Chapter 3
Mari
While the new king began to make his rounds, I slipped into the alcove that was used as a place to fuck the Doves, shutting the door with a click.
“Hurry,” Feather whispered.
“I am.” I slid out of the full-bodied cloak and dress combo that I reserved for my moments as the Briar Queen. My Doves suspected who I was, but even they did not know all my coloring. For their own safety as well as mine. The only ones who truly knew were Feather and Tulli.
Feather was my closest friend and had been with me on that terrifying boat ride. The scars along the sides of her face, her left eye missing, all had come from an over-exuberant client, and they’d left her abhorrent to the males.
I stood naked as she helped me into the dress of shimmering gold. A bold choice, but that was my job as Innia—the boldest Dove of the Rose and Lantern and the Briar Queen’s voice when she was not in attendance.
The dress covered me from my collarbones to my wrists, to the floor.
No slit, no bit of skin other than the very tops of my shoulders.
But no one would ever say it was prudish—the material clung to every part of me, and I wore nothing beneath it.
Every curve, every move I made, every breath I took could be seen.
I rarely changed the style of my dress, only the color. That and the color of my hair and eyes. “What do you think, Feather?”
“Oh, wear the amber ring, I love that chestnut and gold mane.” She pulled a box out from her bag.
About the size of a large book, it was our best kept secret.
I flipped the lid open and stared down at the different rings.
The amber ring was a good match for the dress, and I slid it out and over my middle finger on my left hand.
I blinked and pulled a few strands of hair around so I could see. Dark chestnut shot through with streaks of gold slid through my fingers. “Excellent. And my eyes?”
“Amber. If Breona was indeed the type he prefers, you’ve hit the nail on the head.
” Feather tucked the box back into her bag along with my Briar Queen dress.
“Hopefully it will be enough to lure that bastard to you and do what needs to be done. Do you think you can get the king to take a mistress? None of us could ever get Malach into bed.”
It had to be. If not, I’d come prepared to do something drastic, if need be, because there was zero chance of me leaving this ball while the demon noble Aristotle still lived and breathed. Not after what he’d done to that poor Dove.
There were two kinds of Fallen.
Those who lusted after the human women.
And those who despised them.
Aristotle had been the latter. So much so that he never partook of what the Doves had to offer…
Until a week ago. According to Lady Dahlia, he’d gone late at night, arriving in secret.
He’d requested Breona by name. Said he’d seen her at several parties, and she’d been haunting his dreams. He’d finally decided to break his unwritten rule and bed her.
Malach had been of the second variety, and it had only been through the desires of his people that he’d kept any of us alive.
She’d been found by a servant girl in a Seventhell alley the next morning, and, depending on who was telling the tale, she’d been decapitated, disemboweled, and pieces of her innards missing.
Pieces missing.
The investigation had been brief and careless.
Ruled a wild animal attack after Aristotle’s drinking buddies claimed he’d met them at the tavern after his tryst with Breona.
A lie supported by Lady Tulip herself, who claimed she’d seen Breona leaving Tulip House of Pleasure and Pain early the next morning.
Strange how Lady Tulip had suddenly seemed to come into a large sum of money, only a couple of days later, spending lavishly on new clothes and hats.
Bastard had paid her off, how could no one else see it?
If the two of them dying tragically during this party wouldn’t have seemed like too much of a coincidence, I’d have brought enough poison to kill them both.
“What will you do if you can’t draw him into a private room?” Feather asked, worrying her bottom lip.
“We won’t worry about that yet, love.” I pulled her into a hug. She’d never had the heart for being a Dove, and while I hated that she’d been hurt, it had kept her safer in the long run. It had kept her from having to pretend.
Not like me and Tulli.
She hugged me back, tighter, as if she knew what I was thinking.
“Please be careful.” Her voice was muffled against my neck. “Please.”
“Always.” I stepped back and did a slow turn, looking at her over my shoulder, fluttering my eyelashes. “Good?”
“Brilliant.” She smiled, the skin across her cheeks pulling it into a sneer. “Use your weapons well, Mari.”
Marinnia in truth, Mari to my closest friends, Innia to the clients, and the Briar Queen when I needed to command respect, I went by many names.
If names carried secrets, I needed to ensure none knew all of mine.
