AUTHOR'S NOTE: Sorry for the long wait, y'all. Both of my jobs kicked into high gear and I have two weddings in two months. In both I am in the wedding party, so. Busy busy busy! Plus the new book came out and I'm trying to take at least some of it into account with my plans.
The queen's party had turned out to be an evening garden party, which at least meant Chaol felt more secure: he could watch her. There were so many people watching her that Lillian sometimes wondered if she should be more careful about how she used the privy.
At the moment it was only Chaol, as far as she knew, and he was getting sloppy. His throws were still picture perfect, his blocks textbook, but his mind was clearly elsewhere. She had successfully bored a captain of the royal guard enough that he wasn't paying attention to her.
Actually work at your lessons with the captain, Celaena had instructed, or near enough.
When Chaol grabbed her this time, Lillian let her feet slip into the correct position for the first time in years and realized that her left hand could still close tightly over something as large as a man's arm. She twisted.
Chaol wasn't technically thrown - he was too good for that, and she was still too unpracticed - but he did stumble against her, off balance and automatically bringing his leg up to sweep hers out from under her. She stepped back into him, foiling his momentum, and kicked sideways at his knee. He let her go so he could twist away, and he kept going until he was out of reach.
Lillian looked at him. He looked at her.
"Better," he said finally. "Maybe we'll let you practice with a sword sometime before the year is out."
They didn't have that long, and Lillian didn't know how to use a sword. She said, "I prefer a staff."
"For assassinations?" Chaol asked dubiously.
"I don't see how a sword would be any less inconspicuous," Lillian retorted. He shrugged, and made her try the throw again until she could toss him.
"Don't speak to the queen until you've been introduced," Philippa instructed as Gytha made sure the corset fit properly. The current fashions, Gytha assured her, were designed to emphasize slim hips, slimmer waists, and large bosoms. Lillian had one of those things, and her waist size was a direct result of being routinely starved. She hadn't quite managed to put the weight she'd lost back on, but she had always had wide hips and smaller breasts anyway.
Philippa had produced stuffing for the corset so she looked as if she had a larger chest, though. Lillian poked at it, unconvinced.
"When you start making fashions you can get rid of it," Philippa told her, and batted her hands away so Elaine could pull the dress up and begin fastening the tiny pearl buttons that ran up the back of her dress from tailbone to the top of her high lace collar.
Elaine had outdone herself. Instead of a lace insert, a warm ivory lace overlay went from near-solid at the neck to increasingly more loosely tatted until it became uneven near the hem, like flower petals. Under it, the burnt orange color of the gown itself was slowly revealed. LIllian didn't have to worry about going barefoot this time: even fashion bowed to the possibility of getting noblewomen's feet covered in dirt from the gardens. Her slippers matched the underdress exactly.
"Perfect," Elaine said smugly. Lillian grinned at her in the mirror - Elaine had asked for her input on color and design, but the craft had been entirely Elaine's. She had the right to be smug.
"Wig," Philippa said, and Elaine and Lillian both grimaced. The wig wasn't bad - this one had been secured into an upswept arrangement with strategically mussed locks of hair meant to hang around her face - but it was itchy, and Elaine had complained that it didn't curl like Lillian's hair did. Philippa pinned Lillian's curls down ruthlessly anyway, plopped the wig on top, adjusted it a little, and pinned it just as ruthlessly in place. Gytha presented gloves (more lace, how did they get ahold of all the lace? Lillian did not let herself calculate how much it must have cost), and Sara slipped a wrap the same color as Lillian's underdress and shoes over Lillian's shoulders.
"A moment alone with Lady Lillian, please," Philippa said when they had all and Sara filed out obediently, but Elaine frowned at looked at Lillian.
Lillian glanced at Philippa before she nodded at Elaine, who dropped a quick curtsey and backed out.
Philippa snorted. "If I'd known letting her design gowns would win undying affection I'd have let her do it sooner. Don't let it go to your head. Remember what we said about Kaltain."
"Every word from you is engraved on my soul," Lillian assured her, and flinched when she realized she was being sarcastic with a woman who could probably have her thrown back in Endovier with a word to the prince.
She got a laugh in response, though. "Don't kill anyone. Don't die."
Lillian thought that was probably good advice for all occasions, though she would be expected to kill people eventually if the prince and Chaol could be believed.
"And try not to spill anything," Philippa added, turning her towards the door. "Lace is hard to clean."
I know, Lillian thought. The door opened to reveal a blank-faced prince and a considerably less blank-faced guard captain. Chaol looked as if he had sucked on something sour. Lillian realized why when the prince offered her his arm.
She took it slowly, keeping Chaol's black-clad form in the corner of her vision and trying to think like Celaena Sardothien wanted her to. If he came at her she could duck around the prince or Philippa and run for her rooms - and then what? Maybe Celaena's plan to teach her how to hang off balconies had some merit.
Chaol wasn't going to attack her now though, so she turned her attention to the prince. He was all in ivory the same color as her lace, with red and gold embroidery swirling around his shoulders and picked out delicately along the hems. It made his black hair stand out, but Lillian thought it clashed with his skin tone and didn't give his eyes the emphasis they needed to really pop. The red and gold embroidery was, when she looked even more closely, a wyvern: it wrapped around his shoulders, mouth open as if to bite. Lillian didn't like the way it looked like it was going for the prince's throat, but she did like the dangling ruby drop he wore in one ear. Men hadn't worn jewelry at court when last she'd heard.
"Do I pass inspection?" the prince asked dryly.
Lillian considered telling him to find a better advisor in regards to his coloring and discarded the idea. "I like your earring," she said instead.
He snorted.
They walked in silence for several minutes before the prince said, "Call me Dorian at this."
