Chapter 10: The Midsummer Festival

  Hannah's room was slightly larger than Kessa's and twice as lived-in. A quilt in bright patchwork covered the bed. Drawings pinned to the wall, done in a child's hand, showed figures with enormous heads and stick limbs doing things that might have been dancing. A small wooden horse sat on the windowsill, paint worn by small fingers.

  "Lily's," Hannah said, catching Kessa's glance. "She sends me drawings every week. I send her fabric scraps to make doll clothes."

  Kessa set her bag on the bed and pulled out the dress. Silver-grey silk unfolded in the lamplight, and Hannah's reaction was everything she hadn't known she needed.

  "Kessa." Hannah took the dress from her hands with reverent care. She held it up. Turned it. Watched the silk catch the light and release it. "Where did you get this?"

  "I had fabric. I'm a seamstress."

  "This is beyond seamstress work. This is art." Hannah looked at her over the top of the dress with an expression that was half admiration, half the quiet awareness that she wouldn't get an answer. She let it go. "Put it on. Now. I need to see it on you."

  The silk slid over her head like cool water, settling against her body with an ease that said it had been made by someone who knew her body. Because she did. Because she'd made it for herself.

  Hannah circled her, making small sounds of professional assessment. "The neckline is perfect for your shoulders. The hemline, did you do something to the weight? It moves like it's alive."

  "Good construction."

  "Mmm." Hannah was already reaching for Kessa's braid. "Sit. I'm doing your hair."

  "You don't have to—"

  "Sit."

  Kessa sat. Hannah's fingers were deft and warm, unwinding the practical braid Kessa wore every day and rebuilding it into something different. Pieces left loose to frame her face, the rest gathered in a way that showed the line of her neck and the set of her jaw. Small things that changed everything.

  "Taran is going to lose his composure completely," Hannah said.

  "Don't be ridiculous."

  "I'm never ridiculous about romance. It's the one area where I'm deadly serious." Hannah met Kessa's eyes in the small mirror on the wall. "A necklace. You need a necklace." She was already at her dresser, rummaging, producing a simple silver chain with a small pendant, something that caught the light the way the dress caught it. "Borrowed. You'll give it back tomorrow."

  The necklace settled against Kessa's collarbone. Hannah added a touch of color to her lips from a small pot, something berry-dark and barely there. The measuring ribbon stayed at her wrist, hidden beneath the silk of the sleeve, warm and constant.

  "Now look," Hannah said, turning her toward the mirror.

  Kessa looked.

  The woman in the glass was familiar and wasn't. Same face, same brown eyes, same strong hands. But the dress transformed her the way good clothes transform anyone, into a version of herself she hadn't known she was allowed to be. Someone who deserved silver silk and loose hair and a night where the only obligation was joy.

  "I look..." she started.

  "Beautiful," Hannah said. "Stop being surprised by that and accept it."

  "I wasn't—"

  "Beautiful. End of discussion. Now let's go before we miss sunset."

  The lower courtyard had been transformed into something from a fever dream.

  Colored lanterns hung from every surface, dozens of them, their light enchanted by Mirrorwork into shades of amber and rose and deep violet. Garlands wound around pillars and archways, threaded with the same light-catching silk Kessa had used for the sashes, so that the greenery shimmered when the evening breeze moved through it. Musicians played from a raised platform at the courtyard's edge, their instruments weaving together in melodies that were old and familiar and made something in Kessa's chest want to move.

  And the magic. Hannah had warned her, and the warning hadn't been enough.

  The air itself changed as they walked. One moment it was warm summer evening, the next a pocket of cool ocean breeze, salt and distance, and then two steps later the smell of a hay meadow in high summer, grass and wildflowers and sun-warmed earth. Givon's work and the work of the other Scentbinders, layering the air with beauty.

  Above them, the Mirrorworkers had caught the dying sunlight and were holding it, scattering it into patterns that danced across the courtyard walls. As the natural light faded, the enchanted light grew, until the courtyard seemed to exist in its own golden world, independent of the darkening sky above.

  And the tapestries. Hannah pulled her to the far wall where three ancient hangings, their colors faded to ghost-pale, hung between the lanterns. As Kessa watched, the figures in the weaving began to move, at the edge of sight: a hand lifting, a head turning, a couple stepping into a dance that had been paused for centuries and was now, for one night, resumed.

  "Old magic," Hannah whispered beside her. "Nobody knows who made them anymore."

  Kessa stared. The figures danced their ancient dance, thread-and-color people moving through a world that existed only in fabric, alive for one night a year.

  "Come on," Hannah said, tugging her arm. "Tarby will have a crisis if we don't taste his pastries within the first ten minutes."

  They found the group near the food tables. Tarby stood beside his contribution looking terrified. The centerpiece of his display was a tiered arrangement of tiny fruit tarts, each one topped with a cage of spun sugar so delicate it looked like frozen breath. The sugar caught the Mirrorworkers' light and threw tiny rainbows across the tablecloth, miniature arcs of color that shifted and vanished and reappeared.

  They were perfect. He was panicking.

