[cw: blood & injury, ptsd flashbacks]
The great thing about designing and making your own clothes is that you can make them look and feel however you want. If you want to design your dresses so they have more concealed pockets than your average gear jacket and can be worn sans corset without anyone noticing, you can do just that. If you want to make a ballgown where you can put the whole ensemble on without help, and take it off without help, you can do that, too.
This way, Sydney can stash a bar of chocolate down the bodice of her dress, so she's got caffeine and sugar around when she starts nodding off. She should probably abandon this shindig and go to bed. Eh. Fuck sleep.
As a general rule, Sydney doesn't much enjoy the social aspect of these functions. She likes to talk, sure, but the chatter common to these events, not so much. She loves to dance, however, and that more than makes up with it. Or at least, it used to. She's glad this is London. If it were Romania, she'd be lucky if she even got an invitation to the ball.
No pitying glances, at least, it seems the news hasn't spread as far as London yet.
Lucie approaches the girls at the edge of the dance floor, bringing with her a statuesque redhead in an utterly horrid lilac dress. Even before Lucie introduces her, Sydney knows she's Cordelia Carstairs. Sydney wasn't able to be at Cornwall Gardens when the Carstairs family arrived. She had conveniently been in the Institute library, comparing accounts of Zeus's varying shenanigans to those of the Zmeul Zmeilor, in order to avoid having to put up a façade of not liking Alastair Carstairs, who she doesn't actually hate. She had then not-so-conveniently passed out from Portal lag and general lack of sleep. Papa had found her and carried her to bed like a four-year-old. Fortunately, if he looked at Sydney's research, he'd found nothing suspicious in it.
"What a pretty dress," says Ariadne, pulling Sydney from her memories. "I believe that's the shade they call 'ashes of roses.' Very popular in Paris."
"Oh, yes," says Cordelia. "I did get this dress in Paris, as a matter of fact. On Rue de la Paix. Jeanne Paquin made it herself."
Rosamund Wentworth's lips thin out, and Sydney realizes that Cordelia has stepped in it quite elegantly.
"How fortunate you are," Rosamund says. "Most of us here in the poky little London Enclave rarely get to travel abroad. You must think us so dull."
"Oh," says Cordelia. "No, not at all –"
"My mother has always said Shadowhunters aren't meant to have much of an interest in fashion," says Catherine Townsend. "She says it's mundane."
"And yet," Sydney interrupts, "Matthew and I remain popular."
"Do you?" Rosamund says icily. "You're hardly ever here."
Sydney just barely manages to not wince.
"You must be Sydney Herondale," says Cordelia, likely covering for her by accident.
"Da. And you're Cordelia Carstairs, right?"
"Yes. I'm very pleased to meet you. Lucie was telling me you just returned from a year of tour in Romania."
"Da. Târgoviște, in Wallachia, specifically."
"I think that I would like to have a tour year, but I doubt Mâmân will let me. She would think it improper."
"Well, don't look at me. I perused archives of collected vampire scholarship and lost a duel to which I had been informally challenged."
"What were you doing in the company of vampire scholars?"
YOU ARE READING
mirror shards // matthew fairchild {1}
Fanfiction{snap, shatter, and howl, pt. i } When Sydney Herondale returns from a year of tour in Romania, she's a very, very different woman from the girl Matthew left behind at the Shadowhunter academy years ago: a new version of Sydney that he finds himself...