"I'll try," Lillian said.
"And…" he trailed off. Lillian waited. He sent a look at Chaol over her head, sighed, and continued, "Please be kind to my stepmother. Don't be friends. She doesn't need any more fake friends. But be kind."
Lillian suddenly liked him a little better. He might not care if she died, and he might want her to kill people, but he cared about his stepmother. It was a scrap of humanity, at least. She nodded.
His hand tightened on her forearm as they approached an outdoor courtyard. The doors here were glass again, the glass over the doors worked into stylized sun rays in all sorts of reds and yellows. "And stay away from my sister."
Lillian nodded again, and did not tell him he was hurting her. He let go a moment later anyway, as they stepped through the doors.
The queen brightened noticeably when the prince - Dorian, remember Lillian, call him Dorian - entered and called him over. Dorian pulled Lillian along with him.
Queen Georgina was in the palest shade of pink Lillian had ever seen. She wasn't even sure it was pink: it might have been white, and some trick of the reflected candlelight or the dresses of the ladies surrounding her. Either way it made the queen's skin glow, and her expertly applied cosmetics made her green eyes - darker than Philippa's - look especially piercing. Her hair was a deep reddish brown, and it didn't look like a wig. Lillian couldn't tell if it was dyed, either.
She was ten years older than Lillian at most, and Lillian thought she might be younger. The candlelight made it difficult to tell.
The candlelight did not make it difficult to tell where the current body ideal had come from. Queen Georgina's neckline was not shallow in the least, and only gave the slightest whisper of cover over her shoulders. What embroidery there was - a little bit down the front, to emphasize her slim waist - appeared to be gold.
Elaine was good. Whoever had made the queen's dress might be better, and whoever had chosen the emerald drops in the queen's ears and filigree gold necklace with matching tiny gems had known exactly the color of the queen's eyes. Lillian wouldn't change anything about the entire outfit. The person who made it deserved awards.
This was her garden party outfit? Lillian might murder to see her in full court regalia.
Dorian bowed over his stepmother's hand and Lillian collected herself enough to curtsy.
"You've never brought anyone to meet me before," the queen exclaimed to her stepson, and turned her smile on Lillian. "We'll need to get to know each other better. A lunch, maybe. Next week? Just us."
"If your majesty wishes," Lillian managed, sending a panicked look at Dorian.
"Lillian may be busy, Lady Mother," Dorian said smoothly, and Georgina's smile dimmed a little before she turned it back up.
"Of course, I should have thought. You won't have even seen the whole palace yet!"
Lillian shook her head, trying not to ask about her tailor.
"Lady Lillian," Kaltain said, appearing as if from thin air beside them and dipping a quick curtsy to the queen. "Your majesty, Your highness."
"Kaltain," the queen acknowledged, nodding. She smoothed her skirts, and Lillian frowned. Why would the queen be nervous of Kaltain?
Lillian was certainly nervous of Kaltain, whose dress was a cold grey-blue tonight. Silver embroidery dotted it in seemingly random patterns, but Dorian frowned at it.
"Nehemia saw you come in," Kaltain said with no other acknowledgement of the queen or the prince. "She asked me to ask you to sit with us."
"I would be honored," Lillian replied, glancing again at Dorian. He jerked his chin. She hoped he meant 'go ahead'.
Kaltain smiled, though it didn't quite reach her eyes, and dragged Lillian away as forcefully as Chaol had dragged her to meet the king. In Eyllwean she said, "She's surrounded by stuffy old nobles who want to ask her how many wives her father has."
"One?" Lillian said uncertainly in the same language. "Unless Eyllwean law has changed-"
"You'll notice soon enough that most of the court is full of idiots," Kaltain told her, and kept dragging. She had a strong grip.
Some of Nehemia's tablemates weren't old, though Lillian couldn't speak for their stuffiness. A young brunette woman in a deep green gown was just asking with an air of indifference if Nehemia was here looking for a good husband.
"Maybe you can give her some advice," Kaltain said in Adarlanian, coming to a stop beside Nehemia's chair. "Two years isn't that long to go without a marriage proposal, after all."
The young woman flushed, and some of the other young nobles at the table hid their smirks behind fans or hands. Others didn't bother.
Nehemia turned a reproving look on Kaltain but brightened when she saw Lillian. "Lady Lillian! I did not know you had arrived."
Kaltain was busy staring down a young man who had opened his mouth to say something and appeared to think better of it now, so Lillian couldn't be sure how she would have reacted to Lillian learning that she had not been sent by Nehemia.
"Lady Kaltain found me, your highness," Lillian said, curtsying deeply. Nehemia's dress was also white, which made Lillian wonder if white was a royal prerogative these days. It was similarly cut to the red one Lillian had seen Nehemia wear before, though it had no embroidery, and her hair once again sparkled with gold dust. No other jewelry was evident.
"She is so attentive," Nehemia said dryly, which earned a sidelong glance from Kaltain. Nehemia raised an eyebrow at her.
"I'm stealing the princess," Kaltain told the table, tone brooking no argument. "She really has to try the punch."
She didn't drag Nehemia as she had Lillian, but it was close. Lillian followed with a sheepish smile at the nobles.
"I've had punch," Nehemia said in Eyllwean, tone mild as they followed Kaltain to the refreshments table.
"I thought you had had enough of them," Kaltain said in the same language. "If not, you can go back. I thought you wanted to talk to Lillian."
"I don't know how you navigate court so well with this attitude," Nehemia sighed. "Lady Lillian will think you're cruel."
"I am only cruel to boring people," Kaltain replied. "Are you boring, Lillian?"
Lillian, caught off guard, stammered, "I'll try not to be?"
"There you are," Kaltain said, and began serving them all punch.