Bloodsuckers & Ballrooms

Chapter Four

Gia

The week that followed was one of great consternation. There was much fretting to be done, to be sure, and with the fretting came the pacing and the denial and the nervous chatter and equally nervous packing-and-unpacking of the singular travel trunk the sisters were to share.

Transportation was the largest subject of debate. They went back and forth about it near constantly—about their fears that they misinterpreted the letter, which they no longer had a copy of, or that they would be expected to pay a fare that would assuredly be quite high for such a long journey.

Would someone be sent all the way to the farmhouse to fetch them? If so, would said person take one look at the farmhouse, turn face, and report to the King that Ladies Amethyst, Adair, and Terran were unworthy?

Or did they go to the port a day's journey from the town and wait there? No, no, that would never do—no one would know where to find them. Then, would whoever was sent to fetch them inquire about their whereabouts in the town centre? If that was to be the case, the narrative had written that the sisters were to fail before being given the chance, for the townsfolk would assuredly scare the fetcher off one way or another.

Worse, first impressions were everything where beauty was concerned, and between the three of them they had not a single item in their wardrobe worthy of the gaze of the Prince.

No, not even Roslin's mourning dress would do, which she'd thought for a moment's time she might pass off as proper Prinella formalwear. To her dismay, the dress—which had come to her already secondhand years ago—had begun to dry rot on its hanger and left the whole ensemble scratchy, saggy, and crumbling away to dust with each move.

Clothes, it seemed, did not last forever.

Unfortunately for Roslin.

The skirts were fine, at least, and Roslin gave Gia her blessing to salvage the skirt into whatever she could.

"Damn it all!"

Blood bloomed red on the fingertip Gia had pricked with the needle for not the first time since sitting down. "Curse this dress," she hissed, shaking her hand and bringing the finger to her lips.

With a huff, she looked down at the chimaera of clothing she was attempting to fashion from assorted pieces of her wardrobe. In her mind it had looked good: her black skirt of mourning, a mostly-unstained shirt of white faux-silk, and a cornflower blue bustier. Well, it was once cornflower blue. Now it was more...farm-sweat grey.

Gia sighed and dropped the skirt, needle, and thread back onto her lap. "This is hopeless," she groaned. "Perhaps I'd be better off arriving in a sack and bolstering your chances."

Already Gia had resigned herself that she would not, in fact, be marrying this Prince nor any Princes now or ever. That much was fair and obvious, she should think.

But she'd been invited for a reason, and it clearly had something to do with the family name she knew so little about. Amethyst. It had plainly been chosen as a name...but by who, and why? The chances were slim, but Gia was clinging desperately to the hope that there would be someone, anyone in Darkhaven who could answer her questions about her family.

Across the table, Ros was busy packing, unpacking, and repacking the small trunk the sisters shared for the fifth time. Roslin, at least, had known better than to alter her clothes. She was instead packing a dress or two that may be passable as decent and a few keepsakes should they never return to the farmhouse. Each sister would carry a bag of her own, but they owned one trunk and one trunk only.