Glitter (Glitter Duology #1)(17)
“I’ll leave you here, then,” the King says at full volume. Now that we’re alone in the royal rooms, the public formality is gone from his tone. “But you know where to find me if you have a nightmare.” His voice is cheeky, humorous, and you could almost believe we were friends making jabs.
“My chamber door will be locked, I hope,” I say in a voice of thin glass.
“If you wish it so,” he replies calmly, and sweeps me a low bow. He seems to sense he shouldn’t push me any further tonight. I have no doubt he’ll resume being intolerable tomorrow.
The click of my door closing echoes. I drop my fa?ade and slump against the confines of my stays as I stare around at my gilded cage—the place where I’ll reside for the foreseeable future.
I will never call it home.
“May I undress you?” The familiarity of the synthesized voice is the only thing that prevents me from leaping out of my skin.
“Of course,” I mumble, realizing the sun is already starting to brighten the windows.
I cross the room to the dressing stool that came with my new quarters. I’ll have to order a new one that isn’t raised so high off the floor. By the time I finally stopped growing, I was 177 centimeters tall—five foot ten inches—and half a head taller than most full-grown women. I’d simply stand on the floor to be undressed, but the sensors in the stool orient the bots. So I tower over them the way I tower over most of the ladies at Versailles. I’ve grown used to it.
His Highness’ mother must have been quite diminutive. She and the former King Wyndham both died when His Highness was fifteen. It’s strange to think that two people can be so wealthy, so powerful, that they literally own their own kingdom…and accidents still happen. An electrical storm downed their jet over the ocean somewhere between Australia and India. The wreckage was found months later, but the bodies never were. There were murmurs, of course. Deluded conspiracy theorists who spun tales of deaths faked, assassinations carried out, tech tampered with. But I think the truth is simple: they died. And no one meant for it to happen.
I hold my arms out and the bots carefully remove each delicate piece of my gown. A bot plucks at my hairpins until the entire dark brown mass tumbles down from its high pompadour. I sigh in relief and massage my scalp, rubbing my fingertips in tiny circles.
With a few theatrical exceptions—and the artistic exterior of the bots—we’ve escaped the signature powdered wigs of the Baroque era, thanks in part to a convincing argument that hygiene, rather than fashion, was their impetus. But elaborate updos are still a fixture. Some of the ladies of the court use wire forms beneath their hair to achieve greater height—certainly Molli and Lady Mei do—but I’ve been both blessed and cursed with thick, semi-wavy hair, so I merely get dozens of hairpins.
While rubbing my scalp, I almost miss one of the bots reaching for the ties on my corset. “No!” I say, too harshly, then add an apologetic “Thank you,” as if it had feelings. “I generally sleep in my stays.” I try not to feel too annoyed by the mistake; M.A.R.I.E. knows my preferences, or should, but if my profile didn’t transfer properly to this new room, I can hardly blame her. His Highness may have told her to start afresh. That would be just like him—to try to make his soon-to-be Queen up from scratch.
“Of course, Your Majesty,” the bot replies—technically the proper title for the occupant of this room. It would have said the same thing if I’d claimed to sleep sopping wet and could she please dump a barrel of water over my head.
Tasks completed, the mask-faced bots make synchronized bows and wheel back toward their concealed cubbies, executing their standard shutdown sequence. They’ll awaken again at the slightest command, but until then, I’m alone.
I stare at myself in the full-length mirror. My white silk shift strains across my breasts, still pushed up by the corset. Below my stays the shift protrudes in a light, semisheer cascade of skirt that reaches to precisely three fingers’ width from the ground. My hands go to—and nearly circle—my overly cinched waist, and I try to take a deep breath, which is, of course, not possible. But it hurts, a familiar, comforting hurt that tends to settle not around my stomach, but in the form of a persistent jab at the bottom of my ribs.
It’s so different from when I first started wearing corsets. I was excited to be laced into my first set of stays. It’s a sign of emerging womanhood, and in her heart of hearts, I think every girl wishes she could fast-forward the arduous process of becoming into actually being a woman.
When I put on most of my height, it became apparent I wouldn’t be one of those frail, willowy nymphs. I was tall, and I was solid. With another ten kilos I might even have been called stout. But while Mother’s plans would never have allowed that, the fact remained that I was not and would never again be small. So instead Mother ordered that my corsets be maintained at the same measurements even as I continued to grow. When my body changed so rapidly that I felt almost a stranger in it, I found an inexplicable satisfaction in exploring the limits of my laces.
At the end of the day, though, I was grateful to put them away.
Until I witnessed the King killing that girl. When the time came that night to unlace my stays…I simply declined. Every week or two, when it stops hurting, I set the bots to pull my laces a bit tighter. Now I have nearly the smallest waist in court, despite my height. The other ladies think it’s because I’m vain.