I dipped into a low curtsy. “To the Nest with you, Feather. Hurry.”
I waited until she was out of sight on the stairs and then carefully walked in the opposite direction.
The quartz was cool on the soles of my feet, grounding me as I walked toward the group of Fallen closest to me. The new king’s speech had seemed almost too good to be true, and I feared that it hid a darker agenda.
His hair had been shorn off, short everywhere but on top, and that alone made me nervous. I remembered what my mother had told me, that the human men would cut their hair short before they went to war. Was the king declaring a war of some sort, without the others realizing?
Not your problem, woman.
I pushed this King Gabriel out of my mind and threw myself into the role. I danced with Lord Trent, Lord Porter, and Lord Luc—all of whom offered for me, all of which I turned down, saying I had a prior arrangement.
I almost always had a prior arrangement.
Three lords of the Fallen, and only then did I let myself slow. Each of the dances had brought me closer to where the bastard Aristotle stood, his smug face twisted into a smirk as he watched the partygoers.
I made to move toward him when I was intercepted by a light hand on my elbow.
“Innia? I thought perhaps you would not come. Neither you nor your queen bee like to leave your nestlings alone.”
Shit.
I turned to face Kami and she pulled me into a hug. Her relationship with this side of me was far warmer than that with my Briar Queen role.
I hugged her back. “That is true. Especially with…everything. She sent word that she was on her way, and…well you know me, I can get my clothes on faster than I can get them off.”
Her laugh was immediate as we stepped back from one another and she eyed me up and down. “Lovely, don’t I know it. Love the new wig! And I haven’t seen this dress before either. New as well?”
I saw the worry in her eyes, the avoidance of what I’d brought up.
“I have had it some time, wanted to not waste it, and I thought tonight…well…” I motioned carefully with one hand toward our new king.
“He’s not danced with anyone, despite his declaration for searching out a queen.” Kami said. “Not like he’d take a human as queen, but surely as a consort. Perhaps you should introduce yourself.”
I laughed, letting my voice pitch a little higher, drawing it out then allowing it to fall. My mentor would be proud—a perfect tinkling laugh meant to draw eyes.
Kami smiled as she slid into a curtsy to someone approaching from behind me. “One day you will have to teach me that.”
A strange sense of awareness skittered through me as my neck broke out in gooseflesh.
Bloody hell.
I did not need to look behind me to know that it wasn’t the murderer Aristotle approaching.
It was the new king himself. He hadn’t been the fish I’d wanted to bait but I lowered myself into a deep curtsy and held myself there, eyes down, hair sliding over only one shoulder so that the smooth skin was bare.
Tantalizing.
Leaving a man to wonder what else lay beneath the cloth rather than looking me in the eyes as he had when he first dropped in from the sky.
It had been unnerving to say the least.
“May I ask just what you find so amusing?” His voice was not what I expected. Even though I’d heard him give his coronation speech, with him this close, that silky tone did something to me that I had not felt in a great long time.
Flutters in my belly rippled outward, but I didn’t dare look up. I was only just above a servant in this world.
“Your Majesty,” Kami said, “My friend Innia, she meant no harm.”
Gods, would he kill me for laughing too hard?
“Laughter is far from harmful but seeing as I have not heard one other laugh amongst my fellows, I was curious.”
A finger pressed under my chin, tipping my face upward and I knew one thing for certain.
This was a very dangerous king.
With his white hair taken short, the angles of his cheeks, jaw, and chin were in sharp relief.
A few locks of hair that had evaded the scissors fell forward, partially covering one of his cobalt eyes.
Long, dark lashes that would give any woman cause to swoon framed his eyes.
Lips that were not too full, but it was the quirk to one side that had my attention.
The near…softness to his gaze as he inspected my face.
The heat of that single finger pressing into my skin, flaring hotter. I had to fight to tamp down my reaction, to breathe through this feeling that I could not afford to have.
“I laughed when she suggested that I introduce myself to you. Surely, that would be far above my station, Your Majesty.” I lowered my gaze which allowed me to see the rest of him.
The worn leather pants that had been patched had obviously seen battle, the boots that were laced to his knees rather than to his upper thigh as was the current fashion, and the dark blue silk shirt that hung open to his waist, framing every inch of muscles that rippled each time he drew breath.