Page 18 of A Fragile Enchantment

Many in her family—both with and without an ceird—had borne the same illness: fatigue, pain and swelling with no clear cause, a shortened life span, fingers that turned white as bone in the cold and under stress. Some had lived as long as sixty. Some had died as young as twenty. There was no surefire way of knowing just how long she had save for her hair. The leaching color was her hourglass, a reminder of how much breath she had yet within her.

A reminder to work hard.

She stared down at her sketchbook, unable to process the few ideas she’d scribbled down sometime around three in the morning. The lines rearranged themselves the longer she looked at them, and she could not convince herself that anything she’d drawn made sense. Now, if only she could recall where she’d left her pencil.

She whirled around—and crashed directly into her dress form. It wobbled precariously, but Niamh steadied it before it fell. “Oh! So very sorry.”

The dress form had no eyes—and no head, for that matter—but Niamh swore it regarded her disapprovingly. Or perhaps she needed to go to bed. Whenwasthe last time she had slept?

No matter. She would just finish the last of the embroidery on Kit’s coat, and then she would take a nap. She fished a few pins from the cluttered drawer of her worktable, then popped the ends between her teeth. As she worked, the slant of sunlight made its way across the floor like the hand of a clock.

“You called?”

Kit.

Niamh startled, spinning around in her chair. When her gaze locked with his, all the pins in her mouth dropped onto the floor with a clatter. His lips parted, and his sour expression softened intostupefaction—probably from watching her spit out a mouthful of metal. They stared at each other from across the room.

The nettle he’d grown during their last argument waved like a flag of surrender outside her window. Its leaves curled toward him, pressing against the glass, and in the dappled light they admitted, the whole room seemed to shimmer. Her heart slammed against her rib cage.

“What did I tell you about knocking loudly?” she blurted out.

“I did.Youneed to start paying attention to your surroundings.”

Niamh bit down on a pert reply. She was far too tired to bicker with him right now. “Will you give me your coat, please? I want to make sure the one I’ve been working on fits you.”

Without a word, Kit shrugged off his coat and passed it to her. The fabric was warm and soft in her hands, and it smelled faintly of turned earth and tobacco. She traded him the new coat from the dress form and tried not to watch too closely as he pulled it on. At first glance, it fit him quite beautifully. Pride kindled within her. Finally, he looked as he should: like a prince, regal and imposing.

Niamh admired the color—a navy so deep, it could have been cut from a bolt of the midnight sky—and its decisive, crisp lines. Her assistants had done beautiful work assembling it. The embroidery, done entirely in enchanted silver thread, had taken more time and patience than she’d ever care to measure. The design, a thicket of nettles blooming along the back, eluded its viewer. It became visible only if you turned your head just so, or if the light struck it exactly the right way.

It was the most of herself she’d ever poured into a garment.

I don’t want to be seen at all,he’d told her, a barb she took as a confession.

And so, as much as it pained her, she’d woven memories of safety into the coat. The enchantment would allow him to hide in plain sight. If she allowed her focus to soften, to ignore the familiarity of her own power, she could see the magic begin to take effect. In thatcoat, the lines of his body blurred, and his face grew indistinct. It made the eye gloss over him, as though he was a stranger in a crowd, or no more interesting than a piece of furniture.

Kit studied his reflection in the mirror. She expected him to fidget—most people did, as they reconciled their expectations with the reality of what she’d made—but instead, he stood stock-still with a faraway glimmer in his eyes. She braced herself for his disgust, for him to throw the coat to the ground in a huff, the same as he did the handkerchief.

But he said nothing.

A tentative hope blossomed within her. She knotted her fingers together at her heart. “What do you think?”

She hated the anxiety that crept into her voice. She hated that she still cared what he thought.

“It’s—fine, I suppose,” he said haltingly, nearly choking on the words. “Can I go?”

Fine, he supposed.She couldn’t help feeling disappointed. But compared to his first two reactions to her work, it was high praise indeed. “Not yet. I need to finish the design—and sew in the lining, for that matter. Twirl around, please.”

Kit glowered at her, clearly objecting to even the idea oftwirling,but he nonetheless allowed her to turn him this way and that. He tolerated it with surprising grace.

She straightened his lapels and examined her handiwork. She traced the embroidery with the pads of her thumbs, just where the cutouts shyly curved around his collarbones. His wide-eyed gaze snapped to hers, and it occurred to Niamh, belatedly, that it was a man, not a dress form, wearing this coat. She could not touch him so casually. Her face warmed painfully.

“Ehm,” she said at the same time he said, “What—”

The door swung open. They sprang apart so quickly, Niamh nearly tripped over her skirts.

Jack strode into the room with the grim bearing of a militarycommander. Just like that, all of Kit’s walls went up. The strange, startled vulnerability she’d seen on his face just a moment ago hardened into a mask of utter contempt. Jack, however, did not seem to notice. His gaze swept the room once, then again. He looked at Niamh, frowning deeply.

“What are you doing here?” Kit demanded.