  "The sugar on the third row is uneven," he told Bren, who stood beside him in civilian clothes that looked strange after weeks of seeing her in uniform. "Can you tell? Don't look at the third row."

  "People are eating them, Finn. They're happy."

  "Happy isn't ecstatic. I was going for ecstatic."

  A townswoman nearby bit into one of the tarts and made a sound that was close enough to ecstatic, that Tarby's shoulders dropped half an inch.

  Taven was already at the table, eating steadily, ignoring everyone. Givon appeared from the crowd and demanded that Kessa smell his masterwork immediately. She breathed in. Honeysuckle and warm stone and something that did, against all probability, evoke the precise temperature of a perfect summer night.

  "It's beautiful, Givon."

  He beamed.

  The festival swirled around them. Music and light and people moving through enchanted air, the boundaries between staff and townsfolk and minor nobility softened by darkness and magic and the generous democracy of celebration. Kessa let herself be part of it, eating a fruit tart that was in fact very close to ecstatic, laughing at something Taven said that was technically a complaint but was also somehow the funniest thing she'd heard all week.

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  And through it all, her eyes moved through the crowd, searching.

  "Kessa."

  His voice came from behind her.

  She turned, and the courtyard with its thousand lights and its enchanted air and its ancient dancing tapestries became backdrop, scenery.

  Taran stood in dark blue formal clothes, silver accents at the collar and cuffs that caught the Mirrorwork light. His dark hair was combed back from his face, showing the clean line of his jaw, the grey eyes that looked lighter tonight, almost silver in the enchanted light. The hand mirror was absent from his belt. He'd come as himself, not as a Mirrorworker.

  He looked at her. At the dress, the loose hair, the silver pendant at her throat. And the reserve cracked just enough to show a warm honesty underneath.

  "You look…" he said, and didn't finish.

  "So do you," she said.

  His almost-smile arrived, and she wanted to memorize it.

  "I wasn't sure you'd be here," he said. "I hoped."

  "I said I would be."

  "You did. I suppose I wasn't certain I believed my luck."

  Around them, the festival continued. The music swelled and shifted into something slower, something with a pulse that matched the rhythm of the colored lights. In the central space of the courtyard, couples had begun to move together, the ancient Midsummer dance that everyone in the kingdom knew the steps to, learned at their mother's knee or their father's hand.

  "There's dancing," Taran said.

  "I noticed."

  "Would you… that is, would it be.. I mean…"

  Taran. Composed, controlled Taran, who answered questions in three words and made silence feel like communication. Stumbling over his words like a boy at his first festival, color rising in his face, his hands opening and closing at his sides as if they'd forgotten what hands were for.

  "Yes," Kessa said, saving him. "I would."

  The relief that crossed his face was worth every moment of the weeks she'd spent watching him from across crowded tables and pretending she wasn't.

  He offered his hand. She took it.

  His hand at her waist was warm through the silk.

  Her hand found his shoulder, solid under the dark blue fabric. Their free hands clasped, his fingers threading through hers.

  The music wrapped around them. A slow traditional melody, strings and a single flute. The steps were simple. Step, turn, step.

  His eyes never left hers.

  They weren't good dancers. Neither of them had claimed to be. But they moved together with an ease that surprised them both.

  The dance turned them once, twice. Each time they came apart, the space between their bodies felt wrong, and each time they returned, the rightness of it was more obvious. His hand at her waist guided without leading. Her hand on his shoulder settled there.

  "I should tell you something," Taran said.

  "Now? While dancing?"

  "I can't seem to find another time. When we're alone, there are always interruptions."

  "We're not alone now. We're surrounded by people."

  "Strange." His eyes held hers. "I hadn't noticed."

  The dance turned them, her skirt swirling silver-grey, the light catching the silk and releasing it. When they came back together his hand resettled at her waist.

  "What did you want to tell me?" she asked.

  "That I notice you." His voice was low, pitched beneath the music, meant for no one else. "That I've noticed you since you arrived. That I find myself thinking about you. Often."

  The courtyard, the music, the thousand enchanted lights all went distant. There was only his voice and his hand at her waist and the grey of his eyes, which were not cold at all, had never been cold, were in fact the warmest thing she'd ever seen.

  "That sounds uncomfortable," she said, because humor was easier than honesty, and because she needed a moment before she could say what she actually meant.

  "It is. But also the opposite of uncomfortable. I don't have a word."

  "I don't either. But I think I know what you mean."

  "Do you?"

  "I notice you too."

  His hand tightened at her waist. Just slightly.

  They danced. The music continued, unhurried, generous with its time. The Mirrorwork light painted patterns across their skin, gold and rose and violet, and Kessa thought: this is what magic is. Not thread or mirrors or scent. This. Two people finding each other in a crowd and choosing to stay.

  The song ended. The last note hung in the warm air. Another melody began, faster, and the dancers around them shifted tempo, reformed, paired off in the new rhythm.

  Taran and Kessa did not move.

  They stood in the middle of the dance space, hands still clasped, his hand still at her waist. The faster music moved around them like a river around a stone, couples spinning past, the lantern light shifting across the ground. Neither of them seemed to notice.

