I wake in Locke’s house on a bed covered in tapestries. My mouth tastes of
sour plums and is swollen from kissing. Locke is beside me on the bed, eyes
shut, still in his party clothes. I pause in the act of rising to study him, his sharp
ears and fox-fur hair, the softness of his mouth, his long limbs spread out in
sleep. His head is pillowed on one ruffle-covered wrist.
The night comes back in a rush of memory. There was dancing and a chase
through the maze. I remember falling on my hands in the dirt and laughing,
totally unlike myself. Indeed, when I look down at the borrowed ball gown I
slept in, there are grass stains on it.
Not that I’d be the first to green gown her.
Prince Cardan watched me all night, a shark restlessly circling, waiting for
the right moment to bite. Even now I can conjure the memory of the scorched
black of his eyes. And if I laughed louder for the sake of angering him, if I
smiled wider, and kissed Locke longer, that is a kind of deceit that even the Folk
cannot condemn.
Now, however, the night feels like one long, impossible...