Chapter Thirty-Seven
The next day, I run into Quinn as she’s leaving the dungeons. Her hair is matted to her head, and she looks as though she hasn’t slept in a couple of days.
“They’re lucky,” she says, thumbing over her shoulder towards the stairs to the incarcerated alchemists, the same stairs she carried me up after I’d been wrongfully imprisoned.
“The guards that took care of you were put in a cell themselves for a couple of weeks, and then they were given a chance to improve the conditions down there. They must have been pretty motivated because it’s as clean as I’ve ever seen it. ”
“Are they talking?” I ask her.
“Endlessly,” she says with a smile. “I wouldn’t have been pulled in—not really my area; I’m more of a court jester than anything official—but so many of them were involved, they really had no choice.
It’s a mess. The Alchemists’ Guild, foreign merchants.
Even some of the nobility. You helped him uncover the biggest fucking scheme to take control of the crown in the history of Selara. ”
Well, one of the biggest schemes. I’m still working on taking down the other one. I’ll be forever grateful to Larus for whatever he did to delay things. The Alchemists’ Guild crisis would have made for the perfect opportunity to strike amid the chaos.
“I do what I can,” I say.
“I hear that’s true,” she says, her brows bouncing. “He won’t tell me anything, but I could see it on his face. Everyone is talking about how he went there to save you and what must have happened after.”
My cheeks turn red. “Everyone?”
“I won’t make you tell me what he’s like.
Although I have always wondered; who hasn’t?
But tell me at least if you’re together.
I won’t tell anyone. Maybe Taran, but he probably already knows, although he'd never tell me. Which is really quite unfair, now that I’m saying it out loud.
I think I’ll go and start a fight with him about it later. ”
“I bet you will.”
“Well?” She nudges me with her elbow.
I think about last night after we returned from my walk with Adria and Larus to the sea.
About how I felt his need when he passed me in the dining hall.
How I’d waited until Adria was asleep to creep back into the corridor and through the passage into his chambers.
About the many wonderful hours I’d spent there, and how I’ll do it again tonight, the second that I’m able.
“Yes,” I say. “There’s…something there. Don’t tell anyone.”
“Your secret is safe with me,” she says. “Are you free later? I need help with my mask for the ball.”
The masked ball. It’s in two days, on my birthday, of all days, and I’d forgotten all about it. “Shit. You don’t have two masks by any chance?”
“Meet me after lunch,” she says. “We’ll go shopping.”
Quinn takes me to the vendor in the market that hates Nithyrians over my repeated protests.
“There is no one in this city who doesn’t know who you are. You are going to be the consort of the king. The queen, one day. No one will dare defy you.”
The world spins wildly beneath me when she says it. I’d forgotten that bit too. It had felt fun to imagine back on stage when Ronan had crowned me at the end of the Festival of Sport. But it feels different now that I’m spending my nights in his bed.
It feels real.
Queen Sylvie of Selara.
It’s a long way away if it ever happens. But it’s difficult to imagine my life without Ronan in it now. It’s difficult imagining any sort of future that doesn’t involve binding myself to him in some way.
It’s scary, but a future without him feels scarier.
Quinn was right about at least one thing: between all the events of the Festival of Sport and the Alchemists’ Guild crisis, people do recognize me in the street now.
The rumors reach beyond the palace walls, making it difficult to walk through crowded places without being stopped.
Ronan had offered to send a couple of his guards with me—well, he’d insisted, really—but I had thought that would just draw even more attention.
Of course, he’d sent them anyway, trailing behind Quinn and me at a reasonable distance.
The mask-seller is a handsome man with curly dark hair and sculpted features that he contorts into haughty expressions as the stragglers from court, ourselves included, fight over the last remaining masks.
He’s an asshole through and through, but he doesn’t say anything about my Nithyrian heritage, although admittedly I’m passing for Selaran these days in my attire.
But he also doesn’t make any remark when I greet a pair of distant cousins in their Nithyrian leathers.
“See? He’s a changed man.”
I sincerely doubt that’s the case, but if my presence here means other Nithyrians were welcome, I suppose it can’t have been all bad. Though I still didn’t know if I should be supporting his business.
