The Extra's Rise - Chapter 743

743: Peace (3) 743: Peace (3) The racks arrived like quiet cavalry: four long rails of clothes floating through the door on soft wheels, two seamstresses in tow, and a full-length mirror big enough to make a ballroom insecure.

The delivery crew looked ready to wrestle; Cecilia thanked them, waited until they’d stepped back, and pushed the heaviest rack across the living room one-handed as easily as if it were a well-behaved cat.

“Is that… safe?” Douglas asked, eyebrows somewhere above strategy altitude.

Cecilia’s smile had edges, but the soft ones she reserves for family.

“It’s on wheels,” she said, which was technically true and wildly insufficient as an explanation for the way steel obeyed her.

She wore flats and a pale blouse that made the room feel like it had chosen a filter.

The tiara lived wherever tiaras rest when they are not being political; her hair was braided simply, as if to reassure Stella that princesses can be practical.

She stepped out of her shoes without looking; they arranged themselves politely beside the console table because even accessories have manners around Cecilia.

“Stella,” she said.

“Would you like to practice the important sentence?” Stella hopped once.

“No, thank you.” “Exactly so.” Cecilia touched her shoulder.

“We will use it on any dress that thinks it can boss you around.” “Even if it has pockets?” Stella hedged.

“Especially then,” Cecilia said solemnly.

“Pockets are temptresses.” We were not shopping; shops had come to us.

That was Cecilia’s compromise with the world: preserve our quiet without making the attendants unemployed.

She tipped well; she smiled; no one took a picture; the penthouse felt like a country with a firm border and a generous custom.

Reika ghosted through with tea like a stagehand whose timing deserved applause.

She set cups down without ceremony and then lifted the mirror with her fingertips, pivoted it two degrees so the light fell kinder, and let it rest with a click that sounded like agreement.

Even at rest, she moved like strength was simply a setting.

“Arthur,” Cecilia said, eyes going to the small furrow between my brows, “you are allowed to sit.

We will bring the world to your chair.” “I can stand,” I said.

“You can,” she agreed, “and yet-” She pointed to the armchair nearest the window with the kind of polite authority that unbuttons resistance.

The chair and I decided to collaborate.

The seamstresses unpacked dresses that looked like statements and jackets that looked like problems to be solved later.

Cecilia lifted a garment bag and unzipped it with a small, efficient sound.

Silk sighed in a color that couldn’t decide if it liked the light better than the shadow.

“For the dinner with nobody,” she said dryly, which made Alice laugh from the kitchen.

“Try it on,” Stella breathed, reverent.

“I will,” Cecilia said, “but first your turn.

Today we learn to tell clothing what kind of day we are having.” They started with Stella because the world should.

Aria stood by with clips.

Cecilia chose three dresses that would never condescend to a child and laid them like cards.

“This one,” she said, “is for when you want to climb and be respected.

This one is for when you want to read all day and be invisible to nonsense.

And this one is for making an entrance that is actually an exit because you are already leaving for an adventure.” Stella pointed at the last.

“Obviously.” Cecilia lifted Stella as if gravity were a polite rumor, spun her once-just enough to make giggles-and set her on the ottoman.

Seam ripper, pins, a loose hem tamed in a flurry so quick the eye couldn’t follow.

When the dress slid on, Stella turned in front of the mirror and forgot to breathe for three beats.

Cecilia’s eyes softened.

She did not say “beautiful.” She said, “You look like exactly who you are.” Stella beamed so hard the lamps considered dimming to keep up.

Cecilia made the seamstresses laugh twice in thirty seconds-once with a story about a minister who thought he could out-stare her (he could not), and once with the way she folded tissue paper precisely, as if it were a treaty.

Then she was in the pale silk, and the room went attentive the way rooms do when grace becomes visible.

“Too grand for a Tuesday,” she said, watching herself in the mirror the way a swordswoman watches the wind.

“But Tuesday has been good to me.” Aria circled, hands hovering, resisting the urge to touch the fabric because she respects other people’s work.

“You look like you know where every door leads,” she said.

“I do,” Cecilia said, not as a boast but as an inventory.

She pivoted to me; the skirt breathed once and behaved.

“Honesty,” she said.

“If it reads like performance, it is wrong for our house.” “It doesn’t read at all,” I said.

“It listens.” Her eyes softened at that.

She moved closer, the dress not daring to wrinkle.

“Good,” she said, and somehow the word held more relief than the silk had room for.

We rotated to Arthur-clothes because I cannot live in shirts that make me feel like I’ve been borrowed.

One tailor tried a jacket with a collar that believed it was in charge; Cecilia plucked the lapel between finger and thumb and, with a single micro-tug, corrected the line.

The tailor blinked.

“I swear I ironed that.” “You did,” Cecilia said.

“The iron and the collar disagreed.

I have mediated.” I stood; she approached with pins.

When she kneels to measure,, I always feel all the ways strength can be soft.

