An Artificial Night

The Queen’s habit of transforming my clothes is incredibly irritating, especially since I lack the magical oomph to change them back. There are only a few bloodlines in Faerie talented at transforming the inanimate; the Daoine Sidhe aren’t among them, which is why we depend on illusions and chicanery to enhance our wardrobes. But if I happened to have a dress formal enough for the occasion . . .

I grabbed the crumpled gown off the floor, holding it up. If I could figure out how to get the grass stains out of the skirt . . . I stuck my head out of the room. “Hey, May, you know anything about cleaning silk?”

She leaned over the back of the couch, eyes widening when she saw what I was holding. “Are you seriously thinking about wearing that?”

“I don’t think I should be throwing magic around if I can help it, do you? It’s not like I have much to spare.” Every changeling has a different amount of power, and pushing past your limits is a good way to fuck yourself up. If I was going to stay at the top of my game, I needed to avoid magic-burn for as long as possible.

May hesitated before getting off the couch and walking toward my room. She bit her index finger, looking torn, and finally said, “I can help. Go get your knife.”

I blinked. She met my eyes, nodding marginally. Something in that gesture told me to listen. I stepped past her, heading for the rack by the front door, where my knives still hung. I unsnapped the loop holding my silver knife in place and glanced back to May. “I assume I can use the silver, and not the iron?”

“Yeah,” she said, with another nod. “Bleed on the dress.”

I raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“Just trust me.” She offered a wan smile. “It’s a funky Fetch thing.”

“Right,” I said, slowly. I didn’t have any better ideas, and so I nicked the back of my left hand, my stomach doing a slow flip as blood welled to the surface. I hate the sight of my own blood. I glanced at May before wiping my hand on the bodice.

The fabric only darkened for a moment, drinking the blood like dry earth drinks the rain. I tried to jerk my hand back. May grabbed my wrist, forcing me to stay where I was. “Trust me.”

“May . . .”

My magic flared before I could finish the sentence, rising with an eagerness that was almost scary. I was pulling less than a quarter of the power I’d need for an illusion, and it was coming nearly on its own. May’s magic rose, adding ashes and cotton candy to the mingled scents of copper, fresh-cut grass, and blood.

The Queen’s magic snapped into place, filling my mouth with the taste of frozen salt and damp sand. I stared at May. She let go of my hand.

“The spell’s fresh enough to argue with. Now tell it what to be.”

I stared for a moment more before reaching out with my still-bleeding hand, grabbing for the Queen’s spell the way I’d grab for mists or shadows when shaping an illusion. I hit a brief resistance, like the air was pushing back. Then my fingers caught, my magic surging to obscure everything else, and I understood what to do. The Queen taught my clothes to become a gown. I couldn’t break her spell—not even blood could give me that kind of power—but as long as I wasn’t trying, I could change the definition of “gown.”

Visualization is important when you’re assembling an illusion, and this was close enough that the same principles applied. I fixed the image of a simpler, clean dress in my mind and muttered, “Cinderella dressed in yellow went upstairs to kiss a fellow. Made a mistake, kissed a snake, how many doctors did it take?”

The magic pulled tight before bursting, leaving me with the gritty feeling of sand coating my tongue. My head didn’t hurt. May’s magic had fueled the spell, not mine; my magic only directed it.

“I didn’t know you could do that,” I whispered.

May held up the dress. I stared.

The Queen designed a dress too fragile for heavy use and too impractical for anyone expecting to do something more strenuous than a waltz. It wasn’t that dress anymore. The fabric had changed from silk to velvet. It was still the color of dried blood, but the material was slashed to reveal a dark rose underskirt, which looked decorative, yet left me able to both conceal and reach my knives.