“We should have listened to you,” said Eve. Her spectacles had fogged up from the heat. “About not going to the pavilion. You were right.”
Azalea waved it away. “What happened when you went through the passage?”
All the girls’ faces became clouded.
“The pavilion…wasn’t the same,” was all Bramble said.
Azalea remembered the dark pavilion, its mesh of half-beast, half-human dancers, and the bony hands grasping her ankles. She imagined what it must have been like for them, to arrive to that, and then to be magicked away into mirrors. She shuddered.
“Never mind,” she said. “Let’s not think of it.”
The girls, however, pressed Azalea into telling her story, and she started it from the beginning—from the haunted ball, and Mother, and finding out about Keeper, to the wraith cloak and brooch charm. By the time the story had ended, Azalea’s bathwater had cooled to only mildly warm, and the girls hugged their knees to their chests, eyes wide.
“What a story,” said Bramble. “Wouldn’t the Herald die to hear that!”
Servants arrived with more steaming water, and with them, Delphinium, her arms full of fabrics of silks and velvet. Azalea, so used to black, stared at the brilliant pinks and purples and blues hungrily. As the servants left, everyone rushed to Delphinium’s side, tugged at the fabrics, and shook them out, revealing dresses of all sizes.
A flurry of fluffing and exchanging blouses brought the right outfits to the right hands. Delphinium, flushed with excitement, laid out a skirt with ruffly blouse over a bathing-room chair for Azalea. With a flourish, she added a matching collar bow.
“The dressmaker says she already had them ready, and she hopes they all fit! Oh, Eve, that positively makes your eyes pop! Lavender is just right for the twins, don’t you think?”
“But where did they come from?” said Azalea.
“The King!” said Flora. “He gave them to us.”
“P-Papa,” Goldenrod corrected, unbuttoning Flora’s black dress.
“Yes, Papa. He said it would be his Christmas present to us!”
“He did?” Azalea’s brows knit. The King had wanted to stay in mourning. Hadn’t he?
“We won’t look like Fairweller’s spawn anymore.” Bramble grinned. It faded, however, when she saw Azalea’s expression. “I mean—you’re excited, right?”
Azalea cupped bubbles in her hands, then dipped them into the water, thoughtful.
“Yes,” she said. “It’s just…he told me not long ago he didn’t feel ready to lift mourning.”
“But now he is,” said Delphinium, beaming. Her smile disappeared when she saw Azalea’s face, and she clutched her pink dress to her chest.
“He never remembered our birthdays,” she said.
“Do you remember his?”
Delphinium flared pink. “Well…that’s different.”
Azalea rubbed the cool porcelain beneath her chin. “Only I was thinking,” she said. “He’s always gotten us gifts for Christmas, but…we’ve never given him anything.”
Bramble shrugged. “He’s never asked for anything.”
“He has. Just in a different way. He’s our papa, isn’t he?” Azalea raised her eyebrows at her sisters, a trace of a smile on her lips. “Well, now we’re going to act like it.”
Azalea was proud of them. She couldn’t help but be proud. All of them, even Delphinium, had agreed to dress again in black. None of them knew how long the King would want mourning to last, yet not one complained. They rollicked through Fairweller’s austere peppermint-smelling manor of waxed floors, doilies, and boxes of chocolates, and pulled the curtains closed. Even the servants helped, after Clover explained things to them.
“Good-bye, sunlight.” Delphinium sighed as she closed the drapery in Fairweller’s gallery. It dropped shadows over portraits of Fairwellian ancestry, all dressed in black. “Good-bye, daytime.”
“Sunlight, daytime,” said Bramble. “Hullabaloos!” She pushed the curtains of the next window closed with a flourish.
“Bramble,” said Azalea suddenly. “Have you written Lord Teddie yet?”
“Who?”
“Lord Teddie,” said Azalea. “You wanted me to write him. Don’t you remember?”
“What are you on about?” said Bramble, smiling at her with knit brows.
Azalea glanced at Bramble’s hands, clutching the curtain fabric. Her knuckles were white.
“What is all this?”
Azalea nearly leaped for joy at hearing that voice, though every piece of her ached. The King stood at the end of the gallery, leaning heavily on a walking stick, his military satchel over his shoulder.
“Papa!” said Azalea, as they flocked to him like sparrows to bread. “Oh—sit down. You’re going to fall over.”
“I am not falling over,” said the King as the girls pushed him to the nearest chair. He eased himself onto the brocaded velvet, wincing. He was winded, bandaged, pale, and worn, but—his beard was well trimmed. A good sign. If he could shave, he was certain to feel all right.
“You are up at last, Miss Azalea,” said the King, inspecting her as she fussed over him. “You are looking better.”
“You are looking better, for being shot!” said Azalea, as the girls sat down around him, on the polished wood floor.