"But I can't wear these," Elena had protested to Lady Ulma. "I might not get to see you again before we get Stefan - and from that moment we're on the run!"
"It's the same for all of us," Meredith had added quietly, looking at each of the girls in their "indoor" colors of silvery-blue, scarlet, and opal. "We're all wearing the most jewelry we've ever worn indoors or out - but you might lose it all!"
"And you might need it all," Lucen had said quietly. "All the more reason for you each to have jewelry that you can trade for carriages, safety, food, whatever. It's simply designed, too - you can wrench out a stone and use it as payment, and the jewels are not in an elaborate setting that might not be to some collector's taste."
"In addition to which, they are all of the highest quality," Lady Ulma had added. "They are the most flawless examples of their kind we could get on such short notice."
At that point, all three girls had reached their limit, and rushed the couple - Lady Ulma on her enormous bed, sketchbook always beside her, and Lucen standing nearby - and cried and kissed and generally undid the beautiful jobs that had been done on their faces.
"You're like angels to us, do you know that?" Elena sobbed. "Just like fairy godparents or angels! I don't know how I can say good-bye!"
"Like angels," Lady Ulma had said then, wiping a tear from Elena's cheek. Then she grasped Elena, saying "Look!" and gestured to herself comfortably in bed, with a couple of blooming, dewy-eyed young women ready to attend to her wishes. Lady Ulma had then nodded at the window, out of which a small mill stream could be seen, and some plum trees, with ripe fruit blazing like jewels on the branches, and then with a sweep of her hand indicated the gardens, orchards, fields, and forests on the estate.
Then she had taken Elena's hand and smoothed it over her own softly curving abdomen. "You see?" she had spoken almost in a whisper. "Do you see all of this - and can you remember how you found me? Which of us is an angel now?"
At the words "how you found me" Elena's hands had flown up to cover her face - as if she'd been unable to bear what memory showed her at that moment. Then she was hugging and kissing Lady Ulma again, and a whole new round of cosmetic-destroying embraces had begun.
"Master Damon was even kind enough to buy Lucen," Lady Ulma had said, "and you may not be able to picture it, but" - here she had looked at the quiet, bearded jeweler with eyes full of tears - "I feel for him as you feel for your Stefan." And then she had blushed and hidden her face in her hands.
"He's freeing Lucen today," Elena had said, dropping to her knees to rest her head against Lady Ulma's pillow. "And giving the estate to you irrevocably. He's had a lawyer - an advocate, you'd say - working on the papers all week with a Guardian. They're done now, and even if that hideous general should come back, he couldn't touch you. You have your home forever."
More crying. More kissing. Sage, who had been innocently walking down the hallway, whistling, after a romp with his dog, Saber, had passed Lady Ulma's room and had been drawn in. "We'll all miss you, too!" Elena had wept. "Oh, thank you!"
Later that day, Damon had made good on all of Elena's promises, besides giving a large bonus to each member of the staff. The air had been full of metallic confetti, rose petals, music, and cries of farewell as Damon, Elena, Bonnie, and Meredith had been carried to Bloddeuwedd's party - and away forever.
"Come to think of it, why didn't Damon free us?" Bonnie asked Meredith as they rode in litters toward Bloddeuwedd's mansion. "I can understand that we needed to be slaves to get into this world, but we're in now. Why not make honest girls of us?"
"Bonnie, we're honest girls already," Meredith reminded her.
"And I think the point is that we were never real slaves at all."
"Well, I meant: Why doesn't he free us so that everyone knows we're honest girls, Meredith, and you know it."
"Because you can't free somebody who's free already, that's why."
"But he could have gone through the ceremony," Bonnie persisted. "Or is it really hard to free a slave here?"
"I don't know," Meredith said, breaking at last under this tireless inquisition. "But I'll tell you why I think he doesn't do it. I think that it's because this way he's responsible for us. I mean, it's not that slaves can't be punished - we saw that with Elena." Meredith paused while they both shuddered at the memory. "But, ultimately, it's the slave owner that can lose their life over it. Remember, they wanted to stake Damon for what Elena did."
"So he's doing it for us? To protect us?"
"I don't know. I...suppose so," Meredith said slowly.
"Then - I guess we've been wrong about him in the past?" Bonnie generously said "we've" instead of "you've." Meredith had always been the one of Elena's group most resistant to Damon's charm.
"I...suppose so," Meredith said again. "Although it seems that everyone is forgetting that until recently Damon helped the kitsune twins to put Stefan here! And Stefan definitely hadn't done anything to deserve it."
"Well, of course that's true," Bonnie said, sounding relieved not to have been too wrong, and at the same time strangely wistful.
"All Stefan ever wanted from Damon was peace and quiet," Meredith continued, as if on more steady ground there.
"And Elena," Bonnie added automatically.
"Yes, yes - and Elena. But all Elena wanted was Stefan! I mean - all Elena wants..." Meredith's voice trailed off. The sentence didn't seem to work properly in the present tense anymore. She tried again. "All Elena wants now is..."