Vael dragged Aria to the seamstress's workshop three days after the announcement, and Helsa came along uninvited, declaring she had earned the right to opinions on royal fashion after six years of loyal service.
"You wore deep blue when you were claimed the first time," Vael said, circling Aria where she stood on the small fitting platform. "What do you want this time."
Aria considered the bolts of fabric stacked along the workshop walls, silver and gold and the deep midnight blue of Ashenveil's banners, and found herself thinking, unexpectedly, of a torn grey dress in the Blackwood six years before.
"White," she said. "Pure white. The kind no Beta's daughter ever gets to wear, because white shows every mark of poverty and every wolf in Blackmoon would have told me I had no right to it.
