The grand hall unfurled before me. The dip of the staircase and the whorled gold of the banisters opened onto a floor of swirling gowns and satin waistcoats. Floral perfume sweetened the air. Couples as posed as garden statues spun across the inlaid floor, dancing to the thin rhythm of soft music.
With a pinch of recognition, I noticed the familiar lemons in the silver bowls. They were the smooth-rinded variety my village harvested in winter and sent off to wealthier kingdoms.
That particular shade of yellow, how it was the brightest color in the room, tipped me toward the horror of realizing something else.
The gowns and tunics before me had all been cast in dove grays and blush pinks, pale golds and soft ivories. The brightest skirts had been stitched in cream mint, or the demure blue of the most delicate birds’ eggs.
And here I was, in a gown as deep red as my painted lips.
Back home, red was a favored color, alongside black. The dresses of any party or wedding seemed a sea of rubies and ravens’ feathers. But here, I looked as strange as a drop of blood in a bowl of sweets.
Their Majesties themselves wore colors as subtle as the fondant on the cakes. The queen, her hair done up in a whirl of white, sat on her gilded throne in a gown of pale rose. The king, on his nearly matching throne, had donned a coat as silver as his hair.
I set my hands on the bodice of my dress and breathed.
All I had to do was beg an audience with them. Surely they would consider allowing a place in their kingdom for families torn to pieces by la corrección; they must understand our hearts a little. Their son, the prince, had been christened a princess at birth, but when he declared himself as the young man he was, his mother had taken on the task of choosing him a boy’s name with all the reverence of planning a mass. This very ball was meant to celebrate not only his age but his introduction to the kingdom with his true name.
I raised my skirt enough to mind my feet, careful of las zapatillas de cristal.
On the last stair, I eased my weight down slowly, as though too heavy a step might crack the glass.
When I lifted my eyes, they found a gold waistcoat, the color of candle glow cast on snow.
A young man with hair as dark as his eyes offered his hand.
“I’m sorry,” I said, stalling. “I don’t know these dances.”
“If you don’t mind letting me lead,” he said, “I think you’ll find them easier than they look.”
My eyes drifted to the king and queen.
What good would it do to offend this young man? By the way he was dressed, he was probably the son of some favored noble family. Maybe by dancing with him, I could even make myself seem less a girl who came wrongly dressed and more a mysterious stranger. Someone who belonged here.
Someone the guards would not throw out before I’d said my piece.
I held my skirt and curtsied to the young man. I stepped close enough for him to take my waist, and he swept my red skirt into the whirl of cream and pale blue.
He smelled so much like my mothers’ campanillas—the vines, not the flowers—that I had to try not to shut my eyes and fall into the scent. His lead kept me from colliding with the other girls. He took the cue of my body when I wanted to widen the distance between us, adjusting the frame of his arms, and when I drew in, each time pretending it was accidental.
For the first turns of the music, I worried that las zapatillas would crack under our steps. But the glass felt light on my feet, and strong as diamonds.
I opened my eyes just as we swept by another couple. They brushed so near that I startled, the bodice of my dress falling against the young man’s chest.
“I’m sorry,” I said, instinctively looking to see if the red fabric had somehow left a stain on the pale gold.
For the first time, the contour of his chest struck me, the shape beneath the heavy embroidery.
“You’re worrying me,” he said.
My eyes leapt up to his face.
He glanced down at his front. “Have I spilled something on myself?”
“No.” I lowered my head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to stare.”
His laugh was small but good-natured. “I’m used to it.”
The heat in my cheeks rose to my forehead.
His smile stayed. “Whatever it is you’re wondering, you can ask me.”
I tried not to look at his chest. “You don’t bind yourself?”
“Only if I’m riding,” he said. “And then only because it hurts if I don’t.” He winced, and I imagined the pain of riding out with my breasts free, the soreness afterward.
“Is that the way here? For”—I stumbled as I tried to finish the thought—“everyone like you?”
He laughed again. “There is no one way for everyone like me. Some of us bind; some of us don’t. Some wear one kind of clothing; some, all kinds.”
Envy fluttered through me. I couldn’t imagine growing up in a kingdom where a single person would be allowed to wear a dress one day and trousers the next, where a boy like the one before me could let the shape of his chest show and still be acknowledged as the boy he was.
I drew myself back to the present moment.
“And you?” I asked, grasping at the easiest change of subject.
“I mostly wear the clothes my father wore at my age,” the young man said.
“Was this his?” I traced my fingers over his sleeve. I tried to make the gesture airy and flirtatious, like those of the women around me, but I only felt ridiculous.
The young man nodded once. “From one of the first balls he attended.”
As though to save me from my own attempts at charm, a tall figure in pale blue stopped alongside the young man.
“Your Highness,” he said, “Her Majesty wishes a word.”
“Forgive me.” My dancing partner—His Highness?—kissed my hand. It was quick and light enough that it seemed more out of custom, a habit of politeness, than any kind of overture.
But I stood, silenced by that press of his mouth to the back of my hand.
I had been dancing with His Highness?
This was a kingdom where His Highness could choose not to bind his chest?
I could almost imagine my tía pinching my arm, telling me not to show myself as una campesina. If I wanted to be believed as a girl who belonged here, I needed to stop gawking at everything. I needed to stop gazing upward at the blue-painted ceiling set with gold stars. I needed to stop staring like a girl who had never seen a handsome young man before, and worse, a country girl who didn’t recognize the royal cloth of the prince’s coat.