"Visit," Leah instructed, when Kaltain and Lillian were back on their horses. Kaltain had a box strapped to the back of her saddle with her own and Erick's clothes for the evening.
"We aren't afraid of whatever you think we are," Brendan added. "We love you."
Nobody said anything like what they had in the shop over the half hour it had taken to finish Kaltain's dress. The street was not as safe as somewhere filled with people who hated the king.
"I love you too," Lillian said. She was absolutely not going to cry again. "I'll come back when I can."
She craned her head to watch them wave goodbye as Pumpkin followed Hisli and Kaltain back to the wide faestone road and the Glass Castle at the end.
"I was trying to be nice," Kaltain said abruptly, when they could no longer see the shop. "If I didn't manage, tell me so I can try something different."
You were trying to make up for letting me be sent to Endovier, Lillian thought but did not say. You haven't figured out yet that it's not really something you can make up for, or that it almost doesn't matter. The thought was contradictory but true nonetheless. There wasn't any action to cosmically balance standing by while Lillian was sent to Endovier. There wasn't anything to stop Lillian caring about Celaena either, or to stop Celaena caring about Lillian.
"You were being kind," Lillian said. "It's not the same thing as nice, but it's better sometimes."
Celaena contemplated that.
"It was a good thing you did for Lysandra," Lillian added. "Yes, even if you only did it because Nehemia was worried."
She wasn't sure she believed that was true, either - she didn't pretend to totally understand Celaena, but she knew from personal experience that discussion or reminders of Terrasen's royal family or their deaths was guaranteed to get a reaction from Celaena as few things were. Lillian wasn't stupid: she could see some of the parallels here. At least these children still had one parent.
"Lysandra is better equipped than Erick was," Celaena said as if she could read Lillian's thoughts. Occasionally Lillian did wonder. "He couldn't do much to earn money at first."
Lillian wanted to ask all sorts of things - at first? Why Erick, and not a nurse or a guard? She'd learned recently that Erick wasn't even ten years older than Celaena. He'd have been maybe sixteen when Queen Evalin and King Rhoe were murdered. Who was he, to be so fanatically devoted so young?
But if she pressed she was worried Celaena would never say anything about it again. Celaena's estimation of Erick's skill was too high, in Lillian's opinion, but she supposed she hadn't ever seen him actually try to kill someone.
"And the people he wants to die do whether you see him or not," Celaena had pointed out when Lillian mentioned it.
"He didn't want final fittings?" Lillian asked now.
"Mistress Gordaina told him that if he changed one more detail she would never dress him again," Celaena said. "He said he didn't want to risk it."
They rode for a bit in silence, and Celaena said, "She really is excellent. She asked him the first time he ordered something whether he'd be wearing as many knives with that outfit as the one he was wearing right then. Nobody but me ever spotted Erick's knives before, and I knew they were there."
She paused. "Well, and you. That makes sense."
"It's how the fabric's cut," Lillian said. "And how it drapes. You can make it less obvious, but a really good dressmaker knows how to spot the tricks even if they don't know what exactly somebody's hiding. The knives were probably a guess. Don't tell Erick."
"It was funny to watch him not know what to say for once," Celaena admitted.
"Does he know they're my parents?"
Celaena shrugged, the same one she used as Kaltain. Celaena was really very lucky she didn't know anybody else as Celaena: once you started looking closely, it was easy to see that Kaltain and Celaena had similar mannerisms even if one wore wigs and structured dresses.
"It's important," Lillian said.
"I think he knows," Celaena replied. "We haven't discussed it. He likes them, though, he said - or at least he likes your mother."
Lillian was irritated to realize that the idea that he liked her mother softened her towards Erick. Plenty of people liked her mother. Even people Leah Gordaina didn't like liked her. Her mother was likable, because her mother was extremely good at talking to customers and running a shop.
They didn't speak for the rest of the ride.
Lillian's dress for Solstice was red, of course. It did double duty as a show of national pride and acknowledgement of Mala's fire. Since Lillian looked good in red, if not as good as she did in blue, she wasn't upset about it.
Since Elaine had decided to get creative, Lillian wasn't upset about anything else, either. She was standing on a stool letting Elaine sew her into the structured undermost layer when Dorian knocked.
He and Chaol had different knocks. Chaol's was businesslike. Dorian's was always hesitant.
"Come in!" she called, when he didn't open the door after his and Chaol's usual short wait.
Dorian obeyed, though when he closed the door behind him she could see in the mirror that he kept his hand on the knob, as if he was prepared to leave at any moment. He was in royal white, rumpled and losing its stiffness from being worn since the earliest hours of the morning. The circles under his eyes were only made more evident by the havoc that particular shade of white worked on his skin. "I didn't really get to say good morning," he said. "Hello, Elaine."
