Chapter 90 - Part 2

Chapter 90 - Part 2
Kate
\[2/2\]

Ashleen takes a step toward the mirror, slowly turning, watching how the skirt follows her movement, how the light dances across the petals. She laughs—an open, surprised laugh, surprised at herself—and the sound breaks me from the inside out.

She suddenly turns and runs to me.

The impact of the hug is strong, decisive. Ashleen wraps her arms around my legs, her face pressed against me.

“I’m pretty,” she says, her voice muffled.

I slide off the bed and kneel on the floor without thinking, carefully wrapping my arms around her small body.

“Yes,” I murmur, burying my face in her curls. “More than you can imagine.”

I feel the knot rise in my throat, treacherous. I hold back the tears by breathing deeply, focusing on her real weight in my arms, on the warmth of her body, on the certainty that this moment exists.

A fairy approaches in silence and places something on Ashleen’s head.

A crown. It isn’t rigid, nor does it seem heavy. It’s made of small flowers, woven together with thin branches and threads of silvery light. It fits perfectly, as if it had always belonged there. Ashleen lifts a hand to her head, touching the crown with exaggerated care.

“Can I really wear it?” she asks, as if someone might say no.

“You can,” I say, smiling despite the tightness in my chest. “Today, you can do anything.”

She smiles back, proud, and turns once more to the mirror. The reflected image gives me back a child who looks like she stepped out of a dream, but who is mine. She always was.

The fairies don’t even give me five seconds to process Ashleen crowned before they start circling me, wings brushing the air with a low, constant sound, like a collective whisper that wraps around me before I can even stand up and try to escape.

“No, no, no,” I say, raising my hands in an automatic defensive gesture. “Seriously. I don’t need it. This is already more than enough.”

“You do,” says Niv’leen, appearing right in front of me as if he’d been summoned by the word no
. He looks indignant, wings vibrating behind him. “MY little menace has to be the SECOND most BEAUTIFUL of the night! Because the moon will be first, of course. Don’t even try to argue with me.”

“I’m not arguing,” I reply. “I just think there’s no need to overdo it with me.”

“Overdo it?” He presses a hand to his chest as if personally offended. “Kate, this is not a FAIR where humans wear RAGS and FLIP-FLOPS!”

A few fairies giggle softly, and before I can form another objection, fabrics begin to glide through the air around me. They don’t touch me right away. They float close, respectful, as if waiting for my permission… or my surrender.

“I’m just going to watch,” I try again. “I don’t need to draw attention—”

Niv tilts his head, studying me from top to bottom. “Impossible. I can’t properly assess human beauty, but I can say you already draw attention just by existing. And you won’t be just watching. You’re going to DANCE, and to dance you need to wear PROPER attire.”

I roll my eyes, but the comment doesn’t hurt. On the contrary, there’s something strangely comforting in his words.

A red fairy approaches, studying my skin carefully. The fabric in her hands shifts under the light until it reaches a deep shade of gold.

Niv lets out a low whistle. “There we go. See? Perfect match.”

“Match of what?” I ask, suspicious.

“The color of the fabric with the color of your skin.”

The dress begins to form slowly, respecting my body instead of trying to mold it. The fabric is firm enough to support me, fluid enough to move with me. It doesn’t make me feel strange, nor does it turn me into something I’m not.

“That,” Niv comments, circling me in the air. “Perfect. Keep going.”

I swallow hard.

While the fairies adjust details, my mind slips away. Not to the mirror, not to the dress taking shape, but to a strange, almost uncomfortable thought: I never had time for this. There was never room to look at myself calmly, to think about fabrics, cuts, colors. Caring about my own appearance always felt like a distant luxury, something reserved for days far too safe to exist. Between escapes, wounds, and urgent decisions, the body was just a means—something that had to function, endure, keep moving. Nothing more.

I realize, with a certain discomfort, that I never learned to see myself as someone who could be prepared for something beautiful. As if being alive already required too much effort for there to be space left for this kind of care.

And then, against my will, my thoughts drift.

Dan.

I imagine the moment he’s going to see me. The way his gaze, lately, always lingers a second longer than it should, as if he’s assessing something dangerous or too precious to touch. I imagine the silence, the tense posture, the useless attempt to look indifferent. I imagine his warmth changing in intensity, the shadows reacting before he can even restrain them.

The idea makes me uncomfortable.

I shove the thought aside almost roughly, as if it were forbidden. I don’t want this moment to be about that. I don’t want to measure anything by his gaze, or allow his reaction to validate whatever I’m becoming here. It’s not for him. It’s not for anyone.

I repeat this silently, like a poorly rehearsed spell.

Even so, my chest tightens a little, traitorous, and I know that when he walks back into this room, I’ll feel it. Even if I try not to.

I take a deep breath, forcing my attention back to the present—to the real weight of the dress settling into place, to the distant murmur of the fairies, to the fragile certainty that, for a few minutes, I can simply be in one place, pretty or not, without needing to run afterward.

Niv lands on the headboard of the bed, noticing my silence.

“He’ll be fine,” he says, lower than before. I wonder if our bond now lets him read my thoughts. “I just can’t fix that face of his that looks like he ate something and didn’t like it.”

A laugh escapes me before I can stop it.

The mirror appears in front of me. I look, and for a moment it isn’t another person I see—it’s me, but without the immediate weight of fear. The golden dress seems to highlight the color of my skin. Discreet flowers live along the hem, pulsing with the magic around us. My hair is done too, gathered into a single braid that starts close to the scalp and runs down my back, adorned with the same flowers that formed Ashleen’s crown. I’d been so lost in thought that I hadn’t even noticed the fairies working on that as well.

The sight steals my breath for a few seconds.

Niv crosses his arms, satisfied. “I told you. The second most beautiful of the night.”

