She felt a burning in her cheeks and saw the fair-skinned face of her reflection turn pink.
Standing as stiff as a scarecrow, Selena watched her attendant return to brush back her long hair and clip dangling earrings to her virgin lobes. A ring and two bracelets later, the seamstress departed, only to be replaced by two more women, one of whom went straight for Selena’s hair. The other began concocting something out of sight.
During the eons-long primping that followed, Selena’s anxiety over the night’s affair evolved into full-blown dread. After her helpers departed, she was left with naught but the company of her mirror image. The sight was enough to make her eyes sting with unspent tears.
Unlike the fairytales, Selena had not made a butterfly-like transformation from childhood to womanhood. In the mirror, she saw a tall girl who might have looked a bit pretty if not for the dark rouge on her cheeks, the sparkle of too much jewelry, and a dress that made her bottom half take up ten times the space it did normally.
And I am supposed to dance in this outfit? she thought incredulously.
The sight of that little girl in grownup’s clothing was almost enough to make her break her promise and lock herself in her room for the rest of the night. If she had made the vow to her mother alone, Selena would have done just that, but she knew her father had gone to a lot of trouble to make her fourteenth birthday party an extravagant event.
For his sake, she resisted the desire to tear off the dress—all one hundred layers of it.
A little while later, there came a knock at her door, which was followed immediately by the appearance of her second-oldest sister. Daphene lifted the hem of own her dress up off the floor as she ushered herself into Selena’s bedroom, not bothering to close the door behind her.
“What are you doing just standing there, Selena?” she asked.
Daphene would have found Selena sitting or perhaps lying on her bed if the cruel yellow dress had allowed for such things. She was simply biding her time and was not about to do anything until she absolutely had to.
Anyway, she was not sure what she was supposed to be doing. She could not go down into the great hall until all of the guests were there and waiting—“Let them revel in the anticipation of your arrival,” her mother had said—and so she would stew in her room until fetched.
“It is nice to see you too,” Selena replied dryly.
She had not seen Daphene in five months, when she and her husband, Count Raynor Vanguard, had spent the summer at Castle Nelesti. No, Selena mentally corrected, the Count had had enough of his in-laws after a week and a half and left early. Neither husband nor wife had seemed to have any problem with spending the rest of the season apart.
Daphene ignored Selena’s sarcastic greeting. Wearing a bemused expression, she said, “I hardly recognize you, Little Sister. Where did you get that necklace?”
“You can have it.”
Daphene rolled her eyes and shook her head. “This is the biggest night of your life, Selena. I barely got a wink of sleep the night before my coming-of-age ball.”
In fact, Selena had not slept well last night, but it had not been due to anything akin to anticipation.
“You were seventeen years old when you became a woman,” Selena pointed out. “So was Vivian. And Evelyn was sixteen when she had her coming-of-age party.”
Daphene shrugged, as if to say, “What difference does it make?”
“Why in the Seven Hells do I have to do this now?” Selena demanded.
Daphene laughed, and if Selena had at all missed Daphene the past few months, she certainly had not missed her nasally, haughty laugh.
“You speak as though tonight is a punishment! Perhaps you will feel different when you see the mountain of gifts the guests have brought.”
Wonderful, Selena thought, more dresses and baubles.
“You really do not know why Mother has arranged all of this now?” Daphene flashed a sly smile.
Selena wanted to shout, “Out with what you know or be on your way!” Instead, she shook her head, causing her earrings to swing back and forth like pendulums.
“Well,” Daphene began, adopting a tone Selena had secretly dubbed The Gossipy Milkmaid, “Baron Briarbridge has it on good authority that Prince Eliot himself is to attend your party!”
Cecil Briarbridge. The husband of Vivian, the oldest Nelesti girl. Out of her three sisters, Selena would have liked the opportunity to visit with Vivian most of all. But here she was, listening to Daphene gossip about—
“Eliot Borrom? The Crown Prince of Superius?”
Daphene nodded enthusiastically. She seemed to be waiting for Selena to say more—or maybe jump up and down for joy—but she was doomed to be disappointed. Selena merely stared at her, waiting for her to go on.
“Is it not obvious, Selena? Of the four of us, you are closest in age to Prince Eliot. Mother is most hopeful that the royal family will take a liking to you and the two of you will be betrothed before the night is through!”