But Ronan had been right about the masks: even the limited supply he has remaining is lovely.
Quinn chooses a fox for herself made from delicate filigreed gold.
It’s expensive; the Alchemists’ Guild shake-up has people worried about gold scarcity.
With only a few days remaining, Ronan has dialed back the harvest festival celebrations to prepare for shortfalls.
I’m concerned about it myself, having seen the effects of hunger firsthand. But I know Ronan would strip the palace of all the gold it has before letting the people go hungry.
He may just do that anyway.
I’m ready to take the last remaining silver mask, which was intended for a man and covers more than half of my face, when Quinn finds a golden eagle mask. I can’t resist it. It looks just like the griffin.
She grins, concealing some private joke, but I’m in too good a mood to care.
On the day of the ball, Adria embarrasses me at lunch by having the chef bake me a plum pie and doing the Nithyrian birthday chant, which causes a lot of other people to join in, although they don’t know all the words.
There’s no one like a sister to mortify you in front of a crowd.
Still, I’m grateful to her. Displays like this, laced with humiliation though they may be, are rare from her. Maybe they’re a sign that she has affection for me deep down. That she still has a heart, and that heart might be changed.
I receive further proof that evening as we’re getting ready. I’m dressing with Quinn in her chambers after a long day of plucking and preening when a knock comes at the door.
“Come in,” says Quinn. Her servant is drawing sharp lines of eyeliner over her eyelids as Quinn holds up the fox mask to preview the effect in the mirror.
“Lady Adria of House Verran to see Miss Sylvara,” says Quinn’s servant.
“Sylvie,” Quinn and I both correct automatically.
I catch Quinn’s eye in the mirror. She’s as surprised as I am that Adria has come here. And then I catch something pass between them as we turn to face Adria that’s apparent in spite of the masks. Something…charged.
I really can’t tell if they want to kill each other or fuck each other. Gods, please tell me Quinn isn’t fucking my sister.
“I brought you something,” says Adria. She hands me a little box covered in a fraying blue fabric. “It was Mother’s.”
I open it to find a golden necklace set with a large piece of amber. “It’s beautiful,” I say. “I didn’t know you had this.”
“There’s never much occasion to wear it. I thought it would go better with your outfit than mine.”
Adria’s gown is one of our mother’s as well, a silver and black dress made from a heavy, structured fabric that creates curves where she has few. Her mask itself is black—a wolf.
She’s right that the necklace goes better with my outfit.
My dress has been made from a shiny silk in a deep golden brown, with a low-slung belt of golden medallions.
“It looks like Ronan’s hair,” Quinn said when she pulled it from her wardrobe for me to try, and I knew immediately that I had to wear it.
“Here, let me put it on you,” says Adria. She takes the necklace from the box and unclasps it. Then she drapes it around my neck, admiring it in the mirror. “You look so much like her, you know. More than I do.”
“Thank you,” I say, my voice wavering.
There’s more she wants to say, but she looks at Quinn and changes her posture and tone. “You’d better hurry up before they finish the good wine,” she says to me sharply. “They had to bring out the Selaran trash at the last ball.”
“Selaran trash for Nithyrian trash. Truly the peaceful future Ronan hoped for,” says Quinn. Her hand, which had been gently resting on the dressing table, tightens around it.
“Enough,” I say to them both. “Thank you, Adria. We’ll see you there.”
Despite Adria’s warning, Quinn and I arrive at the ballroom quite late.
I can see quickly why Ronan enjoys masked balls so much.
The court has really gone all out on their costumes, with some people going as far as having their entire outfits made to match the mask.
The most impressive by far is a peacock gown worn by a cousin of House Nauta decorated with real feathers that shimmer and shake as she moves.
This party is far larger than the last one. It extends from the ballroom onto a balcony—the larger balcony, not the small one where Ronan kissed me the first time—and then out into the courtyard beyond, where the palace gates have been opened to allow the commoners to join the festivities.
It takes me a long time to find Ronan. Not just because many of the masks effectively conceal the wearer’s identity, but also because Ronan isn’t with the court at all. He's out in the courtyard among the people.