Once Broken Faith (October Daye #10)(78)

“Oh,” said Elliot, in a hushed voice.

“His name was Dobrinya. I haven’t seen him in centuries. I don’t even know if he’s still alive. I hope he is. He was among the sweetest of my brothers. But you’re not mine.”

“Apologies, First,” said Elliot, turning his face resolutely away. He reached up to wipe his eyes, trying to make the motion seem unobtrusive. He failed, but it was a valiant attempt. “I just never expected to stand so close to you. To any one of you.”

“I know,” she said. “You did good.”

Elliot visibly swelled with pride, finally looking at me. “You need to stop doing this sort of thing,” he said.

I shook off my surprise. It had been so long since I’d seen someone dealing with their first Firstborn encounter that I’d almost forgotten what it looked like. “Why should I stop? You do such a good job of fixing it.” I glanced down at myself. The blood was gone. So were the holes in my clothing. Even my bodice had been relaced, although the laces weren’t pulled tight; that would have knocked the air out of me, and that’s never good when you’re surrounded by a giant wave of magical water. I looked up again. “The High King told me to change my clothes. You think he’ll be cool with me having them magically steam-cleaned instead?”

“No,” said Arden immediately. “You need to wear something they haven’t seen before. It’s the only way you’ll be taken seriously.”

“Oberon save me from the purebloods and their rules,” I muttered. “All right: I’m going to need an escort back to the room I’m supposed to be sleeping in, since all my clothes are there.”

“Actually, no—you won’t,” said the Luidaeg. She turned and took the brown case from Karen, who had observed everything in silence, eyes wide and face drawn. She looked like she couldn’t decide whether she wanted to be terrified or amazed. That was a combination I was very well-acquainted with.

Setting the case on the table, the Luidaeg opened it and began rooting through a welter of scraps. Finally, she pulled out a piece of coppery spider-silk. The edges were ragged, but the lightning jag remains of the embroidery that must have covered the entire piece of fabric were still visible. She walked over and held it out to me.

“Here,” she said. “Now strip.”

“Uh.” I glanced at Quentin. As I had expected, his cheeks were so red that he could have replaced Rudolph as the lead reindeer for Santa’s sleigh. “I’m going to go with ‘no.’”

The Luidaeg rolled her eyes. “When you people learned all this modesty shit from the humans, I may never figure out. There’s a screen in the bathroom. Go get it, stand behind it, and strip.”

“Why am I stripping?” I asked. Quentin was blushing harder all the time. I was starting to wonder if the Luidaeg missed the sight of blood all over everything, and was trying to make my squire explode.

“Because you need to change your clothes.” She narrowed her eyes. “Unless you want to argue with the sea witch?”

I groaned, throwing my hands up in the air. “Sure, now you get all dire and terrifying, because you want something. Why can’t you be dire and terrifying when people are stabbing me? That’s when I need you to be dire and terrifying.”

“The bathroom’s over there,” she said, pointing.

I stopped complaining and went.

The bathroom, as she called it, was bigger than my living room, and contained a recessed tub that would have given me nightmares if it had been full. If the Luidaeg hadn’t been attending the conclave, this would probably have been the room assigned to Patrick and Dianda; she could have gone swimming in that tub. The promised screen was propped against the wall next to a large rack of soaps, bath oils, and baskets full of bath salts. I grabbed it, hoisted it up onto my shoulder, and returned to the main room, where the others were waiting.

“That is the biggest bathtub I’ve ever seen,” I said, putting the screen down.

“So glad to know that your pedestrian concerns continue to take priority,” said the Luidaeg. “Now strip.”

Arguing with her wasn’t going to get me anywhere. I unfolded the screen, stepped behind it, and began removing my clothes, trying to pretend I wasn’t sharing the room with my regent, my squire, a sea witch from the dawn of time, and an easily amused Duchess with a penchant for rewriting the luck of others. Tybalt, Elliot, and Karen were almost irrelevant; none of them made me that nervous, at least where nudity was concerned. Finally, I stepped out of my trousers, and called, “Done!”

“Great. Hold the cloth in front of you, hold your breath, and close your eyes.”

I did as I was told. I’d come this far. What was a little more ridiculousness?

The Luidaeg said something else, more softly this time. That was the only warning I received before a wall of hot, soapy water cascaded over me, leaving me gasping. Then I realized I could feel corset stays pressing against my sides. I looked down. The copper scrap had become a strapless, corseted gown. The skirt was loose enough for me to run in, cut mid-calf in the front and extending to the floor in the back. The whole thing was covered in that delicate forked lightning embroidery, giving the impression that I’d just walked out of the heart of a storm. There were even shoes, flats, made of leather that was the same beaten-gold color as the lightning.