She pressed a shoulder seam, marked a sleeve, and then-because she is who she is-glanced up to check my breathing like a physician.

I smiled because I had planned to.

“I’m fine.” “You are patient,” she corrected, approving.

“That is different.” With anyone else, I might have said something clever.

With Cecilia, I accepted accuracy.

Between fittings, the house became a runway by accident.

Stella narrated each look with the kind of vocabulary that makes adults reconsider their careers.

“That says ‘I will listen to you, and then I will do the right thing whether or not you agree,'” she said about one of Cecilia’s suits.

“That says ‘No, thank you’ without using words.” About another: “That says ‘I brought cookies and a sword, and you don’t need to know which is which yet.'” Cecilia applauded.

“A savant.” Stella flipped her hair like an empress of nine.

The seamstresses took measurements with unobtrusive speed.

When one of them overreached and a tower of boxes tilted, Cecilia was simply there-one hand under twenty pounds of stacked hatboxes, steady as a promise, her other hand still holding a chalk stub.

She eased it back and laughed, half at herself for enjoying it.

“Pardon me,” she told the boxes.

Alice and Douglas watched like people at a tennis match where the ball is etiquette.

“Do queens perform miracles in silence as part of their job description?” Douglas asked.

“No,” Alice said.

“Cecilia does that as a hobby.” They went on arguing amiably about hem lengths in a tone that suggested entire dynasties had hinged on less.

Reika moved the mirror again by a single degree that made a shoulder seam behave.

Aria learned three new methods of pinning without stabbing someone, and stabbed herself once anyway.

Cecilia kissed her fingertip without thinking about it, the way a mother would, then went still as if she’d revealed too much.

Aria didn’t freeze.

“It’s okay,” she said, quietly.

“I liked it.” Cecilia’s smile then looked like something only I usually get to see.

“Good,” she said.

“Me too.” When the rails had aired their opinions and the tailoring chalk dust settled, Cecilia clapped her hands once-not loudly; the sound was an invitation for the day to consider being done.

“Final exercise,” she said.

“We practice saying no kindly.” She lined up three dresses that were, in their own ways, persuasive.

“I will play the dress,” she told Stella.

“You play yourself.” Cecilia smoothed her expression into the polite, empty charm of a store display.

“Try me,” she said with musical insistence.

Stella curtseyed because nine is a kingly age.

“No, thank you.” “Why not?” Cecilia cooed.

“I will climb trees later,” Stella said, perfectly pleasant.

“You would be sad.” Cecilia brightened.

“Approved.” They switched roles.

Stella became a dress so deeply in love with itself it could only be worn on Thursdays above cloud line.

Cecilia, now the child again, considered, then bowed.

“You are wonderful,” she told the dress.

“And you are for someone else.” Alice had to pretend not to clap.

Douglas did not pretend.

After the fittings, Cecilia changed into something that let her sit cross-legged on the rug without worrying the rug.

“Arthur,” she said, patting the floor beside her.

“Bring your least offensive jacket.

Let us make it excellent.” I brought the grey one that has never betrayed me.

She rolled the sleeve once, then again, and somehow it looked like I owned the concept of sleeves.

“Lessons,” she said, eyes beating the jacket into cooperation.

“You don’t have to improve everything.

Only the things that keep you from breathing.” “I’m learning,” I said, because it had become the day’s refrain and because it fit.

“Your progress pleases me,” she said, which sounded like a queen handing a city back to its people.

Later, when the seamstresses packed and the mirror leaned with a workday’s slouch, we found the balcony.

The city had arranged itself politely for evening.

The dress rail remained; Cecilia slid it back toward the wall with one elbow while pouring herself water with the other.

Strength in her hands never reads as a threat; it reads like a guarantee.

“Dance?” I asked, because the day had moved like one already.

“In slippers?” she said, pretending to be scandalized.

“In slippers,” I confirmed.

We didn’t step far.

Three turns, a pause, my palm at her shoulder blade, her fingers adjusting my collar with a precision that improved my posture and, incidentally, my soul.

Through the glass, our reflections looked like two people who have learned to make ceremony out of ordinary minutes.

When we stopped, she straightened my lapel in the window, eyes on our mirrored selves.

Her kiss was quick, claimed in the glass rather than the air, as if to make the moment official but unbroadcast.

Inside, Stella had fallen asleep on the couch in her adventure dress, cradling a shoe like a trophy.

Reika laid a muslin cloth over the mirror so the fabric could rest, which is the kind of sentence that makes perfect sense in this house.

Aria stacked the empty boxes in a column that obeyed geometry with visible gratitude.

Cecilia set a lavender sachet in my drawer and closed it with two fingers.

“For sleep,” she said.

“I like it,” I told her.

“It likes you,” she said back, and there was no more to discuss.

We ended there-no grand declarations, just a rail of favorites that would be worn until they stopped being ideas and started being clothes, a mirror with its eyes closed, and a balcony that had learned our small slow waltz.