Chapter 23: The Hall of Gowns

I opened the door a hand's width, in my under-robe, with my hair wild.

Behind me, the window curtain swung once and was still.

"Good morning," I said.

Aethon looked at the curtain, then at my face, then at the sill, where a smear of frost was melting.

He decided not to ask.

"Come with us," he said. "Please."

They led me down the Stair of Rays in the pink light, the three of them in front, and I walked after them in bare feet.

I knew where we were going before we turned the last corner.

The doors of the Hall of Gowns stood wide open.

Forty courtiers were waiting inside, in two rows along the mirrors.

They were the same forty.

Nobody had ordered them to come, and not one of them had stayed home.

I stopped on the threshold.

My knees went strange.

"Helia," Lampos said softly. "It's all right. Look."

I looked.

In the middle of the hall, where Aethon had once held my gown over his arm, three stands waited in a row.

Aethon went to the first, and picked up the gown.

It was cloud-silk, pale as dawn, stitched with a thread that caught the light.

The stitches were not even.

Some ran long and some ran short, and in one place a seam had been unpicked and sewn again, and again.

He carried it across the floor in both hands, and he knelt.

Eous knelt beside him with the band on a velvet cushion.

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