Everyone else in the room did this as well. It wasn’t hard for Elli, who only had to slip off her little satin slippers but Roke had to fight with his tall black boots, a low curse coming from his lips as he finally got them off.
Having gotten his knee-high silk stockings and high-heeled shoes with their golden buckles off, the Crown Prince stepped into the stream that flowed through the room, submerging his pale feet in the milky blue water.
At once, everyone in the Court followed suit.
“Oh—it’s warm!” Elli murmured as she stepped into the part of the pale blue stream that ran closest to their lounge.
“It’s been infused with the chemicals of our home world,” the Duchess explained in her soft, dreamy voice. “To make it safe for delicate Tenebrian skin. So much nicer than that awful, cold stuff that falls from the sky here on Pok.”
“You mean rain?” Elli raised an eyebrow at her.
“Yes—that.” The Duchess made a face and shivered. “So harsh and abrasive—dangerously so!”
Elli had always liked rain herself—it made the world feel clean and refreshed. It had been one of the things she missed while living in the artificial environment of the Mother Ship. But apparently the Tenebrians hated it. She wondered if it was actually dangerous to them—maybe it ate into their skin like acid or something.
Just then, the Crown Prince finally stepped out of the stream and dried his feet on a towel that had been left on the steps of the dais for him. On cue, the Tenebrian nobles went back to their lounges and used the towels that had been stored under the long pieces of furniture, apparently for this purpose. Once their feet were dry, they did not put their shoes back on because the Crown Prince left his off. Instead, everybody sat back on their lounges with the males sitting behind and cradling their females between their legs.
“This reminds me of sledding down hills with my brothers when I was little,” Elli remarked, as she settled gingerly between Roke’s long legs, making certain not to press back against him too much.
“I beg your pardon, but what is ‘sledding’?” the Duchess asked as she got resettled between her husband’s legs.
“Oh—it’s something we did for fun whenever snow fell,” Elli answered. “You take a flat piece of board to the top of a hill and ride it all the way down.”
“Snow?” The Duke frowned in obvious confusion.
“When water—rain—freezes during the winter months, it falls down as snowflakes,” Elli tried to explain.
“That horrid stuff freezes?” The Duchess shivered. “Ugh! And I thought it couldn’t get any worse!”
“Oh, no! It’s actually—” Elli began but just then the Crown Prince cleared his throat and everyone in the room went utterly silent.
“Now then,” he said, rubbing his hands together and looking around the room. “Who shall be my Bride of the Night?”
The women in all the lounges sat up straighter and Elli noticed a great deal of preening going on. Some of the noblewomen were smoothing their dresses and patting their elaborate hairdos—some of which towered as much as three feet above their heads—and others appeared to be surreptitiously checking their make-up in small hand-held viewers.
“I think I shall choose…Lady Heekenbottom.” The Crown Prince pointed a finger at one of the women in the front row. Her pale cheeks went a pale violet and she rose at once and nodded to her husband before ascending the dais to curtsey before the Crown Prince.
“What’s happening?” Elli murmured to the Duchess. “What’s going on?”
“Oh, the Crown Prince has no Heart’s Companion, so every night at Supper he chooses one lucky noble to be his ‘Bride of the Night.’” the Duchess whispered back.
“Really?” Elli asked uneasily. “So then she sits with him and eats Supper with him?”
“And then goes to spend the night in the Royal Bedchamber.” The Duchess fluttered her long, white lashes expressively. “And of course, if the lucky girl gets impregnated by His Majesty, her status grows enormously!”
“Right along with her belly!” the Duke put in, with a chuckle.
“I don’t—” Elli began but she was interrupted by the husband of the woman who had been chosen to go to the Crown Prince.
“I choose…” he was saying, looking around the room. “I choose Lady Birthenbeak.”
The noblewoman he was pointing at rose and came forward to join Lord Heekenbottom on his lounge. Whereupon, Lord Birthenbeak, her husband, rose and began looking around the room.
“Does this happen every Supper?” Elli asked, as he called out the name of “Lady Pottymod” and another Tenebrian noblewoman rose and went to join him, leaving her husband to look for a new Supper partner as well.
“Oh yes,” the Duchess murmured. “That’s why the Court rotates their Supper dates—so everyone has a chance of spending the night with the Crown Prince at least once a cycle.”