"You got up early even for me," Lillian replied, trying to crane her neck to look more closely at him without getting in Elaine's way.
"Look straight please, Lady Lillian," Elaine admonished, which meant she had not succeeded. "Your Highness, please, I only have so much time to literally sew her into this dress, and frankly I don't want to be involved in your romantic troubles."
"They aren't troubles," Lillian protested instead of pointing out that Elaine had been cautious about the whole thing last year. She, at least, was not afraid of Dorian either.
"Chaol said we needed to clear some things up."
Elaine sighed. "Lady Manon only tried to marry him to be queen, nobody is attached, don't get in the way of her nails, they're very sharp."
"All true," Dorian said after a moment. "How do you know about the nails?"
"Everybody knows about the nails," Elaine said. "They are not subtle."
Though Manon clearly hadn't used them on Dorian, whose cheek scars from the most severe of Lillian's panic attacks were healed but not quite to the point of invisibility. Unless she had, and that was why he was so unconcerned about the whole thing. Lillian didn't care for the idea.
He touched the scars absently, maybe thinking about the incident, and Lillian winced. The scars weren't entirely straight or parallel - nails weren't sharp enough to slice cleanly through skin - but four ran in roughly the same direction down his left cheek, starting dangerously close to his eye and trailing off before they reached the edge of his jaw. Above his lip a fifth, smaller one was the faintest.
No one had asked what happened to Dorian's previously unblemished face, but then, Lillian supposed that everyone who cared already knew.
"There's nothing wrong," Lillian said. "I was just surprised by some new information. We can talk more about it once everyone is well rested. Did you get a nap?"
"No," he said, watching her warily.
"Lay down and doze while Elaine finishes with me."
"You don't like it when I wrinkle my clothes," he said, half a question.
"They are your clothes to wrinkle whether I like it or not," Lillian said briskly, "and anyway, that is not what you will be wearing to the night celebrations. Elaine and I - mostly Elaine, I'm rusty - made sure you had something actually nice."
"Oh, well, in that case," Dorian said, and flopped face first onto Lillian's bed.
He managed to doze - or at least close his eyes - while Elaine finished sewing Lillian into the dress.
The underdress was close-fit, boned through the bodice, and very red. The hem was uneven and should, if Lillian managed to dance, look like spreading lily petals from above when she spun. The outer layer was entirely sheer and fell to the floor, with streams of lilies picked out in thread of gold and tiny glass beads of red and gold falling from the pointed waistline and crawling up from the hem. More sheer fabric, this edged in gold lace and more glass beads, covered the lily-petal neckline of the underdress that rose to her chin and fell over the billowy three-quarter sleeves of yet more sheer fabric caught with cuffs just below her elbows.
"That's pretty," Dorian said groggily from the bed. "Is sheer the new lace?'
"I use whatever I can get to make her better dressed than everybody," Elaine replied, inspecting Lillian critically. She twirled a finger, and Lillian, suppressing a memory of the king doing the same, turned so Elaine could look at all angles.
"I don't think it's a competition," Dorian said.
"You're wrong," Elaine said blithely, and gestured for Lillian to sit at the vanity. "I'm winning either way, though. The queen's seamstress is good, but Georgina knows what she looks good in and doesn't like to deviate when she doesn't have to."
Dorian's face creased into an expression Lillian could only classify as 'adorable confusion'. "Lillian knows what looks good on her."
"Yes," Elaine said, "but I know what will look good on her, and she knows enough to listen."
"I don't know enough about it to argue," Dorian admitted, and appeared to doze off again.
Elaine squinted suspiciously at him. Lillian could see it in the mirror. "Is this normal for him?"
"If you say his name he'll be sitting up and probably moving before he's actually awake," Lillian said. "I won't be surprised if he doesn't remember that that conversation happened at all."
The king had instilled unthinking obedience into Dorian as a child - well, Philippa had helped, out of self-and-child-preservation. Lillian had seen Philippa call him from the other room and Dorian be up, dressed, and halfway through eating breakfast before he actually woke up, blinking around him with zero memory of having done any of it. It was almost like Lillian's panic attacks, only Dorian went completely docile, and Lillian - well.
So really it made sense that Dorian tried to push back when he could, even if it was just through being late.
"I'll finish your hair and get his clothes," Elaine said, sighing. "Brullo is being wasted."
"Brullo can't sew as well as you can," Lillian replied, and closed her eyes to let Elaine start in with the decorative pins.
Lillian had almost dozed off herself when Elaine said, "One day you'll sing the whole song," and Lillian realized she was humming again.
Passion then cooled, but another love grew,
Warmed by contentment well nurtured and true,
Playful and growing, little life taking wing,
Mab, pure as snow thaw, precious ruler of spring
"One day I'll know the whole song," Lillian grumbled, and Elaine shrugged and finished up her hair.