Ashleen approaches in silence, far too serious for someone her size. She watches me carefully, as if trying to memorize every detail.

“You look like a queen,” she says.

The air leaves my lungs slowly.

Niv claps his hands, moved. “Did you hear that? Little menaces are never wrong at moments like this!”

I kneel slightly to meet her at eye level. “It’s not that much.”

Ashleen shakes her head, firm. “You do look like a queen.”

I feel something old loosen in my chest. A knot I didn’t even know was still there.

I hug Ashleen at my side, pulling her close and squeezing her gently, doing my best not to wrinkle our dresses.

The bedroom door opens just as I’m standing up and adjusting the weight of the dress on my shoulders. The mirror has already vanished, so I’m following a fairy’s instructions when I hear the soft sound of wood, and for a moment I don’t turn around. I expect to see Dan coming in the way he always does: rigid posture, measured steps, shadows moving before he does.

Normal.

When I turn, my body takes half a second longer to understand what it’s seeing.

He’s standing in the doorway, and there’s something so out of place about the image that my mind tries to correct it on its own, as if it were a trick of perspective.

Dan is dressed up.

Very dressed up.

The clothes fit his body with clean, precise lines—dark without being heavy, elegant without looking fragile. The fabrics are a deep navy blue, worked into a design I wouldn’t see even at a high-society event, where at best you might find a duke. It was an outfit worthy of a prince, perhaps even a king or something beyond that. Hard to describe with words good enough. But it was clear he’d made his own alterations, because where there might have been a collar, there was only a neckline that dipped to the start of his abdomen.

His hair is tied back in a low ponytail, leaving his face exposed in a way that catches me off guard—his cheekbones look sharper, his jaw more defined, his golden eyes impossible to ignore. His fangs show when he opens his mouth, uncomfortable, and his horns… there are delicate silver chains hanging from them, with small metallic leaves and pale stones.

Dan takes a step inside and stops when he sees me.

I know he saw me because his body reacts before any expression does. His shoulders tense. His hands hover in the air for a moment, unsure where to land. The shadows at his feet go still. He opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again, as if he’s completely forgotten what he came to say.

“I—” He clears his throat. “I already hate this.”

The sentence comes out misplaced, delayed, like a line from a script that no longer matches the scene.

“I’m never letting fairies near me again,” he adds, crossing his arms too tightly. “I’m almost certain I look like a clown.”

The silence that follows is strange. Not because he spoke, but because he doesn’t say anything else.

Dan stares at me as if he’s waiting for something. A judgment. An immediate reaction. When it doesn’t come, the gold of his eyes darkens slightly, and he shifts his weight, clearly lost.

I try to respond.

I can’t.

Something in me locks up—not out of shyness, but out of pure surprise. A thought crosses my mind without a clear shape, without control. Something far too simple to say out loud. I hesitate, and Dan notices. Of course he does.

His jaw tightens. “If this is bad, I can take it off,” he says, too quickly. “They went overboard.”

“You look… different,” slips out of me at last.

He freezes completely.

“Different how?” he asks, defensive, already bracing for a criticism I haven’t even formed.

I see the mistake happening. I see him closing off before he even hears me.

“No,” I say quickly, taking a step forward. “That’s not it.”

He watches me with an intensity that’s almost too much, as if he’s trying to decode a hidden threat in my words.

I take a deep breath.

“You look good.”

The word falls between us and doesn’t dissolve.

Dan blinks once. Twice.

He doesn’t smile. He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t joke. He just stands there, motionless, as if he’s been struck by something he doesn’t know the source of.

He opens his mouth. Closes it. Looks away.

“Uh,” he murmurs at last, in a low, strange tone. “Right.”

His hands move again, aimless. He runs his fingers over his wrist, then along the side of his clothes, as if checking whether he’s still whole.

“This is… your fault,” he adds, almost grumbling. “They said I had to match.”

I don’t know what he’s thinking. I don’t know if he believes me. I don’t know if he liked hearing that. I only know that the shadows remain still, and that he looks… awkward. I can’t explain why, but it makes him adorable.

I no longer feel the fatigue from before. My body feels renewed by the golden fabric of the dress.

I look at Dan before I can think too much.

“Shall we?” I ask, simply, as if it were obvious we were going together.

He blinks, like he’s coming out of a trance, and takes a second to answer. Then he nods, brief, maybe relieved not to have to decide anything right now.

We leave side by side, with Ashleen glued to us, holding the tip of his tail.

We’re not holding hands—just together. Even so, I feel the space between us vibrate, charged with something new, something that has nothing to do with the many small hands on our backs, urging us to keep walking.

The sounds of the celebration reach us first, surprising me, since I only learned of this event’s existence a short while ago and it’s already beginning right after the fairies finished dressing us. It isn’t exactly music, but rather soft pulsations spreading through the air, mixed with laughter, voices, and the constant rustle of wings. Everything seems more alive, perhaps even more colorful. Tir na nÓg never tires of creating wonders.

My chest fills with a good, electric kind of anxiety.

Maybe we all need this.

I let that thought stay with me as we walk toward the celebration, under the Pearl Moon.

\[Author’s Note: I apologize for not posting anything last week, but the past few days have been extremely hard to endure… I almost lost my mother—she suffered a sudden heart attack, and I had to rush her to the hospital. I spent four days with her during her hospitalization, until they performed a catheterization and angioplasty, during which three stents were placed. I didn’t have the mental space for anything other than taking care of her after we finally returned home, and only now I finally managed to sit down and write something. I apologize if this chapter doesn’t live up to what you expect from this book, but I made a point of writing a long chapter, even if that meant the need to split it into two, so you would have more to read as compensation for the week of inactivity. I hope you can understand.\]