Fractured Crown (Book 1: Terra)

Chapter 26

Iris took in a deep breath, standing before a full-length mirror. She was backstage, behind a turquoise, velvet curtain, awaiting her cue. The sound of the townspeople chattering stirred the butterflies in Iris's stomach, and she took a few more steadying breaths, eyeing her reflection.

Early that morning, one of the maids had bustled into her room while she was still half-asleep in bed, presenting her with an array of dresses to pick from, all elegantly formal and far more prestigious than she felt. By the time she had sorted through all twenty-six dresses that had been lined up on a moveable clothes rack, she had started to notice the Terra District's patriarchal, earthy colour schematics. Not that she was complaining. Her favourite colour, ironically enough, had always been emerald, anyhow.

Despite this, she didn't pick any of the four emerald-coloured options available to her, but rather, her eyes were drawn to the golden-brown dress that glimmered in the light. The dress was extremely low-cut, making a sharp V-neck, and the back was even lower, coming up just above her waist-line. The dress was made of a thin, synthetic material that hung loosely and comfortably on her body. It flowed down limply by her ankles, the back of the dress trailing slightly on the floor like a glittering, golden tail. She felt immensely out of place in golden, open-toed heels, and was thankful she had at least chosen the two-inch block heels rather than the black stilettos she had eyed. They were incredibly hard to walk in and she couldn't imagine anyone voluntarily wearing these things.

Iris sighed through her nose, her eyes wandering to her dirty-blonde hair, pinned back with a huge, brown clip shaped in a flower, completely revealing her facial features – a slightly long nose, hazel eyes, and her pale lips that had been painted a simple, nude colour, yet felt oddly unnatural.

Was lipstick always this dry? And mascara always so thick and heavy?

The maids that had styled her had done an amazing job at reinventing her, Iris wasn't denying that. But it all felt so wrong and unnecessary. And she had stated it too, when they began brushing over her eyelids with a shimmering bronze colour and covered her face with a substance the same colour as her skin, before applying some powder and highlights to her cheeks.

She had thought that new clothes changed her appearance, but this... with the make-up and the hair and this dress... she was a whole new person. She was no longer Iris, the Street Rat. This was a girl entirely unknown to her.

And she had yet to decide if she quite liked that.

Two security guards had escorted her to the town hall through a secret, underground tunnel – there seemed to be plenty of secret passageways around the district, all used by authorised personnel. She hadn't gotten to see the outside of the hall. The tunnel had led to a trap door backstage, where she stood now. Iris scanned the ropes and dim light, the backstage dark and a little dusty. The wooden floor below her creaked slightly, and it was safe to assume that this must have been one of the first buildings that they had made. This led her to wonder how old it was exactly. If the Elemental War had only been going on for fifteen years, then had this underground place existed before then? Perhaps the Terrans had once stocked their weapons below ground. Although she hadn't seen any so far. Did they even need weapons when they had magic at their disposal? Still so many questions, and ones she knew could only be answered by a Terran.

All that information Raena and Braedon had given her the previous night had left her too tired to fall asleep, and she had tossed and turned in her bed, mulling over each scrap of thought in thorough detail before disregarding it with another. On top of that, just like Jasper had had assured during their dinner, someone had indeed come up to her room yesterday night when she came back to her own room. The kind maid didn't say anything about her being illiterate, thankfully. She simply began reading aloud, and Iris began repeating it to her, until almost an hour later, she had most of it memorised, and the maid left her with no more than an encouraging nod. Iris was not in the least bit surprised when it turned out Jasper had indeed written everything that she suspected he would try to promote.