Chapter 14: Feed your Soul
The morning light cut through the gauzy curtains, painting hot stripes across the scattered rose petals on the floor. Elara, wrapped in the violet robe that still smelled like safety and sin, watched as the chamber filled with quiet, precise chaos.
They moved like whispers. Three tailors, their forms subtly other—one with fingers that were an extra joint too long, another with eyes the colour of raw silk—carried bolts of fabric that seemed to drink the light. Velvet the depth of a forest night, silk that shimmered like a breath on water, linen so crisp it looked capable of drawing blood.
“Good morning, muse,” the lead seamstress said, her voice a soft rasp. She was older, her demonic traits refined to a delicate tracing of scales along her hairline. She set down a chest of tools that clicked softly. “We have been dreaming of new curves to dress.”
Lilith observed from a low chaise by the window, a cup of something dark and steaming held lightly in her hand. Her gold eyes tracked every movement, a contented, predatory glow in them. “Be gentle with her, Kaela. She is not used to being seen.”
“But she should be,” Kaela said, turning her assessment to Elara. It wasn’t lewd. It was artistic. “All these lovely lines, hidden in sackcloth. A crime.” She gestured, and the other two approached, their measuring tapes slithering like benign snakes.
Elara stood frozen as cool, thin hands guided her to the centre of the room. The robe was taken, leaving her in only her simple shift. The morning air prickled her skin, but the humiliation she expected never came. Their touches were impersonal, efficient. The tape curled around her ribcage, over her hips, down the length of her thigh.
“Breathe out, please.” Kaela noted a number on a slender slate. “And in.” Another notation. A murmur to an assistant. “The waist is a full hand’s span smaller than Her Majesty’s. We will need to drape, not structure. Structure would break her.”
Lilith sipped her drink. “Drape her, then.”
For an hour, Elara was turned, posed, and swathed in fabrics that felt like ghost-kisses against her skin. They held up jewel tones to her face, debated the cut of a sleeve. They knelt to measure her from knee to ankle, their professional chatter a low hum. One brought forward slippers of supple leather, another showed stocking so fine they were cobwebs.
Through it all, she felt Lilith’s gaze. It was a physical warmth on her back, a steadiness that let her breathe when the tape tightened around her bust, when her freckled shoulders were bared. She caught her own reflection in a long, darkened mirror they brought in—a pale, wide-eyed creature being transformed by waterfalls of colour. The girl from the scullery was gone, burned away. Who was left?
Kaela finally stepped back, her slate covered in marks. She looked from Elara to the Queen, a thoughtful line between her brows. “The foundation is exquisite. But the canvas…” She chose her words carefully, addressing Lilith but meaning them for Elara. “She is hollow in places a woman should be soft. The shoulders, here.” She gestured with two fingers. “The hips. It is not a lack of shape, but a lack of… sustenance. The old uniform did more than hide. It starved.”
The room went very still. The assistant tailors busied themselves with folding cloth.
Lilith set her cup down. The soft click was like a stone dropped in a well. She rose and crossed the space, the tailors parting for her without a sound. She stopped behind Elara, her presence a wall of heat and scent. Her hands came to rest on Elara’s hips, her palms warm even through the shift.
Elara’s breath hitched. In the mirror, she saw the contrast—Lilith, a vision of lush, formidable vitality in her dressing gown, and herself, all sharp angles and nervous eyes, swallowed by Lilith’s shadow.
Lilith’s thumbs stroked the pronounced curve of bone. Her gaze locked onto Elara’s in the glass. “You are perfect,” she said, and her voice was low, for Elara alone. “But Kaela is not wrong. My love,” she continued, the endearment so casual it stole the air from the room. Her fingers splayed, possessive and gentle. “What are your favorite foods?”
The question was so mundane, so utterly human, it shattered the last of Elara’s poised anxiety. A weak laugh bubbled out of her. “What?”
“Food.” Lilith’s lips brushed the shell of her ear. “What do you crave? What did you dream about in your little cot down in the stone?”
Elara’s mind went blank, then flooded with simple, stolen memories. The head cook’s apricot tarts, left to cool on a windowsill. The smell of butter-rich pastry. The sharp tang of ripe berries from the garden, eaten quickly behind a hedge before anyone could see.
“I…” she stammered, leaning back into Lilith’s hold without thought. “Fruit, I suppose. Berries. And… the honey cakes from the midsummer festival. Once.” She’d had a whole one, years ago. It had been so sweet it made her teeth ache for hours.
Lilith listened as if she were reciting poetry. She nodded slowly, then looked over Elara’s shoulder at Kaela. “You have your measurements. Begin with the day dresses. The emerald silk, the dove grey linen. The rest will follow.”
It was a dismissal. The tailors gathered their things with fluid bows and vanished as quietly as they came, leaving the bolts of chosen fabric heaped like treasure on a side table.
Alone again, Lilith turned Elara to face her. Her hands didn’t leave her hips. “The kitchen is yours,” she said simply. “From this moment. You will eat with me. You will eat what brings you joy. If you have a whim for a tart at midnight, you will wake a baker to make it.” Her thumb traced the line of Elara’s jaw. “This hollow,” she whispered, “I will fill it with honey and sunlight and everything you were ever denied.”
The promise was too vast. It wasn’t about clothes. It was a wholesale rewriting of her life. Elara’s eyes stung. She looked down at their feet, her plain toes peeking from under her shift, Lilith’s bare feet beside them, elegant and strong.
“Why?” The word was a thread of sound.
Lilith’s answer was to pull her close, until there was no space for doubt between them. She didn’t kiss her. She just held her, letting Elara feel the solid, unshakable reality of her. “Because you are the answer,” she repeated, the words from the night before now a foundation. “And I have waited too long to hear the question.”
Outside, a bell tolled the hour. Duties called. The castle, with all its whispered judgements and sharp hierarchies, was waking. But in this room, fragrant with new cloth and old roses, the only law was the steady beat of two hearts, slowly learning to share the same rhythm. The fittings were done. The true cultivation had just begun.