The courtiers laugh. Heat floods my face because he’s telling them a secret and using that secret to mock me.
When Eldred was High King, his revels were staid, but a new High King isn’t just a renewal of the land, but of the Court itself. I can tell he delights them with his caprices and his capacity for cruelty. I was a fool to be tempted into thinking he’s any different than he’s always been. “Some among us do not find mortals beautiful. In fact, some of you might swear that Jude is unlovely.”
For a moment, I wonder if he wants me to be furious enough to order him to stop and reveal our bargain to the Court. But no, it’s only that with my heart thundering in my head, I can barely think.
“But I believe it is only that her beauty is… unique.” Cardan pauses for more laughter from the crowd, greater jeering. “Excruciating. Alarming. Distressing.”
“Perhaps she needs new raiment to bring out her true allure,” Locke says. “Greater finery for one so fine.”
The imps move to pull the tattered, threadbare rag gown over my own to the delight of the Folk.
More laughter. My whole body feels hot. Part of me wants to run away, but I am caught by the desire to show them I cannot be cowed.
“Wait,” I say, pitching my voice loud enough to carry. The imps hesitate. Cardan’s expression is unreadable.
I reach down and catch hold of my hem, then pull the dress I am wearing over my head. It’s a simple thing—no corset, no clasps—and it comes off just as simply. I stand in the middle of the party in my underwear, daring them to say something. Daring Cardan to speak.
“Now I am ready to put on my new gown,” I say. There are a few cheers, as though they don’t understand the game is humiliation. Locke, surprisingly, appears delighted.
Cardan steps close to me, his gaze devouring. I am not sure I can bear his cutting me down again. Luckily, he seems at a loss for words.
“I hate you,” I whisper before he can speak.
He takes my chin in his fingers, tilting my face to his.
“Say it again,” he says as the imps comb my hair and place the ugly, stinking crown on my head. His voice is low. The words are for me alone.
I pull out of his grip, but not before I see his expression. He looks as he did when he was forced to answer my questions, when he admitted his desire for me. He looks as though he’s confessing.
A flush goes through me, confusing because I am both furious and shamed. I turn my head.
“Queen of Mirth, time for your first dance,” Locke tells me, pushing me toward the crowd.
Clawed fingers close on my arms. Inhuman laughter rings in my ears as the music starts. When the dance begins anew, I am in it. My feet slap down on the dirt in time with the pounding rhythm of the drums, my heart speeds with the trill of a flute. I am spun around, passed hand to hand through the crowd. Pushed and shoved, pinched and bruised.
I try to pull against the compulsion of the music, try to break away from the dance, but I cannot. When I try to drag my feet, hands haul me along until the music catches me up again. Everything becomes a wild blur of sound and flying cloth, of shiny inkdrop eyes and too-sharp teeth.
I am lost to it, out of my own control, as though I were a child again, as though I hadn’t bargained with Dain and poisoned myself and stolen the throne. This is not glamour. I cannot stop myself from dancing, cannot stop my body from moving even as my terror grows. I will not stop. I will dance through the leather of my shoes, dance until my feet are bloody, dance until I collapse.
“Cease playing!” I shout as loudly as I can, panic giving my voice the edge of a scream. “As your Queen of Mirth, as the seneschal of the High King, you will allow me to choose the dance!”
The musicians pause. The footfalls of the dancers slow. It is only perhaps a moment’s reprieve, but I wasn’t sure I could get even that. I am shaking all over with fury and fear and the strain of fighting my own body.
I draw myself up, pretending with the rest of them that I am decked out in finery instead of rags. “Let’s have a reel,” I say, trying to imagine the way my stepmother, Oriana, would have spoken the words. For once, my voice comes out just the way I want, full of cool command. “And I will dance it with my king, who has showered me with so many compliments and gifts tonight.”
The Court watches me with their glistening, wet eyes. These are words they might expect the Queen of Mirth to say, the ones I am sure countless mortals have spoken before under different circumstances.
I hope it unnerves them to know I am lying.
After all, if the insult to me is pointing out that I am mortal, then this is my riposte: I live here, too, and I know the rules. Perhaps I even know them better than you since you were born into them, but I had to learn. Perhaps I know them better than you because you have greater leeway to break them.