Beneath the Haunting Sea by Joanna Ruth Meyer

Author:Joanna Ruth Meyer [Meyer, Joanna Ruth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Page Street Publishing
Published: 2017-12-06T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Five

SHE WAS EXHAUSTED ENOUGH TO SLEEP THE whole night through, images of Stars and Waves and screaming dead shadows haunting her dreams. She awoke to find the rain had frozen overnight, snow tracing delicate patterns on her window. Her room was completely frigid. She wrapped herself in a blanket and settled on the window seat.

All the world below her, save the sea, was shrouded in white, snow clinging to the rocks and the sand and the hills to the south, blanketing everything in soft winter quilts. The beauty of the landscape took her breath away. It had snowed only rarely in Irsa, a light dusting a handful of times throughout her childhood, and not at all in Eddenahr. The capital was far too warm for anything but an occasional cold rain in the early spring months.

Ro came in with a breakfast tray, and when she’d laid it on the dressing table, she knelt to coax life back into Talia’s fire. “It hasn’t been snowing long enough to close the roads, so the seamstress ought to be here presently,” she said, sweeping away yesterday’s ashes.

“Seamstress?” said Talia, leaving the window nook to pour herself some tea.

“The Baron sent for her last week. You’re to have a few dresses of your own, and a bridal gown, of course, Miss.”

She clenched her teeth. “A bridal gown?”

Ro glanced at Talia over her shoulder. “It’s unlucky to get married in another woman’s dress, you know.” She quirked a grin. “Especially if she’s dead.”

“Don’t joke about that,” Talia snapped, her voice coming out louder than she’d intended.

Ro turned back to the fire. “Sorry, Miss.”

Flames sparked on the stones, and Ro got up and left the room.

Talia nibbled fitfully at her breakfast, staring out at the snow and trying not to think about the sea goddess and her Star, the nine Waves playing music for the dead.

The seamstress barged in when Talia was only halfway through her pot of tea, a wide flat box tucked under one arm, a wooden stool dangling from the other. She was young, no older than Talia herself, and was angular and tall. She wore her brown hair pulled into a rigid knot at the back of her head.

“Up you go then,” she said, plopping down the stool and waving Talia onto it. Then she set the box on the bed and opened it, revealing half a dozen unfinished gowns.

Talia laid down her teacup and obligingly stepped onto the stool.

The seamstress made her try on all of the half-sewn gowns, one after the other, circling her with a critical eye and a fist full of pins. She took measurements and made notes in a little green book, pausing now and then to pin the open seams.

Talia tried on the bridal gown last of all. It was a deep blue, as brilliant as the Enduenan summer sky, with the beginnings of delicate silver embroidery around the neckline. It was beautiful.

The seamstress kept circling like a shrewd hawk, an intense frown of concentration on her face.

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