  "I don't want this to end," he said.

  "Then it doesn't have to."

  His thumb traced across her knuckles. She felt it in her hand and in her chest.

  "Kessa! There you are!" Givon's voice, carrying across the space with cheerful, theatrical authority. "You MUST try my new scent composition! I require your professional opinion on my masterwork!"

  The bubble broke. Reality returned in a rush of noise and light and other people's laughter.

  Taran released her hand. Slowly. His fingers trailing across hers as they separated, holding on until the last possible moment.

  "Later," he said, quiet, just for her.

  "Later," she said.

  He stepped back. The reserve settled over his face again, but imperfectly.

  Givon appeared at her elbow, looping his arm through hers with cheerful authority, already pulling her toward the group. "You'll thank me later," he murmured as they walked. "The entire servants' hall was watching. I just saved you from becoming tomorrow's gossip."

  Kessa looked back.

  Taran stood where she'd left him, the enchanted light painting his face in gold, and he was watching her with an expression that made the word later feel like a promise.

  The rest of the night passed in a glow.

  She sat with the group, and Givon insisted she smell three different versions of his scent until she declared the third one sublime, which it was. Taven admitted, grudgingly, that Tarby's pastries were "acceptable," and Tarby's face achieved an expression of pure joy, and Bren had to steady him. Hannah gave Kessa a look that communicated roughly seventeen different things without a single word, most of them variations on I told you so.

  The magical displays peaked at midnight. Every Mirrorworker in the castle released their light at once, and the courtyard erupted into color, the air itself seeming to fracture into a thousand reflected fires. The Scentbinders layered the air with summer and warmth and the clean sharp scent of starlight, which Kessa had not known had a scent until Givon showed her it did. The ancient tapestries danced their silent dance on the walls, thread-people celebrating alongside flesh-and-blood ones, and the boundary between magic and world dissolved into simply celebration.

  Then, for a heartbeat, the lights stuttered. A cluster near the eastern wall, three lanterns dimming and brightening in rapid succession, their color bleeding from amber to something colder. A Mirrorworker Kessa didn't recognize crossed toward them quickly, one hand raised, his attention fixed on the glass. He steadied the lanterns with a gesture that was efficient and practiced, but as he turned away, his gaze went past the courtyard wall toward the eastern horizon, and his expression held something that wasn't celebration.

  The moment passed. The lights resumed their warmth. No one else seemed to notice. But Kessa noted it, the way she noted all the small things that didn't quite fit: a Mirrorworker looking east with a frown on the brightest night of the year.

  Kessa watched the rest with a feeling that was too large for her chest.

  Through the crowd, she caught glimpses of Taran. He was working now, she could tell, checking mirrors, monitoring reflections, the Mirrorworker back on duty. But his eyes found hers across the courtyard in moments that felt like touches.

  Bren and Tarby danced, Tarby counting steps under his breath, Bren patient with his anxiety, her hand steady at his back. They moved together with the comfortable imperfection of people who had stopped performing long ago.

  The night wound down. The lights dimmed by degrees. The music softened. People began to drift away, carrying lanterns and laughter and the warm exhaustion of a night well spent.

  Hannah walked with her back through the quieting castle, their footsteps echoing in corridors that still smelled of Givon's enchanted air, the scent fading but not gone, a memory of summer and celebration clinging to the stone.

  "Good night?" Hannah asked, though her smile said she already knew the answer.

  "Good night," Kessa confirmed.

  Hannah squeezed her arm at their parting stairwell. "He looked at you like you were the only person in the courtyard."

  "He did not."

  "He absolutely did. Even Taven noticed, and Taven doesn't notice anything that isn't a plant." She was already turning toward her own corridor. "Sleep well, Kessa."

  "You too."

  Her room was quiet. Knot waited on the bed, silver eyes catching the light of the single candle she lit as she entered.

  She closed the door and stood for a moment, holding the night inside her, unwilling to let it disperse.

  The silver-grey dress came off carefully, reverently, the silk still holding the warmth of the courtyard and the music and his hand at her waist. She hung it on the back of the door where she could see it from the bed.

  In the small mirror on the wall, her face looked different. Something behind the eyes. She looked like someone who had been given permission to be happy and was still learning what to do with it.

  She touched her knuckles where his thumb had traced.

  "I danced tonight," she told Knot, sitting on the bed beside him. "With someone who sees me."

  Not all of her. Not the magic, not the Syntheri secret, not the weight of the Queen's request. But enough. He saw enough to want more. And she wanted more too.

  "I think something wonderful is happening," she said.

  Knot's purr rumbled, steady and warm, a sound that asked no questions and required no answers.

  She lay down. The borrowed necklace was on the table. The measuring ribbon was at her wrist. The stars were visible through the window, the festival lights fading below, the castle settling back into its ordinary self.

  But Kessa wasn't ordinary. She was Syntheri, and she was falling in love. And tomorrow, for once, felt like a promise rather than a threat.

  The thought carried her into sleep, where she dreamed of dancing and silver light and a voice that said her name like it was the beginning of something.