Chapter Thirteen #3
She frowned but obliged me. “I left the ballroom at one point, to meet with Dorian,” Anais replied just as slowly.
“In the course of our…encounter…I took them off.” She cleared her throat.
“We were interrupted—I fled in a hurry. When I realized I’d forgotten the gloves, I went back to retrieve them, but they were gone. ”
I sat forward, intrigued. “Where was this exactly? And what was the nature of the interruption?”
Anais’s gaze sharpened. “What do you care?” she sniped. She sat forward, both slippered feet extending toward the floor. “Why are you inquiring about my gloves?”
By her curiosity, I knew I’d been too obvious. Tensing, I mimicked her cool demeanor. “Does it matter?”
Her teeth came out then, from where they’d been hiding behind the pink of her smile. “Darling, it always matters.” Tucking up into her chair, she let her chin drop. “I’ll tell you,” she said, and my heart knocked against my ribs in eagerness. “For a price.”
“The one I have just agreed to does not cover it?” I scoffed, but nodded at her to continue. “Name the cost.”
I half expected Anais to pull her paws to her chest and lick them, so feline was her gaze. Her grin widened, the pearled jut of her incisors now exposed. “I want to be your maid of honor.”
It was the very last request I could have anticipated. A snort escaped me before I could kill it, loud enough that I worried it would be overheard by the silkwitches still lingering on the first floor. “You must be joking. Anais, you do not even like me.”
“And is that not to your benefit?” she protested. “I will be candid. Have you selected your dress yet?”
An incredulous look was my only reply. At it, Anais’s posture shifted, her limbs ridding themselves of their girlish looseness.
“Cecilia,” she said in a low tone, and though it was not my true name, I understood we were speaking honestly.
“Listen to me. However justified you think your actions during the Vainglory, you cannot deny that you ruined my game. Your meddling cost me my future, and the affection of the only person I have ever loved.” She paused, her gaze briefly shuttering, and though I didn’t wish it to, guilt pierced me again.
“After the competition, my choices were the cloisters or the man who ran them,” Anais continued.
“Society has all but cast me out due to my entanglement with Dorian, but if I am your maid of honor, my status will be elevated. I will have friends again. Rich female friends, who also despise their husbands and will include me in all the expensive, frivolous hobbies they keep up to avoid them.” She leaned closer, her eyes leveling with mine.
“You have already brought me down. Do you wish to see me in the mud?”
It was a difficult question to answer. Only months ago, I would have said yes without hesitation—I had orchestrated her exit from the Vainglory, after all, because I found her particular brand of cunning to be a direct threat to my own.
And yet now…though my opinion on her personally had not changed—I still found her to be selfish, malicious, unrepentant—I could not make myself hate her in the way I had back then.
She was my rival. But I had learned the difference between a rival and an enemy.
“Fine,” I said, frowning when her features lit with glee. “But if your information is bad, I reserve the right to revoke my offer.”
“Fine.” Unbothered, Anais agreed. Our pact made, she moved to the edge of her seat, like a child preparing to divulge a secret.
“Dorian and I met in the billiards room, just off the ballroom itself,” she admitted. “And the interruption was nothing, really. I thought I heard a door open—panicked at the thought of being caught—but no one came in, so it must have been one farther down the hall.”
She stopped. Prompted by her silence, I ventured, “And?”
Anais gave an innocent sort of hum. “That’s all.”
I laughed. “That’s all?”
“You asked me two questions: where Dorian and I met, and what interrupted us.” Sitting back, Anais arched a brow in challenge. “I’ve answered them. If you wished for more, you should have been more specific when we struck our bargain. Unless you’d like to make another deal?”
I’d ceded far too much ground already. “The information you’ve provided is fine for now,” I relented.
Anais smiled, evidently pleased with herself.
“The other girls,” I said abruptly, after quiet had begun to fester between us. “You think they are truly vicious enough to kill me?”
Anais’s expression grew somber. “I think that if Manon has cracked, the rest have already done so days ago,” she replied. “Bastian’s offer is a good one—your death for a life at Noé’s side will seem, to many of them, a worthy trade. Manon’s attack will only be the first—”
“Manon’s what?” We both went rigid as a new voice broke in—brusque, alarmed, and worst of all, familiar. Too late, I sensed a presence behind me, approaching from farther down the second-floor walkway.
“What kind of offer,” Noé asked, drawing closer, “has my father made, exactly?”