“Besides, everyone wears dresses here,” said Calliope brightly. “You can’t say you don’t like it until you give it a chance.”
Ella offered me the dress. “Your choice. Expensive, comfortable dresses you won’t notice in a day or two, or jeans that’ll stand up on their own in a week.”
Letting out a low growl in the back of my throat, I snatched it from her and stormed into the bathroom. She could make me wear it, but that didn’t mean I had to like it.
Lacing me up took nearly twenty minutes, and that was without a corset. That’s where I drew the line, and Ella wasn’t stupid enough to try to force me into that, too. The dress fit me well without me suffocating myself, and that was good enough. I didn’t need to have my chest forced up to my chin in the meantime.
Once they’d finished dressing me, Calliope sat me down and fussed with my mousy hair for a few minutes. She hummed as she worked, and any questions I tried to ask were either ignored or cut off by random bursts of song. Just as I started to wonder if it would ever end, she announced that I was done and breakfast was ready.
Breakfast. I was so ravenous that I didn’t even object as they forced my feet into a pair of heeled shoes. We would talk about those later, especially if I was expected to do stairs, but for now, as long as there was a promise of food, I’d put up with it.
Still feeling lost, I followed them out of the room, wishing I understood more about what was going on. Was this how every morning was going to go, or would I eventually be allowed to dress myself? Were they supposed to be my friends, like Calliope seemed to want to be, or were they supposed to keep an eye on me to make sure I didn’t escape?
They weren’t my most pressing questions, but those answers, I suspected, were ones only Henry could give me. In the meantime, there was still one response Calliope and Ella owed me.
“Calliope?” I said as she and Ella led me through the maze of rooms and corridors. Supposedly there was a breakfast room in the massive manor, but I wasn’t so sure I believed them. It felt like we’d been wandering for hours. “What did you mean when you asked if I were better than the last one?”
She gave me a blank look. “The last one?”
“When you guys thought I was sleeping—you mentioned me being better than the last one. What last one?”
Calliope thought for a moment before realization dawned on her. “Oh! The last one. The last girl, I mean. The last one Henry had here.”
There was another girl? “How long ago was that?”
Calliope exchanged a look with Ella, who remained silent. “Twenty years, maybe?”
So apparently Henry had been a toddler last time. Unless he was telling the truth about ruling the dead, but I wasn’t quite ready to accept that. “Why do I need to be here then? Why isn’t she here anymore?”
“Because she d—”
Ella slapped her hand over Calliope’s mouth so hard that the sound reverberated through the room. “Because she isn’t,” said Ella sharply. “It isn’t our job to explain this to you, Katherine. If you want to know why you’re here, ask Henry. And you…” She glared at Calliope.
“Oh,” I said softly as another thought occurred to me. “He—he said everyone here was dead. Is that true? Are you two…?”
Neither Ella nor Calliope seemed surprised by my question. Instead Ella pulled her hand away, letting Calliope answer.
“Everyone’s dead here, yes,” she said, rubbing her cheek and giving Ella a dirty look. “Or like Henry, never alive in the first place.”
“When were you…uh, born?”
Calliope sniffed. “A lady doesn’t reveal her age.”
Ella snorted, and Calliope glared at her.
“Ella is so old, she doesn’t even know what year she was born,” said Calliope, as if that was something to be ashamed of. I shook my head, speechless, not knowing if I was really supposed to believe all of this or not.
Ella said nothing. Instead she pushed open another door, finally revealing a long room with a table so large it could’ve easily seated thirty. My head was spinning from Calliope’s story, and it took me a moment to realize the room was already filled with people.
“Your court,” said Ella drily. “Servants, tutors, anyone you’ll ever have contact with. They all wanted to meet you.”
I stopped dead in the doorway, feeling the blood drain from my face. There were dozens of pairs of eyes staring at me, and suddenly I was painfully self-conscious.
“Are they going to stay here while I eat?” I whispered. I couldn’t think of a better way of making sure I didn’t eat a thing.
“I can send them away, if you’d like,” said Calliope, and I nodded. She skipped forward and, with two claps of her hands, most of them began to file out. A few who handled the food remained, along with two men standing off to the side, each accessorized with formidable weapons. The tall blond was so still he might as well have been a statue, and the brunette fidgeted, as if standing still and being silent was something he wasn’t very good at. He couldn’t have been older than twenty.
“You will always be guarded,” said Ella, and I looked at her, startled. She must have seen me staring. She moved forward with the grace of a deer and gestured to a place at the foot of the table. “Your seat.”
I followed her, trying hard not to trip on the hem of my long dress, and sat down. Now there were only about a dozen people in the room, but they were still all looking at me.
“Your breakfast, Your Highness,” said a man, stepping forward to set a covered plate in front of me. Ella lifted the cover, not giving me the chance to do so myself. She looked as bored as she had in my room.
“Um, thanks,” I said, bewildered. Your Highness? I picked up a fork, prepared to spear a piece of fruit and eat it, but a pale hand snatched my wrist before I could do it.
I looked up, surprised to see Calliope standing over me, her blue eyes wide. “I taste first,” she insisted. “It’s what I’m supposed to do.”
Shocked, I blurted, “You test my food?”
“When you decide to eat, yes,” she said timidly. “I tested your dinner last night, too. But you don’t have to eat while you’re here, you know. Eventually you’ll forget what it feels like. If you want to though, I have to—”
“No,” I said, pushing my chair back so loudly it squealed against the marble floor. The stress of the day before and the confusion of that morning came crashing down on me, shattering every last bit of self-control I had. “No, this isn’t going to happen. It’s ridiculous—food tasters? Armed guards? Your Highness? Why? What am I supposed to be doing here?”