CHAPTER16
“Iam not wearing that,” Cathy said flatly.
Aodhan lowered his wand, magic still shimmering around his fingertips. He inspected the result of his efforts. As far as he could tell, there was absolutely nothing wrong with it.
“If you have an aesthetic objection to green, you might have said so before I spent the better part of an hour transforming leaves into a garment,” he said, unable to keep a bite of exasperation from his tone. The ritual had not been easy. “For Herne’s sake, woman, what color did you think it was going to end up?”
“I like green. It’s my favorite color.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“You said you were making a dress.” Cathy folded her arms. “That is not a dress.”
“What in the names of all the goddesses would you call it, then?”
“Revealing,” Motley volunteered.
Aodhan shot him a glare, which Motley returned with bland innocence. At Aodhan’s request, the raven shifter had joined them in the workshop, eschewing the offered chair in favor of a perch on top of the highest bookcase. Aodhan would have felt much more sanguine about this if Motley had been in his bird form.
“It’s fashionable.” Aodhan gestured at his creation. “This is precisely the sort of thing a powerful, respected changeling sorcerer on an urgent quest for an important seelie lord would wear.”
Cathy eyed the plunging neckline. “Apparently powerful, respected changeling sorcerers don’t need bras. Aodhan, you can’t seriously expect me to wear that. Can you imagine how I’d look?”
Oh, he could imagine. Unbidden, the mental picture coalesced in his mind. Leaf-green silk hugging every curve… jeweled laces glittering across the graceful arch of her back… side-slit skirts fluttering with every step, flashing glimpses of her soft, rounded thighs…
He coughed. “On second thought, perhaps something a little more practical would be better.”
Aodhan flipped to the back of his reference book, searching through the extensive index. High sidhe mages, bless and curse their blackened hearts, had devised a lot of fashion-related spells. There were over one hundred runes just to describe various types of satin, and that wasn’t even getting into the mind-boggling complexity of magical crochet.
Finding a suitable incantation, he raised his wand again, concentrating. Fortunately, it was much easier to adjust a garment than to create it out of leaves.
Longer sleeves… fuller skirt… adjust the texture…
“There.” He dropped his hands, catching his breath. “Better?”
Cathy eyed the new garment. “I suppose. But does it have to be so glittery?”
“Woman, by high sidhe standards, this is somber. They have all the taste and restraint of drunken magpies.” With a gesture, he floated the dress over to her. “Now go and try it on, so I can see if it needs any further adjustments.”
Cathy still looked dubious, but allowed the fabric to settle over her arm. Gathering up the accessories that he’d already created for her, she disappeared amidst the bookcases.
“You should change too,” Motley said.
Aodhan, already clearing away the candles and herbs required by the ritual, raised an eyebrow at the raven shifter. “The seelie are hardly going to care about my clothes.”
“Not your clothes.” Motley cocked his head, sharp and crow-like. “You.”
A twinge of unease twisted his stomach. Aodhan flicked a glance in the direction Cathy had gone, then murmured the syllables of a simple privacy spell. His ears popped as the air shimmered, shrouding them in a bubble of silence.
“And what’s that supposed to mean?” he demanded.
Motley fiddled with the hair tie looped round his wrist. “She sees you, but she doesn’t see you. Not all of you.”
Aodhan’s jaw tightened. “She knows what I am. I haven’t hidden that.”
Motley’s bone-white fingers spidered along the edge of the bookcase. He pulled out one of Aodhan’s own journals, turning it over in his hands without opening it.
For all the books Motley had brought him over the years, Aodhan had never seen the raven shifter actually read one. He’d wander the library for hours, petting some books and shying away from others as though they’d snapped at him… but he never read them.