How fitting, Arianne thought as she made her way to the gardens, that the guests most comfortable at Starfall are the oddest ones. As Hazel had pointed out, Arianne’s back had grown, and her shoulders, too, the results of long afternoons spent sparring with the strange visitors. Nevermind that the gown had failed in that with Garin. “Your aim is to serve the Princess, not seduce her,” she’d said. It would have been better to wear Dayne colours, Hazel said, but when Arianne suggested something she’d worn for Garin’s doomed visit, the seamstress made a face. The only dress that could be properly adjusted to something suitable was a rust coloured one with gold latticework. It was another hour before Hazel allowed her to leave, though the seamstress remained visibly unsatisfied. “Could you stand still? I need- what’s wrong with your arm?” If the stars could tell the future, they were keeping it to themselves – and she would have to face the Princess herself, too, without them or their guidance or even a proper gown. She knew it now to have been a foolish question. She could be the perfect lady, of a perfect height and in a perfect-fitting dress, but the moment Allyria came stumbling into the Great Hall with her braids half-undone and dark circles beneath her eyes, mumbling about patterns in the sky, any pretence of not odd would be swiftly eradicated.Īrianne thought back to the conversation they’d had about the stars, when she’d asked her sister to look for a sign or advice. Colin had remarked that it was a pity none of the greater houses were interested in coming and hinted gently – then less so – that Arianne could afford to be more welcoming and less, well, odd if Starfall’s rooms were to be filled with anyone other than Daynes. They were smaller houses of low standing. With the Princess due to arrive soon, some of the smaller houses nearby (but out of the path the caravan would take to the Great Council in the Riverlands) had come to await the Martell matriarch. ![]() They’d been loaned from one of Starfall’s new guests. She did this with another, then again with another, as Hazel went back to the chair where more gowns were draped. Instead she picked at one of the hairs on her arm, bleached white from the sun, and found that if she pulled hard enough it came loose from her skin. The young seamstress didn’t seem to expect a reply, so Arianne gatefully offered none. No matter how much praise she garnered in the training yard, no matter how confident she grew beneath the sharp eyes of Morna and the good-natured ribbing of Twig and Willow, Arianne still felt a clod whenever she was faced with her own reflection, an image of herself in an ill-fitting gown mirrored back to her like some sort of mocking jape. Arianne couldn’t be sure what she was saying, but it sounded unhappy and her cheeks burned as if on instinct. If anyone could have foreseen that it’d be Arianne before the slanted looking glass, no one would have ever let her brothers leave Starfall. It should have been Cailin being dressed by the seamstress. They had been left for the moths in the Palestone Sword and deteriorated further under the care of Arianne’s own sister, who’d made the tower her apparently permanent home. Her late mother’s dresses were far too short and her Aunt Dorea’s, though the woman had been much taller than her sister, too musty. The Princess of Dorne would be arriving within a fortnight and it was decided that nothing within Arianne’s wardrobe – which had always seemed so vast to her – was suitable for such an important, perhaps even once-in-a-lifetime occasion. Hazel was at her feet, pins between her teeth, hands busy with the hem of a borrowed gown. ![]() As much as she tried not to, Arianne fidgeted.
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