The dress looks faintly ridiculous in the sunlight. It is made for night, meant to be cloaked in shadow and to shroud Constance in temptation. In the last of the daylight, it does not flatter Constance as she pins her hair in place; it makes her seem gangly and grave-pale, and it was definitely not made to be bunched up while she sits.

But once the night falls, then it will be different. Then she will wear the night itself. Then her paleness will become like marble and its lustre where it flashes beneath the layers will be like the barrow-hoards of the dead kings. Then her make-up will be effective, deep and dark enough to drown Robena, rather than looking faintly like peat.

Artifice, Artifice, all is Artifice— but when the sun lowers her lids, then will that artifice be revealed in its hour and glory. Then she will be Night’s handmaiden, the serpent in the garden, a stone to break Robena’s hull and send her heart spilling into the sea.

“Thank you,” she says, to those assembled, and her sincerity is fine and brittle as chalk. Her heart is a bird in a snare in her chest, and her fingers unconsciously twist at her dress already, as if eager to pull layers away.