Chapter 297: You Look Like A Queen

"I’m sorry." Morgana said and robbed her friend’s back.

"And then Agnes came to say you were here. And I thought, oh.Oh. Again." She drew back, scrubbing her cheeks. "I’m not angry. I’m not. I’m only....I want to know that you’re happy."

Morgana looked at her.

She had been asked many questions in her life. Some of them she had answered with lies. Some she had answered with silence. This one, she found, she could answer plainly.

"Yes," she said. "I think I am."

Rowan stared.

"I think I’m happy, Rowan. I don’t know what it is yet. I don’t know what it will turn into. But I woke up this morning and I was warm, and I was safe, and nobody was angry with me." Her voice caught. "And I haven’t had that in a very long time."

Rowan sniffed again, loudly.

"Then I’ll stop being mad," she said.

"Thank you." Morgana said.

"Eventually." Rowan added with a sniff.

"That’s all right."

"I may need a day."

"Take two." Morgana replied.

"I’ll take one." Rowan wiped her nose on her sleeve. "Right. The gown."

Agnes had been standing quietly by the window. Now she moved forward and began, without a word, to lay out pins on the dresser, a row of silver ones, small and bright. The two of them worked like old soldiers. Rowan unlaced the shirt and drew the undergarments over Morgana’s head, and Agnes held up the gown, and together they eased it down over her shoulders.

It fit like a second skin.

It settled over her hips and ribs with a rich dark whisper, and the high collar came up to her jaw, and the long sleeves covered her arms to the wrists. Rowan did up the buttons at the back, one by one, humming under her breath. Morgana stood in front of the tall black mirror and stared at the woman who looked back.

She did not look like a maid.

She did not look like a ward, either, or a girl who had slept in a hayloft. The dark wine color made her skin glow. Her hair, still damp, fell in thick waves past her shoulders. Her eyes looked enormous.

"Sit," said Agnes.

She sat down.

Agnes took up the brush, and began, with long firm strokes, to work out the tangles. Rowan stood at her shoulder with a handful of pins. For a while nobody spoke. The brush rasped softly, and the fire popped, and from somewhere far below came the muffled tolling of a distant bell.

"Eleven," Agnes murmured.

Morgana’s stomach tightened.

"Don’t," said Agnes, without looking up. "Do not do that."

"Do what?"

"Tighten your shoulders. You do it when you’re afraid. You have done it since the first day I saw you." The brush moved on. "They will see it. Every one of them. They are looking for weakness the way a hawk looks for a mouse."

"I can’t help it."

"You can." Agnes finished the section and began another. "Listen to an old woman, my lady. I have served in this palace for years. I have watched queens come and go, and dukes’ daughters, and mistresses, and spies. I have seen girls walk into that hall who were dressed in gold and shaking like leaves. And I have seen girls walk in with nothing but a plain gown and an upright back, and the whole room stepped aside."

"What was the difference?"

"The ones who stepped aside," said Agnes, "walked as if it were their floor."

Morgana’s breath caught.

"It is your floor," Agnes said. "Or it will be. You are the kings’ ward. You are sleeping under their roof, with their dragons breaths in your blood, and not one soul in that hall can say otherwise. So do not walk in as a guest. Walk in as someone who has every right to be there, and does not care who disagrees."

"Walk like it’s my floor." Morgana repeated.

"Yes."

"I’ll try."

"Good girl." Agnes tapped her shoulder with the back of the brush. "Rowan. The pins."

Rowan stepped forward.

She twisted Morgana’s hair up in swift neat coils, and secured them with the silver pins one by one, until it sat high and heavy on her head, exposing the long line of her neck. Nothing was left loose. Nothing was hidden. It was a hairstyle of armor.

"There," said Rowan, stepping back.

Morgana looked at herself.

The woman in the mirror looked back, composed and dark-eyed and unfamiliar. She lifted her chin a fraction. She squared her shoulders. She let her hands fall to her sides.

"Oh," said Rowan, very softly.

"What?"

"You look like a queen."

"I look like a nervous maid in a very good gown."

"You look," said Agnes, "like the king’s ward." She set down the brush. "Which, my lady, is a good deal more intimidating."

Morgana almost laughed.

Rowan leaned in, so close that her lips brushed her ear, and whispered urgently.

"They’re all talking about it. The whole palace. Cook says Lord Carrick has been in the east hall since dawn, sending for the nobles one by one, and Lady Astraea was sent for an hour ago."

"Astraea?"

"A man in council robes came to her door. She went with him."

Morgana’s stomach flipped.

"Who sent him?"

"I don’t know." Rowan’s eyes were big and worried. "But Morgana....be careful."

"I will."

"Promise me."

"I promise."

Agnes cleared her throat.

"If you two have finished conspiring," she said, "I believe the kings are waiting."

***

They were waiting at the end of the long gallery.

She saw them from far off. Three tall figures stood in the middle of the marble floor, outside a pair of immense carved doors, and the morning light fell on them in long bars from the high windows. They had changed. They wore their formal black, dark coats trimmed with gold and silver thread, and each of them wore a plain circlet of dark metal at his brow.

She had never seen the crowns before.

They looked entirely different, in them. They looked like what they were.