Magic Under Stone by Jaclyn Dolamore Read Free Book Online Page B

you doing here?” I demanded.
    “I wanted to see you wind him.” Violet pulled her oversize robe closer around her neck. The collar touched her cheeks. “He is my uncle. You don’t have to snap.”
    “What makes you think he would want you to see him wound?” I said sternly. “He wishes no one had to wind him at all. The least you could do is ask him first!” I was ashamed for Erris, and perhaps in some way, ashamed for myself. I never forgot that I was theone who had done this to him. My anger overflowed, but a wave of sense rushed in behind and stayed my hand.
    She seemed taken aback by my emotion. “I don’t see what the trouble is,” she said, sounding haughty but still hesitating.
    “Because,” I said, “how would you like it if you couldn’t wake up in the morning until someone wound you? How would you like it if beneath your clothes, you weren’t flesh and blood? Would you want people to know, and look at you? Would you feel like yourself?”
    She glanced quickly at the keyhole in Erris’s back, and her lips pinched in. She tossed her head and left the room at a hurried shuffle. She ought not to even be out of bed, I thought. But if she wanted to constantly endanger herself, well, I didn’t care.
    I frowned. It was true—no one would care if she endangered herself except her absent father. She likely never left this house, and never had visitors. Violet was as much a secret as Annalie had been, except she had no spirits to keep her company.
    Well ... that wasn’t my affair either.
    I found Celestina in the kitchens, wearing a linen shirt, men’s trousers, and boots, which she nearly jumped out of when I said good morning.
    “My goodness. You scared me. I’m not fit for company yet.”
    I smiled. “I don’t care. Where I’m from, girls, even queens, wear trousers. Of course, they’re more likely to be made from colorful silk than brown wool, but either way, I don’t care if you dress like that all day.”
    “Really?” Celestina flipped her frying bacon. “Because, when Mr. Valdana’s gone, this is exactly what I do wear all day. You knowhow long it took me to come to the door when you first knocked? It’s because I was scrambling into a dress.” She laughed.
    I laughed too. “I wonder if fairy women ever wear trousers.” I adored my fine clothes, the dresses made of silk and good wool Hollin had bought me, but sometimes I dearly missed having a good lounge . You couldn’t lounge with a corset around your ribs and a collar around your neck, and it seemed that the lower the neckline of a Lorinarian gown dipped, the smaller the waistline became, so any comfort you may have gained was lost.
    Erris walked in a moment later, moaning at the aroma. “Must you make things that smell all the way from my bedroom?”
    “What do you think of trousers?” I said, changing the subject before Erris’s teasing tone turned into melancholy.
    “Trousers?”
    “Did fairy women ever wear them?”
    “Not often,” Erris said. “Fairies are vain and prefer looking fancy, but we don’t have such moral ideas about clothes as humans do, so I wouldn’t be offended.”
    “In that case,” Celestina said, “I will continue to practice shocking behaviors.”
    After breakfast, Erris went out for more foraging. Outside, the morning fog had vanished from the lawn, but it still swathed the bottom half of the trees, and I peered through the curtains as he vanished into it.
    Celestina came back down from bringing Violet breakfast, scooping the cat up from the rag rug so his limbs dangled from her arm while she scratched his round cheeks. “Would you like me to measure you and make you some trousers?”
    I laughed again. “Oh, I couldn’t really ...” I hesitated. There was no logical reason I shouldn’t wear whatever I liked out here. Therules of Lorinarian society had clearly seeped into me almost unnoticed, like a disease.
    “You might as well,” Celestina said. “When winter comes, and there is