Life had been so much simpler before she became a royal mistress.

Across the room, the musicians played a stately low dance while dancers drifted in pairs across the inlaid marble floor. The air was heavy with the heat of bodies, fragrant with wine and flowers and candle wax and a dozen perfumes. Chandeliers scattered prisms of light throughout the hall, gleaming on silks and gems, powdered skin and oiled hair. Those guests not dancing gathered in knots and clusters around the edges of the room, bright as butterflies in new spring finery.

Fashions had been reserved last spring, with the city still in mourning for the old king. This year dressmakers had run wild: bold colors, daring hemlines, floral confections of silk and gauze. Of questionable taste, perhaps, in a city where prostitutes took the names of flowers, but younger courtiers embraced the style. Savedra had spent years avoiding such comparisons, but her dressmaker had still badgered her into a leafy design of layered greens. The designer, her maid, and the king had all sworn her oaths that she didn’t look like a cabbage, but the suspicion lingered in the back of her mind. She might never wear the gown to another ball, but it would serve as excellent hunter’s camouflage.

“You shouldn’t frown so,” Varis Severos said, leaning against a column beside her. “You look as though you’re at a funeral, not a ball.” He eyed an elaborate headdress of silk roses swaying across the room. “A funeral for taste.”

-- from The Poison Court